LETTERS: ABORTION DOESN'T LIBERATE WOMEN

To the editor:

Most modern feminists have made easy access to abortion the very symbol of liberation for women. They refer to abortion as the most fundamental right of women, more important even that the right to free speech and the right to vote. The National Organization for Women designates the protection of abortion rights as its top priority.

Ironically, abortion does not liberate women. Just the contrary. Abortion, and the perceived need for it, validate the patriarchal world view which holds that women, encumbered as they are by their reproductive capacity, are inferior to men.

Abortion liberates men, not women. Here's why:

Efforts to establish abortion as a legitimate solution to the problems of being a woman in a male-dominated society surrender women to pregnancy discrimination. Thus, feminists who demand the right to abortion concede the notion that a pregnant woman is inferior to a non-pregnant one. They admit that pregnancy and mother hood are incompatible to being a fully functioning adult, and than an unencumbered male is the model for success. Instead of working for social changes that would make it possible to combine children and career and opting for abortion instead, they have agreed to participate in a man's world under a man's terms. Thus, they have betrayed working women who want to have children.

Abortion also allows men to escape responsibility for their own sexual behavior. A man whose child is aborted is relieved of the requirement that he support his children. Women are thus reduced to the status of a consumer item, which if broken by pregnancy can be fixed by abortion.

Pro-abortion feminists have corrupted feminism by embracing male standards, which hold that it is permissible to treat "unequals" unequally, and for the powerful to oppress the weak. So by accepting this patriarchal world view, these pro-abortion feminists have actually capitulated to male dominance. Women who agree to conform to the ideals of a world made by and for men are not liberated. They have merely altered their roles within the patriarchy.

CHRISTINE E. STEPHENS

Cape Girardeau