I don’t think many people were surprised to read about Gov. LePage’s anti-abortion stance.

However, I am still puzzled to see that the same folks who insist on minimizing governmental intervention in people’s private lives support telling women what to do with their bodies. Are there really no critical thinkers in their movement who don’t see the irony in this position?

Additional Photos

Participants in an anti-abortion rally march toward the State House Saturday in Augusta for the "Hands Around the Capitol" rally. The rally is held each year to recognize and mourn the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision. AP

Protesters on both sides of the abortion issue hold signs outside the U.S. Supreme Court during the 2006 March for Life demonstration. The Associated Press

I wonder if the folks who insist on laws to inform women of the health risks of abortion also plan to legislate telling all pregnant women about the risks of continuing a pregnancy and giving birth — which is far more dangerous than a legal abortion.

The risk of maternal death is 1,250 percent higher when giving birth as compared with having a legal abortion (0.567 per 100,000 terminations as opposed to 7.06 per 100,000 live births).

Eileen Fingerman, M.D.
Sidney

As sons and daughters of God, which we most assuredly are, one of the reasons we come to this earth is to obtain a physical body. Unless the mother’s life is in danger, or in the case of rape, there is no excuse for the deplorably, selfish act by doctors and mothers of purposely taking a child’s life.

Even in the case of rape, and even though an innocent woman’s precious chastity has been, through no fault of her own, viciously violated, rather than take the life of an innocent unborn, adoption should be seriously considered.

It is argued that we don’t know at what time in the pregnancy life actually begins. First off, what right do we have to be so presumptuous as to think we have any right to make such a life-giving, or in this case, life-taking, decision? The giving or taking of life is God’s decision. It’s not man’s.

Second, because we don’t know at what point life actually begins, wouldn’t any right-thinking person, at any point in the pregnancy, want to err on the side of life?

Last, let me render the first and second points moot — nothing dead grows, period. Therefore, logic dictates that the fetus is alive at conception, otherwise it couldn’t grow — which translated means abortion is murder, plain and simple.

John Calvin, a 16th-century religious and political reformer, wrote, “If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.”

Man has legalized that which God has forbidden from the dawn of time. How sick can society get?

Charles A. Reitze
Millinocket

When I heard the story of Dr. Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia, who was arrested earlier this month for murdering a woman and for a history of performing an unknown number of “full-birth abortions” on already-delivered babies, I’m not shocked.

Can someone honestly tell me that the difference between a partial-birth abortion and a full-birth abortion is anything more than a few seconds? Both procedures involve a baby being born or almost born and a doctor inserting a sharp object, usually scissors, into its head.

I’m really not writing this for shock value. Yes, it’s shocking, but if you go back to the 1990s, it was President Clinton who vetoed the first partial-birth abortion ban. Though it finally made it into law in 2003, we’ve desensitized ourselves to what the procedure really is.

Some of us humans have, anyway. Take Dr. Gosnell’s story and drop it in the 1950s and there would be an outcry from the American people that would be reminiscent of the outrage we felt about the Holocaust.

But today, it’s just another story on the Drudge Report, like the lady who lives with 80 cats.

Dennis Kelnhofer
Windham 

Regarding the Jan. 19 letter (“Anti-abortion reader has lots of things to do”) by Mr. Joseph Kolko about Mr. Robert Poissant’s views opposing abortion, I would assume that Mr. Kolko would have an opinion opposing murder and mayhem in general.

Then he should list all that he has done to give funds to prison groups and organizations that try to shape young people’s views and to help them make better lives for themselves so they don’t have to rob, steal or kill. Enough said.

David Ryder
Portland 

Column on liberal attacks ignored what right says 

On Jan. 14, the paper ran a ridiculous piece on the op-ed page plaintively titled “Why the virulence of liberal attacks on conservatives?”

I didn’t take issue with the premise.

We liberals do look down on conservatives because they deny truth when it suits them (global warming), lie when it suits them (WMDs in Iraq) and present hearsay as fact.

The column, by M.D. Harmon, proves the last point. It is an absurd complaint about “virulent” liberal attacks that attempt to “intimidate into silence everyone who disagrees with the left.” Mr. Harmon often states that case but uses only one pathetic example — a letter written by a local woman to this paper suggesting Cal Thomas be jailed for hate speech. Oh, those big bad liberal bullies.

Let me give examples of “virulent attacks.”

Glenn Beck: “I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it.”

Ann Coulter: “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”

Bill O’Reilly (after San Franciscans passed a ballot measure urging schools and colleges to prohibit on-campus military recruiting): “We’re going to say (to al-Qaida) look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco.”

Rush Limbaugh: “I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus (as) living fossils.”

Pat Robertson: “The feminist agenda encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, and destroy capitalism.”

That is virulence. It is the voice of conservatives. It is dangerous and it has consequences.

Tim Copeland
Biddeford

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