May 15, 1970

Dr. Kurt Loewit

TIustitut fur Allg. u. Exper. Pabhblogie der Universitat
Peter~Mayr Strasse Za

Innsbruck, Austria

Dear Dr. Loewit:

Your letter of April 17 hae reached me after some delay, owing to the illness
of one of the staff people at Current Contents.

I will not attempt to recapitulate all of the many heavily ventilated argu-
ments pro gnd con abortion with which we are both familiar, and which lead
in the long run to a personal moral conclusion.

The specific point that I wish to make beyond the already well discussed
arguments wae the relationship between the legal control of abortien and the
general position of the state in questions of human reproduction. I believe
it essential to establish an ethos of private responsibility in this area as
the only way to forfend the possibility of a wide range of statist intrusions
in questions of human genetics and generation.

I would go further, however, with the remark that a high incidence of abortion
is an accomplished fact and that this being the case, I would prefer that they
be legal,procedures, rather than illegal, and that they be available on a non-~
discriminatory basis rather than merely to the sophisticated and the affluent.
This position is similar to that which many liberals take on a numer of other
opportunities for self-abuse where legal regulation is simply an inappropriate
and ineffective method of securing a goal that may be soctally or morally
important.

I hope you do not think that I advocate abortion on a large scale as the ideal
solution to various social problems. However, I do believe that it is important
that we bring the question outside the aresa of legal sanctions as « necessary
point of departure for reaching to more fundamental levels. So of course I
would agree with you that abortion is just the most superficial aspect of a
much deeper problem. In this country, however, it has had very serious over-
tones of racial discrimination which have been a serious impediment to reaching
more deeply.

T realise that you may have a more deepseated moral condemnation of abortion
than I do, which may in turn reflect a difference of opinion about the definition
of human life. I would simply urge that this matter be left to private moral

 
Dr. Kurt Loewit May 15, 1970
Page 2

decision rather than legal compulsion. Furthermore, I would be obliged to
remind you of the dynamic changes of popular and official views on these
questions, noting that the advocacy of contraception elicited almost identical
reactions not so many years ago.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics