Editor:

I am writing in response to Tara Thompson’s insight into abortion (“People need to take responsibility for their actions,” Nov. 1). Being able to practice responsible sex would help out our abortion rates were there the proper education on the consequences and ways to protect yourself from said consequences of sex.

Our lovely President Bush has done nothing for this-in fact, he is threatening more funding cuts to schools that do provide sexual education, while promoting the completely unrealistic “safe sex” practice of abstinence.

This doesn’t help the fact that teenage pregnancy in 2004 was at 820,000 teens, and STD rates in the United States are the highest among teenagers.

Proper sexual education and information regarding how and why you should protect yourself is needed to prevent the different consequences in sex, not some archaic 600-year-old religious-based dogma of abstinence.

One way to prevent a potential abortion? Planned Parenthood distributes Plan B and emergency contraception, which when taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, has a 95 percent chance of preventing pregnancy.

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have unwanted pregnancies. We wouldn’t have pregnant teens that are scared that the community, religion and family they belong to may ostracize them. Ideally, all unwanted pregnancies would result in adoption.

But this is not an ideal world. Many teens are afraid and are indeed ostracized from their families and community. They are also dealing with the pressure of NOT being ready to raise a child at 16 years old. They also have to face the fact that many opportunities of work and higher education are now taken from them.

I would like to touch on Thompson’s belief that abortion is murder-except for rape and medical concerns. Why? It’s still the same process-a fetus is still killed. This isn’t murder then when it’s a necessity?

If there is criteria for when the “murder” of a fetus is justified or not, then who besides the mother of the unborn child should set the limit of consequences necessary to allow an abortion?

I don’t believe there should be allowances or criteria that other people set. It’s not the government’s right to set the bar.

Salem Honey

Junior, Business Administration