Has violence killed the anti-abortion movement?
BY JEFF STEIN
(04/28/99)

Jeff Stein missed a vital fact: The vast majority of those who identify themselves as pro-life are, and always have been, opposed to violence as a means of addressing the abortion issue. I have never chained myself to a clinic door nor waved a bloody-looking placard, and am horrified at the idea of murder and clinic bombings. What I, and millions like me, have done is quietly live out the pro-life ethic by supporting compassion-driven crisis pregnancy agencies; aiding individual single moms and their children; sponsoring abstinence education and responsible behavior; encouraging adoption; and picking up the pieces when hurting women, convinced that abortion is their only "choice," regret that decision later. We look for balance and mercy in this explosive, complicated issue, knowing that societal change occurs not at the point of a gun, but in the persuasion of individuals.

-- Sharon L. Shannon

Stein states that abortion mills are having problems recruiting abortionists. If anything, what Stein calls "violence" has stopped a lot of innocent babies from being murdered and has stopped a lot of the killers from killing more children.

-- Rev. Donald Spitz
Director, Pro-Life Virginia
Chesapeake, Va.

Is the pro-life movement dead? Ask the thousands of women who, under severe pressure to abort, have turned to pro-life volunteers to help them give their children life. Ask the women whose schools have responded to Feminists for Life's college outreach program by making more resources available to parenting students. Ask the Center for Gender Equality. Their recent poll showed that 53 percent of American women favor legal abortion in, at most, the "hard cases" of rape or incest or to save the mother's life. That number is increasing, by the way; in 1996, it was 45 percent.

The only way to declare the pro-life movement moribund is to ignore all those women, and instead concentrate on the self-aggrandizing antics of a (relatively) few people on the fringe. To then refer to those fringers as the "leaders" of the right-to-life movement only compounds the injustice done to the millions of pro-lifers you've ignored.

-- Jennifer Roth

Despite what Operation Rescue member David Lackey told Jeff Stein, there are still three abortion clinics operating in Birmingham, Ala.: New Woman All Women, Summit Medical Center and Planned Parenthood. Lackey is apparently telling as many reporters as he can that there is now only one, presumably to make his organization look more effective than it actually is.

-- Nicole Youngman
Mobile, Ala.

The hole story
BY JON BOWEN
(04/29/99)

Your article on trepanation was extremely irresponsible. The author clearly was sympathetic to the proponents of this utterly dangerous and profoundly idiotic practice. He didn't even mention the most likely and serious negative consequence of the procedure: brain damage. Anyone foolish enough to drill into his own skull has no way of knowing when to stop, and a millimeter too far can be deadly or profoundly disabling -- even if you don't wind up with an infection.

Brain surgery is an option of last resort; even experienced neurosurgeons know that one slip in the wrong place can destroy a personality, paralyze a body, blind, deafen, make speechless, make impulsive and unable to plan, and in many other ways ruin a life.

Though perhaps anyone dumb enough to try it has little to damage in the first place.

-- Maia Szalavitz

Horrible Harvard
BY LORI GOTTLIEB
(04/28/99)

I just read Gottlieb's article about her horrendous interview experience at Harvard Medical School, and was left wondering if the arrogant, prejudiced institution she described was the same place where I was interviewed a few months ago. The man who received the interviewees at the conference table in the morning was kind, joked with us and did his best to put us at ease. My first interviewer was a warm man who spoke with me for close to an hour and a quarter about various things -- very much a "getting to know you" interview. The second interview, also with a physician, was shorter but still quite friendly. I was not accepted to Harvard Medical School, but I'm fairly certain that that was a fair decision, based on the merits of my application. I think Gottlieb had a very bad interview experience, without a doubt, but the character of the interviews depends on the interviewer, not on the school.

-- Dorit Koren

Having just read Lori Gottlieb's whine about her Harvard interview, I'm duly impressed. That an individual with an undergraduate degree in French and a business background was even granted an interview for any med school is an amazing event. As Lori may realize by now, most interviewees have close to a 4.0 GPA with two to three years of course work in math, chemistry and physiology. I presume she was granted an interview only so that Harvard could meet its requirement of interviewing a certain number of "diverse" (read "unqualified") candidates for their select positions.

-- Kim L. Hossner, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Animal Sciences
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colo.

LORI GOTTLIEB RESPONDS ...

I have a 4.0 from Yale and Stanford, am a member of Phi Beta Kappa, got the highest final grade in every science class I've taken (more than those than meet the requirements for med school), and used to teach Calculus at Stanford. Unqualified? None of the other top medical schools to which I was admitted agree with you.

This is me saving my life"
BY NIALL McKAY
(04/27/99)

Anyone who has read a single interview with Sinead O'Connor must know that she had a rather horrible upbringing, ending up in reform schools after being rejected by a mother who "wished her dead" -- and must know what a terrible inheritance that must be when the girl becomes herself a mother. For McKay to say in one breath that O'Connor "took 20 Valium tablets and three glasses of vodka ... on the eve of a court hearing to determine custody of her daughter," and then in the next breath say that "she claimed to have found religion and averted her own suicide," is an announcement that rings, not with "irony" as McKay would have it, but the simple truth. Happiness does not come cheaply in this world -- not as cheaply as wise-guy irony, at any rate -- and whatever happiness the troubled soul may find here, she should be welcome to it, without cheap sneering from the press.

-- Kenneth Jones

It seems like Sinead O'Connor has found insanity rather than religion. I wonder if family and friends have suggested psychotherapy and/or psychiatry to help her? I hope that she is not too rich nor too famous for someone to try to tell her the truth of how her actions appear, rather than coddle and coo over her. This woman and her child need all our prayers, whether they be to the Pope or to Buddha or to Goddess.

-- Jamie Joy Gatto
New Orleans