Planned Parenthood’s Terri Worm recently wrote to support Roe v. Wade, and what people like to call abortion rights.

She cites our responsibility to women. She wants honor for grandmothers, and sundry good things for daughters and friends. She believes that abortion helps provide this honor, etc.

After 31 years of Roe I remain astonished to reflect how many others ” including people I admire ” share her warm feelings about this killing.

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But unlike Ms. Worm, I’m not persuaded that the elderly derive honor in the shredding of the youngest human beings ” or that we create a happier world for our daughters either, when we exterminate their unwanted brothers and sisters.

Ms. Worm neglects to mention these victims, I guess because she and Planned Parenthood need to pretend they don’t exist. Yet their fantasies notwithstanding, the full humanity of the unborn is plain. It is as real as their flesh and blood ” and mine. Their humanity is not different from my daughter’s, or my grandmother’s, or Ms. Worm’s.

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Likewise their humanity did not disappear in 1973, when a panel of supreme wizards pretended power over nature to undo it by decree. It would be useful for Ms. Worm to recall that in Roe the Supreme Court refit the same dehumanizing rationale it once applied to blacks, when it legitimized slavery.

Today, true love for women and adherence to human rights demands that we resist the official dishonesty. The challenges posed by sexuality and the care of children demand instead our diligent exercises of love, compassion, courage, faith and sacrifice, not to mention honesty and common sense. Success in these things helps women. Abortion ” except in the harshest cases ” is always a moral failure.

Unlike Ms. Worm, opponents of Roe aren’t selling failure. We don’t indulge the futile hope of improving humanity by brutalizing the innocent. In truth such brutality dehumanizes not the victims, but the perpetrators, and all who condone it.

Thank you, Ms. Worm, but our daughters deserve better. For their sake we denounce the hideous miscarriage of Roe v. Wade, and reject the mealymouthed chatter of abortion hucksters.

Chris King

Aspen