LTE: Philladelphia Weekly

To the Editor:

What a stupid, ignorant, and selfish letter Adam
Levick sent the Philadelphia Weekly last week.

Writing "And you don't need to be a conservative to
acknowledge that, excluding rape, women make choices
in their personal lives that determine the number of
children they ultimately have", Mr. Levick refuses to
acknowledge the role of birth control failure in
unexpected pregnancy. Some data for Mr. Levick:
condoms, 11% failure rate; diaphragm with spermicide:
17% failure rate; the Pill: 1%-3% failure rate
(source:
FDA:http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1997/babytabl.html).
Unless Mr. Levick knows Ms. Bell personally, he cannot
know whether or not she was taking contraceptive
precautions.

If memory serves me, so-called "conservatives" have an
enormous preoccupation with outlawing or restricting
abortion (and in many cases, birth control itself: our
own Rick Santorum is on record in opposition to
Griswold v. CT). The only words Ms. Bell offers us
regarding her religious beliefs are "I never intended
to have another baby, but God has a plan." Did it
enter Mr. Levick's mind that Ms. Bell is maybe personally
opposed to abortion?

Mr. Levick refers to Ms. Bell's sexual activity as
"personal moral abdication". You don't need to be a
sexual libertine to wonder whether Mr. Levick has
ever had sex outside of marriage; whether he has had
sex for any reason other than procreation; or whether
he has ever uttered, as so many of us have, "What do
you mean you're pregnant? We've been SO CAREFUL?!?"

Brendan Skwire