Responsibilities with Right to Abortion

In her Tuesday oped the writer declares that she is unashamed to be sexually active and proud of her healthy reproductive system. But then the two intersected and worked as intended by na­ture, and she found herself pregnant.

Desiring to be rid of the unwanted child, she was dismayed to learn that her employer would not pick up the tab. Her employer was the federal government and thus it would have been all of us who paid for her abortion.

She seems to think that her legal right to abortion ought to have obliged someone else to pay for it, lest her reproductive choices be limited.

But her rights, her preferences and her choices create no obligation on anyone else, no matter how petulantly she demands it. Neither does her right to pursue happiness as she sees fit.

If as the complaint goes, it’s not her employer’s business, then indeed it is not her employer’s busi­ness. It’s hers.

Her argument echoes and references the hysteria that has followed the Hobby Lobby decision, a per­fectly reasonable and limited decision to allow some employers to exercise their rights under the law.

No one is barred from purchasing the abortifa­cients to which the plaintiffs objected; the employers have merely been freed from picking up the tab. They are exercising their liberties; the writer has exercised hers.

This sort of ginned-up outrage is what 40 years of legal abortion and the sexual revolution produced: A notion that responsibility for the consequences of our actions should rest with someone else.

Editor's Note: This letter was written by Father Leonard R. Klein Director of Pro-Life Activities, Diocese of Wilmington, Wilmington, DE