In her letter to the editor (Mailroom, March/April), Alice Lemos ’81 PhD condemns politicians such as Lincoln Chafee ’75 for championing abortion on demand and having a “cavalier attitude towards the sanctity of life.”

Senator Chafee voted against authorizing the president to attack Iraq.

Had Chafee been in the majority, more than 3,200 soldiers, fully formed and sentient, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, fully formed and sentient, would be alive today, validating the importance that Chafee placed on the sanctity of life. And that’s not even taking into consideration the tens of thousands of permanently disabled soldiers and Iraqis. However, their lives have been only partially destroyed. Tragically, the loss of lives and the permanent impairments have been in vain.

To impute more importance to relatively unformed and non-sentient fetuses than to the lost lives of adult individuals, as the original letter writer has done, is totally beyond my understanding.

Lawrence Ross ’52

Tucson, Ariz.