The current health care bill under consideration in the U.S. Congress would contain certain pro-life protections, prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay for abortions except in the case of rape, incest or where necessary to protect the health of the pregnant woman.

Is not there an element of hypocrisy in these pro-life provisions? Either the fetus is an unborn child deserving protection, or it is not, and the fetus has no knowledge as to how it was conceived. Once conceived, why should we permit the fetus to be aborted in cases of rape or incest? Such an abortion kills the unborn child, and why should such killing being allowed simply because the child was conceived by rape or incest? Does conception by rape or incest make the fetus any the less an unborn child? Yet pro-life supporters tell us it's all right to kill the child under such circumstances.

Such a pro-life position seems hypocritical to me. Human life is human life, and once it is conceived, it does not seem logically consistent to permit its murder simply because of the way it was conceived. Let us permit the unborn child to be born, even if it was conceived by rape or incest, and let us punish the perpetrators but not the innocent unborn child. (Let me close by saying that I am totally pro-choice in my own philosophy, but I felt it necessary to point out the irrational position of the pro-life movement.)

Theodore M. Utchen

Wheaton