LETTERS

...BARRIE SNEED Asheville, North Carolina I have never known anyone who had an abortion who took it lightly...

...I stated that I did not know very much about the new immigration law...

...I beg your pardon...

...It can be more wrong to put a fetus's potential above one's own physical and mental health and above one's own potential to contribute to our world in ways other than childrearing...

...Yes, indeed, and I have done it without qualm ." On the very next page he describes her as a person of conscience...

...If someone is forced to change jobs three times in four years, how can we expect him to develop any feeling of loyalty...

...Like many feminists I think it's immoral to require a woman to carry to term a pregnancy she doesn't want...

...RORY FORAN Glen Burnie, Maryland Jason DeParle in his article reprints a quotation by me published in Harper's: "I'm not sure, by the way, that we should spend our time debating the ethical points of abortion . . . . Abstract ethical arguments over when life begins are not very illuminating...

...The one about "looking like an unmade bed," however, was tossed off almost a half century ago by the great columnist Heywood Broun as a comment on his own appearance...

...Those fighting to ban abortion see only one moral imperative: to preserve potential human life...

...Moreover, while some see abortion as a primary threat to the dignity of life, others see a ban on abortion as the larger threat—shifting the question of the meaning of human life from moral philosophy to embryology, and therefore reducing the essence of our humanity from social bonding to the pairing of gametes...

...DOUGLAS WEINFIELD Silver Spring, Maryland On page 43 of his article on abortion, DeParle quotes someone named Barbara Ehrenreich as saying, "Would I feel comfortable getting rid of a fetus in the first few months of life...

...But in six (not seven) team changes, he was traded four times and left as a free agent only twice...

...On these public values we agree as a people...

...They make our private values possible—those personal, religious, and philosophical beliefs about which we do not agree and we need not...

...The benefits of abortions, if they are killings, outweigh the costs...

...Your question implies that some number of women do...

...And it is precisely for this reason that it must remain in the domain of private not public values...

...More generally, it is hard to take seriously the suggestion that feminists don't like to talk morally...

...Moral questions need to be discussed in context, with regard to the specific options that a person had at the time...

...JACK ORMSBEE Concord, Massachusetts Fair weather farmers In connection with an article by Tina Rosenberg ["Farm Workers Don't Have to be Poor," April], an editor at The Washington Monthly interviewed me in order to update information I had furnished Rosenberg earlier...

...However, I offered some information about the impact of immigration on migrant workers planting trees for large timber companies in the South...

...But even if workers do trade off gross wages for old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and workers compensation, these newly vindicated rights are very important...

...But many other Americans, who agree that ending potential human life is wrong, also believe there can be acts more wrong: It can be more wrong to bring a child into this world that one does not want or cannot provide for...

...If I were a woman, I would fmd that assumption grossly insulting...

...DONALD COFFIN Chicago, Illinois Bedtime stories I don't like to dampen Matthew Cooper's admiration for the "great lines" flowing from the typewriter of sports reporter John Feinstein ["What The Washington Post Could Learn From Sports Illustrated," April...

...I never stated or implied that this process is applicable to the situation here...

...Although Rosenberg has put her finger on an important truth in saying that, "Farmers pay poorly not because they have to, but because they can," it is probably equally true that they will never have to until farmworkers organize strong unions...

...Most feminists discuss issues in terms of justice and injustice, fairness and unfairness, freedom and lack of it—hardly valueneutral terms...

...It can be more wrong to put a fetus above the needs of children or other loved ones already born and dependent on you...

...We kill them for being too poor to afford medical care, for breathing polluted air, or for killing others...

...Focusing on what he perceives as a lack of moral sensibilities among feminists, DeParle misses this key point: Abortion is a question on which there are profound moral differences...

...LINDA GORDON Madison, Wisconsin Jason DeParle's piece on abortion focuses narrowly on "feminists and liberals" who see abortion as a medical procedure lacking an inherently moral dimension...

...They inevitably become moralistic—and they inevitably carry the implication that people who support abortion are less moral than other people ." Although I spent almost an hour on the phone with DeParle explaining (rather patiently I thought) the context and meaning of this statement, he is using it here to prove something quite different...

...LETTERS Write to life My only disappointment with Jason DeParle's stunning article ["Beyond the Legal Right," April] probing uncharted moral waters in the abortion controversy is that it ended up having a man as the author...

...Public values are those essential to the functioning of a healthy society, values such as justice, democratic accountability, privacy, and civil liberty...

...This crucial distinction is essential to a free society...

...The difference between "moral" and "moralistic" is precisely that the former involves putting oneself in another's place, imagining the actual context, while the latter often means preaching...

...MARC LINDER Weslaco, Texas...

...DeParle is repeating an old fallacy of intolerance: hearing alternative moral values as amoral, rather than different...

...My belief has been that even if the one-month-old fetus/embryo/baby/whatever is a human being, we kill human beings all the time in this society...

...Moreover, you cite me in order to support the claim that "these extra rights haven't made much difference" (presumably because the workers ultimately pay for them...

...And yep, he's been a free agent...

...In so doing, DeParle misses the fundamental issue at stake for our society—whether we maintain a critical distinction between public and private values...

...FRANCES MOORE LAPPE Oakland, California Major leagues Yep, Claude11 Washington has played for seven teams in a 15-year major league career ["Tilting at Windmills," April...