Claire Hoy's column in April 6th issue of the Citizen leans heavily on his conviction that a law to control what a woman must do in the event she finds herself pregnant with an unwanted issue is doomed to failure.

When a female is not ready to have children and cannot find a maternal need stirring within her when she finds herself

pregnant she will exercise her right to have an abortion. This avenue of escape from the heavy burden of responsibility that comes with a newborn is understandable but, for most people, disconcerting.

A human being is a precious creation, but an unwanted birth is a sentence to a life of misery and lovelessness for that child. To create a new law to legislate what a woman must do in such circumstances will serve to drive these desperate people to the back-alley abortionist and the horrors of septicemia and possible death.

Claire states that more than 100,000 unborn babies are aborted each year. Obviously the potential mothers were not ready to assume the heavy responsibility that these children would have become had they been born. What he fails to concern himself with is the millions of children, and adults, worldwide who die from the many diseases that afflict humanity; Malaria, Aids. Cancer the list is endless. These people are living souls who leave this "mortal coil" in agony.

These are the ones we should be concerned about but laws cost little to enact while finding the cause and the prevention of diseases requires heavy financial investment.

A recent example of the consequences of unwanted birth is that of poor little Jeffery Baldwin, whose short life (rather existence) was a horror only humans could inflict. He lived in isolated filth, forced to drink from the toilet and eat with his fingers, rarely to leave the room in which he was confined and eventually to die at six years of age weighing only 21 poundsthe weight of a one year old.

This little creation never experience love and caring, comfort or kindness. A poor little soul who never asked to be born and probably would have been better served had he not been.

Such revelations open a window on what resides in the hearts of some humans. The grandparents of this unwanted little boy saw him only as a source of income and within their evil souls compassion and love did not exist. The sentence for this child's murder by starvation and isolation should be death. There is no justification for their actions.

K. Hayward

Mono