To the Editor:

The ignorant comments of Todd Akin regarding “legitimate rape” are only matched by the ill-informed opinion of anti-abortionists who equate a fetus to a child. Instead of viewing the abortion issue from the perspective of a fetus, we must view the moral issue from the perspective of a future child.

Morality demands that we prevent unnecessary pain and suffering in any person. However, a prerequisite for pain or suffering is consciousness. Every living thing will react to a stimulus, but lacking consciousness, a fetus cannot suffer any more than a chicken embryo in an egg.