To the editor:

[This letter is in response to the column “Are fetuses human beings?” by Oscar Perez.]

Though you have some palatable points, let’s not forget it takes a man a few joyous minutes to decide to dispose his seed while it takes a woman a trying three months to decide on the life in her womb in this argument, so men shouldn’t make hasty decisions. In a patriarchal structure that has subjected women from Native Americans in conquest days to African-American women in slavery to prostitution and brothels today, vis a vis Lawrence Taylor and the underage woman, to sexual acts favorable to patriarchal adherents. Women haven’t had a discursive space to fully deconstruct the objectification of their bodies as presumptuous property that belong to their husbands, boyfriends, pimps, constituencies or countries. Not every woman is endowed with the divine foresight that Mary received about the immaculately conceived baby she would bear. If Judas’ mother had the same chance of divine foresight, history might be singing a different song. Yet, since we are speaking in abstract ideal notions, the only pragmatic thing autonomous individuals living in a complex environment can do is choose to bear the consequences of their choices. Unregrettably, women have given birth to geniuses we adore and ignoramuses we lampoon. We can’t start moral policing of the life of a child if we as a society don’t re-evaluate how we think and treat the woman that carried and helped rear the child in light of our assumptions about women and their role in society.

Dalitso Ruwe