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EVERYONE HAS an opinion on abortion, and everyone seems absolutely convinced that this opinion is completely right. Don't even try to talk about it. On the conservative side, this right- eousness has led to violence, political terrorism and killing-including the horrifying murder of a man in his own kitchen, chatting with his wife and one of his sons, as we were reminded last week with the arrest of the fugitive accused of killing Dr. Barnett Slepian. On the pro- choice side, righteousness leads to marching, demonstrating and a general jostling for the moral high ground. In a women's group I was a member of once, one of our number suggested that she wasn't sure abortion was good; she was treated to an hour of lectures from her more enlightened sisters. I don't mean to compare murder to verbal pummeling, but both sides of this debate act as if they are the freedom fighters. No one wants to give an inch. Sometimes when people are this certain, it means that they are confused.
I grew up in a world where abortion was illegal, and the terror and pain inflicted on my generation are hard to forget. For us-at a time when Planned Parenthood declined to give birth control to unmarried women-sex was inextricably...