Aurora facility will offer help to many

The "right to life" protesters just don't get it. For whatever reason at a given point in time, there has been and always will be a population of women everywhere in the world who will feel the need to terminate their pregnancy.

They are a diverse group -- crossing every age, socio-economic class, race, religion, intelligence -- and the only thing they may have in common is that they find themselves pregnant and feel compelled not to be. They will seek to abort their fetuses and if there isn't a safe procedure available for them, they will hunt for another method -- the back alley abortionist, the drinking of chemicals, the knitting needle, or falling down the stairs "accidentally."

Because they are desperate not be pregnant, no amount of counseling and sign waving and demonstrating in front of a clinic is going to change their minds.

No one knows where their heads are at and what brings them to this conclusion, but this is the way some women are. Maybe they are depressed, or flat-broke or divorced or too young or too old or they've been raped or they are a prostitute or they simply don't want kids ... who knows? It makes no difference, because these women are determined to abort.

Protesters who block the entries of women's health clinics and hassle these women and the doctors and nurses that uphold the law and a woman's right to choose have an agenda to stop a safe, legal way to an abortion. In many states they have forced pregnant women in need to seek out unsafe and potentially lethal alternative methods.

Planned Parenthood is an organization that should be embraced by everyone --they offer affordable birth control and reproductive counseling, annual gynecological exams, pelvic and breast exams, Pap tests, pregnancy testing and counseling, referrals for prenatal care, adoption or abortion, HIV/AIDS testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, vasectomies and more. Abortions are just a part of their menu. There is no organization on earth that cares more about the health of women than Planned Parenthood. To the Aurora City Council: Leave it alone already. Have a spine and uphold the law and let Planned Parenthood open their clinic so they can offer safe health care to women when they need it the most.

Barb Leibovitz

Naperville