Agree with me, and we’ll have consensus

My “unyielding voice” which defends abortion rights is based on two principles which cannot be compromised. The decision to terminate a pregnancy belongs to the pregnant female and no one else. The fetus has no right which supersedes that of the female carrying it. I trust females and their doctors to make that decision free of any interference from church or state.

Gazette columnist Althea Cole (June 25, “Where can consensus be found on abortion policy?”) must have forgotten Dr. Savita Halappanavar. She died in 2012 when Irish doctors refused to perform a life-saving abortion on then-legal grounds. Kylie Beaton was forced to carry a non-viable pregnancy to term because Texas doctors feared that state’s new abortion restrictions.

Abortion opponents used to assure us they wanted exceptions to save women’s lives or to end pregnancies which resulted from rape or incest. They wanted the states to decide abortion rights. The laws passed since Roe v. Wade was unjustly and incorrectly overturned don't respect those exceptions. Right-wing presidential candidate Mike Pence wants to enact a federal 15-week ban on abortions.

Not once in her column did Cole denounce the obvious bad faith of the anti-abortion movement. If I am "extreme," it is because females must always have the right to make their own decisions about abortion. Cole's essay was also an act of bad faith in her failed attempt to convince us she wants a phony "consensus."

Leave females seeking abortion services alone. Leave clinics alone. Agree, and we have consensus.

Jeff Klinzman