To the Editor:
The Supreme Court has again affirmed women's constitutional right to an abortion.
Restrictive abortion laws have been forced upon us by powerful people and institutional elites. This is nothing more than their legal weapon for maintaining dominant influence. Abortion was not considered to be particularly troublesome until Catholic Pope Pius IX made it so in 1869.
It's worthy noting that a sizable number of human pregnancies terminate due to miscarriages. Often times, women aren't even aware that a conception has occurred and has been terminated. Such occurrences are quite frequent among other mammals. Scientists know this by analyzing scatt from caribou and orcas. When food sources lack nourishment, the female mammal rejects the tissue.
Humans alone among the mammals are able to supplement nature's oversight. A pregnant woman has pretty accurate knowledge regarding her ability to survive another pregnancy; also her ability to nurture another child and her knowledge of other factors that are specific to her particular circumstances.
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Abortion isn't the problem. The real problem is the societal conditions that make raising children so difficult for some. A healthy society requires that religious ideology not be allowed to diminish the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of millions of women.
Dave L. Wegner
Sioux Falls
