‘The Cowardice of the Bombers’

I’d like to reply to your editorial (Jan. 17), “The Cowardice of the Bombers.”

Bombings are bad. They sometimes kill someone.

Abortions are worse. They always kill someone.

Of the 30 abortion-clinic bombings, not one caused a death.

Of the 10 million abortions since 1973, every one has caused a death.

Either I’m crazy, or The Times has a serious problem with perspective in choosing targets for its editorials.

KEVIN R. DAVIS

Beverly Hills

I am infinitely tired of the Bible-driveling, excuse-making terrorists who have been bombing the abortion clinics. They may not have noted that there are other religions than theirs; that, indeed, some of us are agnostics and atheists, with as much right to our ideas as the bomber thinks he has to his.

I am also tired of having euthanasia dragged in by the tail to reinforce their dubious positions.

I do not hear of any of these terrorists offering to take the unwanted babies who might have been born; I do not hear of any of them considering the desperate girl who has no other viable solution to her problems. I darkly suspect that they regard sex as both sin and fun, and believe that the mother should pay for its rearing a child for 20 years whether she can do so without destroying her own life or not.

In our family our pregnancies have always run full-term, but this is strictly a matter of individual choice. And I say to the religious snivelers (the terrorist always says God told him to do it), you can have all the babies you want, so far as I am concerned, even though I firmly believe that more than two are too many for anyone, and certainly too many for our environment in this world. I am not bombing you or reproaching you if you have a dozen children. However, your privilege concerning mine stops short of my body and my womb. They belong to me --not you. What you think about my decisions is a matter of sublime indifference to me. May all the bombers be caught and severely punished. It would also be gratifying if they would kindly shut up about what is absolutely none of their business.

MEREDITH HUNTER

Agoura

To the abortion-clinic bombers: Where were you when abortion clinics were not legal? When women put themselves at the mercy of the “back alley butchers,” who often terminated more life than just the pregnancy, who were in the business more for the money than to aid the women coming to them as a last resort?

Why weren’t you around then? You are not going to stop abortion.

At least while these clinics are legal, there can be clean, safe places for women to go for help, where they can find licensed, compassionate doctors who will guide them through a very difficult time and help them make the best decision.

M.L. PIKE

Glendale

The Army of God and the rest of the right-to-lifers should know they aren’t the only ones who abhor abortions. Practically everyone does. It seems obvious that in nearly every case an abortion results from failure to use contraception effectively and that it is then the only means available for correcting a stupid but all too human mistake.

So a logical approach for the Army of God and friends would be to promote vigorously the more effective use of contraception. Where the children who are conceived are done so deliberately the problem of abortion vanishes. To expect it to disappear otherwise is fatuous. It has been with us for millenia for good reason. It can be done safely or under dangerous conditions, but it will be done.

The Army of God and the right-of-lifers can be consoled knowing that no one will try to influence or intimidate any of them to have an abortion.

R.P. LATHROP

Newhall

I have a feeling that most of the pro-lifers, or Army of God abortion-clinic foes, didn’t read the whole page (or is that the whole story?) as printed Jan. 11 in Letters to the Editor, “On Abortions and Bombings” and “Tent City and Its Aftermath.”

What do the pro-lifers propose doing with all the unwanted babies after they’ve been born? Will they leave it to charities or governments to erect nursery tent cities, pre-school, elementary, adolescent, senior, disabled, or other Unwanted Souls Tent Living Projects? And then vote for the President who won’t raise taxes in order to feed, house and educate them?

I could be wrong, of course. All those presently unwanted human beings in America--and the rest of the world--might have already been adopted into all the pro-lifers’ hearts and homes just this morning. But I don’t think there will ever be enough room on this earth for even one more unwanted child. But then, that’s just what I believe.

BEVERLY SIMONS-MORSE

Manhattan Beach

Those bigoted criminals responsible for bombing and setting fire to women’s health care clinics have forgotten that most of these facilities provide services other than just abortion, e.g., pap smears and beast exams to check for uterine and breast cancer; birth control--to name just a few.

Ironically, the media itself is propagating this misunderstanding by terming these facilities “abortion clinics” instead of women’s health-care centers, which provide abortions.

If these facilities are understood and treated as legal health-care clinics, perhaps the requests for investigation into the probable conspiracy that plaques them will be acknowledged.

CHERYL M. SAWYER

Hermosa Bach

Yet another self-righteous man claims that religious belief motivated him to bomb an abortion clinic--”to protect the lives of the unborn from those (women?) who would destroy them” (Times, Jan. 11).

During the 1970s, I was a Planned Parenthood volunteer in one of the New England states. In the course of a rather emotional meeting between pro-choice and anti-abortion activists, I encountered a young doctor. He revealed that he was oppose to abortion because his mother had become pregnant accidentally, when she was in her 40s; he believed that had abortion been available to her, he would never have been born.

My guess is that most of these violent anti-abortion zealots are in fact acting out unconscious rage-- the result of having been unwanted children themselves.

ZORA MARGOLIS

Santa Monica

One one hand we have the much publicized scene of widespread child abuse, beatings and death-- obviously victims of unfit parents, who hate their children and despite the bleatings of sob sisters, should be presented from getting pregnant.

On the other hand, we have the strange spectacles of ignorance, with their “bomb the clinic” program, quite plainly to perpetuate the horror of unwanted children, destined to be future victims of married prostitutes, who have no right to contaminate the idea of marriage.

Yet the “midnight bombers” in their abortion-clinic destruction, pretend to be religiously motivated. I know of now religion that is based on the deliberate creation of tragedy, to appear holy.

ARTHUR E. CLARK

Los Angeles

Don Beny Anderson, self-proclaimed general of God’s Army, is only practicing self-flattery when he describes the bombing of abortion clinics as a “Holy War.” Obviously he does not know the meaning of the term “Holy War.” Such bombings will become part of “Holy War” only when the doctors, nurses, and patients of such clinics and their families answer each bombing of an abortion clinic by bombing, without warning, a church. That, Mr. Anderson, would be a “Holy War.”

DANIEL W. BAKER

Monrovia