Tom Waddell’s opinion page piece, (June 3), “Anti-abortion pseudo-science,” mimicked an idiomatic phrase that people sometimes used to point out hypocrisy: “Pot calling the kettle black.” The earliest appearance of the phrase was in Thomas Shelton’s 1620 translation, of the Spanish novel, Don Quixote; “You are like what is said that the frying pan said to the kettle. ‘Avant, black browes.’”

In the first of his nine paragraphs, Waddell contended that, “the only objection to women having an abortion is religious.” From there, though, he fingered pages of science text, regarding the science of human life, beginning, “with a woman’s fertilized egg.” Randomly, he ranted about zygotes, blastocysts, embryos and fetus. Nary a lettered-word, in approximately 1,200 of them, referencing the Books of the New Testament.

Halfway through the article, Waddell shifted gears from science to historical documents. He faulted anti-abortion folk for believing the Constitution “protects the lives of every citizen, born or unborn.” Twice, he expressed this mandate: a woman’s fertilized eggs are not entitled to constitutional protection unless they “bear resemblance to a human person.” Resemblance is defined as “the way in which things resemble each other.” Because the definition begged the question, Waddell was cleanly, picked off the first base bag!

 

John Benoit

Manchester

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