OPINION:
The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was pro-choice, correctly labeled partial-birth abortion as “just too close to infanticide.” In this light, the Times’ editorial “Kagan’s partial-birth extremism” (July 1) suggests that Ms. Kagan adheres to a constitutional jurisprudence enunciated by Lady Macbeth in Act I, Scene V of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” It is comforting to know that a Justice Kagan will adhere to Lady Macbeth’s principles rather than bother with annoying constitutional protections of life found explicitly in the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth amendments, protections that, if competently applied by the Supreme Court, would outlaw elective abortion altogether.
There is one aspect of partial-birth abortion that your editorial overlooked. According to an article in the Nov. 20, 1995, American Medical News, late-term abortionist Dr. Warren Hern said that rotating the fetus to a breech position, routinely done in partial-birth abortions, is “potentially dangerous” because it could cause an “amniotic fluid embolism or placental abruption.” Dr. Hern is author of “Abortion Practice,” a widely used textbook on abortion procedure.
In nominating a constitutional radical like the otherwise brilliant Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, the president has failed the country, the Constitution and America’s posterity.
Although I am not an economist, it seems to me that liberal avatars favoring elective abortion should fail Economics 101 on at least two fronts. First, it is future generations of Americans who will pay for the generous social programs now in place. America already has aborted well over 50 million such young Americans. Second, it is often young people who are the engine of technological innovation. That certainly was the case in the computer industry. Unhappily, innovations and ideas that would have been developed by some of the 50 million aborted Americans may never be developed.
RICHARD H. ESCOBALES JR.
Buffalo, N.Y.
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