THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 4, 1996 TAG: 9604040020
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Pat Buchanan is politically stupid. He passionately wants the Republicans to win the White House in November. But if the GOP adopts his agenda, it will guarantee the re-election of President Clinton.
His position on abortion alone would do it, even without his tirades on trade, corporations, immigration, the judiciary, evolution, etc.
If your 12-year-old daughter were raped, Pat would force her to give birth to a baby who would inherit the genes of one of the most despicable of human beings: a rapist. He would put in jail any doctor who performed an abortion on the 12-year-old - or on any of the 350,000 unmarried teenagers who become pregnant every year, or on any alcohol or drug-addicted woman. He says he would appoint to the Supreme Court only judges who would work to overturn Roe vs. Wade - a step opposed by more than 70 percent of Americans, Republicans as well as Democrats.
I am a pro-choice Republican. I am as strongly pro-choice as Pat Buchanan is anti-choice. There are millions of us.
Abortion has absolutely nothing to do with being a Republican or a Democrat. It is a religious and biological issue, not a political one.
Many pro-lifers believe that a woman's egg becomes a person at the moment of conception. But most Americans do not think that anything you can't even see without a microscope (1/50th of the size of the head of a pin) is already a human being - any more than a freshly fertilized hen's egg is already a chicken. Even pro-lifers do not believe they are eating bacon and scrambled chicken for breakfast. After 11 weeks a fetus is the size of your little finger.
One of the main attractions of the Republican Party is its emphasis on keeping ``government'' out of our personal affairs. I don't know of any decision a couple can make that is more personal than whether or when to bring another child into a world that is doubling its population every 43 years. It is an awesome responsibility to nurture a child for the next 20 years.
Yet the Republican Party has allowed itself to be dominated by people like Pat Buchanan and members of Ralph Reed's Christian Coalition. Such buttinskis would take these intimate decisions out of the hands of you and your spouse and her doctor and have them made for you by intimidated political bureaucrats in Washington or state capitals - decisions that are none of their business.
People who think abortion is murder should not have one. But they should not be allowed to force the rest of us to abide by their religious restrictions.
THEODORE R. WOLF
Virginia Beach, March 18, 1996 by CNB