PAULA NEAL MOONEY

In her Aug. 9 letter ``Abortion's Dark Ages,'' ( Akron-Beacon Journal ) Peggy Phillips decried the days of illegal abortion and feared the return to a time when ``many women will be forced to endure such dangerous procedures that put their lives at risk.'' Never did she sympathize with fetuses that may experience horrific pain during pregnancy termination. Medical advances now make us privy to more scientific data regarding childbearing from conception forward than in 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided. DNA tests predict babies' sex at five weeks after conception. Pregnancy calendars inform us in Week 6 of the ``beginnings of the central nervous system,'' which receives pain signals. Pro-abortionists' desire to keep abortion legal is more about parental convenience and abdication of responsibility than anything. It's a wrong mind-set I too employed in the past, growing up in a self-centered society whose laws during most of my life made it OK f...

Jesus and Me There’s been a big debate lately about college-educated housewives, and if we’re wasting our brains and baccalaureates by abandoning good jobs to wipe little noses and butts all day. It started with Linda Hirshman’s “Homeward Bound” article in The American Prospect , wherein she decried homemaking as a detrimental road leading to a “demonstrable future loss of income, power, and security for the woman who quits.” Intense reaction to the piece landed Hirshman in “Good Morning America” segments that engaged career, hybrid and at-home moms in side-by-side tête-à-têtes. One homemaker was asked if she feared her husband leaving her destitute. Hesitating slightly, a nanosecond of silence masking her dumbfounded state, she offered a terse and defensive, “No.” If only she’d let down her more-motherly-than-thou guard long enough to tell the truth: that some of us save promising want ads until late-afternoon lessons with our kids compel us to toss them. That after heated fights wit...