It’s not everyday these days that the New York Times allows “the other side” to have its say in the paper’s Letters column. Yet somehow in today’s print edition this letter slipped by, and in a single entry no less, under the heading “Planned Parenthood.” Perhaps all it required was that the letter-writer not use the term “pro-life”:
Gail Collins (“Behind the Abortion War,” column, April 14) obscures the main point of opposition to federal funding for Planned Parenthood by stating that doctrinaire (in her view) opinions against contraception actually motivated the opponents, who seek to defund all forms of artificial contraception.
Such opinions, however, are of little moment before the stark truth that Planned Parenthood performed 330,000 abortions in 2009, as the largest provider in the country, and that if, in truth, it doesn’t use federal money for that enterprise, such financing nonetheless frees up other money to bolster its abortion industry.
These facts joined to the conviction that abortion is the (often savage) destruction of the innocent embryo or fetus — a human being in development — warrants cessation of financing, even when used only for nonabortion services, and awarding it to agencies in no way associated with this high-production abortion industry.
(Msgr.) DANIEL S. HAMILTON
Lindenhurst, N.Y., April 15, 2011
