LETTERS: MORNING-AFTER PILLS AREN'T FORM OF ABORTION

To the editor:

I am writing to express how disturbed I was by Harry Barry's Oct. 28 letter. Obviously, the abortion issue is a sensitive one with many different points of view, but I was frightened by how misinformed Barry was.

I would like to argue that morning-after treatments are not a form of abortion. They are a method of birth contro, and they are administered within 72 hours of unprotected sex or the failure of a different method of birth control. Morning-after treatments, commonly called "emergency contraception," are two large doses of birth-control pills that make conditions in the uterus unfavorable for a pregnancy. Emergency contraception would do nothing to stop an existing pregnancy, as a surgical abortion or RU-486 would.

Barry wrote that "the dreaded RU-486 drug will be available to every teen-age girl who continues to practice the morals preached in all of the sex-education school programs." What about every teen-age boy who puts pressure on a young woman to have sex before she is ready? The "morals" to which Barry takes offense are not gender specific. How dare he attack sex-education programs that attempt to impartially educate young people about all methods of birth control, including abstinence? Our children deserve the truth and a complete understanding of the options available to them.

I am in agreement that abortion is an unfortunate procedure, painful and traumatic. In spite of my pro-choice stance, I have stopped trying to argue that an abortion does not destroy a life. For me, there is no getting around the fact that an abortion obliterates, at the very least, a potential human life. However, the tragic reality is that we live in a society that often leaves women with no other alternative. It is a personal decision, and we must protect a woman's right to this option if she deems it necessary. I look forward to a time when every child born into our world is unequivocally wanted by its parents.

JEANNE S. WELLS

Cape Girardeau