Religion Plants the Guilt in Women

Re “Forgive but Not Forget” (July 19): If Catholic and fundamentalist Christian women feel guilty about their decisions to have abortions, they should be blaming their churches and not themselves. Conservative religions have been calling abortion “murder” for many years. Priests, ministers and especially the Pope have been ranting and raving about abortion, and they all know that women have been having abortions since time began. The difference now is that women are not putting their lives in danger with self-induced and back-alley procedures.

In 1990, the American Psychiatric Assn. published the results of a study (in Science magazine) that said, “The weight of the evidence from scientific studies indicates that legal abortion of an unwanted pregnancy . . . does not pose a psychological hazard for most women. Severe negative reactions after abortions are rare and can best be understood in the framework of coping with a normal life stress.”

FRAN AVALLONE

Los Angeles

These people [who feel guilty about abortion] seem to be forgetting a lot, such as the terrible, damaging childhood of an unwanted, unloved and neglected child.

They also forget that this is a woman’s personal choice by law, and that a fetus is not considered a person until it is viable.

These are court and medical rulings, whatever the flimsy, patriarchal belief systems of the churches. Perhaps these women should be reminded that if they did not buy so easily into the ungodly amounts of guilt imposed upon them by these same belief systems, they would not need to seek counseling from the very institutions that drove them to the guilt in the first place.

KATHIE L. TOUIN