Working together can reduce abortions
Hello Nancy Daly, I appreciate your trying to help women deal with unwanted pregnancies in ways that they would feel truly supported. From your letter of Nov. 27, it seems that there are a lot of things that we could agree on.
First, prevent women from being in a position of having an unwanted pregnancy. If we could learn from the examples of foreign countries (Belgium and others), providing comprehensive sex education in schools and free and available birth control reduces the number of abortions below what is now in the U.S.
In the U.S., the Unitarian and United Church of Christ share a whole life curriculum that weaves teaching about healthy, respectful relationships and sex education into the entire Sunday school classes curriculum so that they have this training by the time they need it. It works.
This training coupled with easily available birth control along with providing support for maternal and child health and day care and other substantial support would get rid of many, if not most, of the causes of people wanting abortions.
Using these approaches, a woman would still be able to choose a safe legal abortion, yet the number of abortions would be reduced, likely well below the number if they were to be made illegal, as in 1973. It is a win/win for pro-life and pro-choice.
Would you work together for this? There are good people on both sides working against each other as if the opponent was evil. This is inaccurate and such a waste. Again, I say let's have the good people work together to benefit all.
Dan Bailey
Wheaton
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