How to Truly Help the Poor

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/opinion/birth-control-abortion-christians.html

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To the Editor:

Re “Christians Need a New Right-to-Life Movement” (Op-Ed, Dec. 25):

Margaret Renkl proposes a new right-to-life movement in which the contentious issues of abortion, birth control and homosexuality would be set aside. Instead, faithful Christians would unite in assisting the poor and the vulnerable.

Unfortunately, the problems the poor and the vulnerable face are inextricably bound up with the contentious social issues that Ms. Renkl would like to avoid. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2014, about 75 percent of all abortion patients were low-income. These women are less likely to have access to birth control. To prevent unwanted pregnancies, and the need for abortion, and to permit women to plan their educational and professional lives, they must have access to affordable and effective birth control and to abortion when birth control fails or fails to be used or when a woman is a victim of coercion.

Access to accurate sex education for all our children that includes but is not limited to abstinence has also been shown to reduce the number of abortions. It has the added benefit of teaching our children about healthy sexual expression and that it is not limited to heterosexuals.

In my view, Ms. Renkl’s call for a new right-to-life movement allows faithful Christians to remain ideologically pure while they ignore the real-life consequences of restrictions on access to abortion, birth control and real sex education for the poor and the vulnerable she purports to champion.

RACHEL STRAUBER, NEW YORK