There was a time when this newspaper would not have published Jennifer Rubin’s latest column, so vitriolic that it was (“Democrats should not lose focus on abortion,” July 12).

But times have changed; the extreme is now normal.

No longer content to address advocates of “Right to Life” as rational, thoughtful citizens who oppose abortion on demand for fundamentally sound reasons, Rubin reached new depths of rancor and disdain by choosing to label such advocates as members of a “monstrous forced-birth” movement.

She believes that our courts and elected politicians must battle to end this movement for the expressed purpose — hold on to your hats — so as not to “prolong the suffering of millions of Americans,” as if pregnancy and defending innocent life were the equivalent of the Bataan Death March.

She believes women are being deprived of “fundamental reproductive rights” by “Republicans and their partisan surrogates,” namely the so-labeled conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Rubin avoids altogether a discussion of fundamental human rights, as if women are somehow not obligated to support these higher universal rights, the same rights that their own mothers recognized.

At some point short of abortion, this basic principle of human life must be acknowledged if more people like Ms. Rubin are ever to get to write like she does, as scary a thought as that may be.

Mark Wood, Poland

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