Berger illustrates perfectly why we cannot trust progressives or liberals to defend individual rights. His very criterion is flawed since every action ever taken could conceivably affect other persons. The best defense of abortion rights is done by the late Murray Rothbard in The Ethics of Liberty, wherein he postulates that no human being has the right to reside in the body of another without their consent. We have no right to birth, that is a choice ultimately made by the carrier. This settles the "partial" birth and other stages-of-life argument. Of course the fetus or zygote or embroyo is human, that was never at issue with any sane person. But that in itself gives no one a claim against another person anymore than the nonexistent "right" to medical care gives one a claim against all providers. No, we don't need yet another worthless state agency run by anti-white Hillaryites to decide who is going to be born. Like everything else in a free society of laissez-faire capitalism this will be done by the unregulated, uncontrolled market. You pwogs need to get your government-worshipping hands out of our lives, both economic and social.

Michael P. Hardesty

Oakland, CA

Let me see if I understand your argument correctly.

On one hand, you are saying we must protect abortion rights even when choices are made solely based on the gender or race of the unborn child. You also acknowledge medical science is learning more about children in the womb and that we can detect birth defects and someday might be able to predict undesirable traits in a lot of areas. We need to protect abortion rights here, too.

On the other hand, you caution that new selection technologies will be expensive and therefore the purview of the rich. You're afraid the free market operating in child choice will cause too many people to order up good-looking, smart, healthy white guys with just enough hot-bodied bimbos to keep life interesting. We need to regulate so this doesn't happen.

Yes, that seems to be the ticket.

Robert Stephens

Flagstaff, AZ

Some of these genetic engineering implications were discussed extensively in science fiction of the 1950s and '60s.

The sex imbalance situation in China, more than India, has a time-bomb potential. The Tai Ping rebellion, which rocked China for seventeen years around the time of the US Civil War, took place in an area and era of great sex imbalances. I look for big trouble around 2021 (+/-). Men without Women tend to be irritable, nasty, and spread sexual diseases like AIDS!

One final point, abortion seen as a choice involving only one individual has another fatal flaw. (Fetal Flaw?) As things stand now, the Father may be liable for child support, but totally is otherwise powerless. Either he should have responsibility or else he shouldn't. Should the Father have any rights to be able to keep his child from being killed?

John D. Froelich

Upper Darby, PA