033174 Wonderment over remark

Dear Editor,

A thoughtful person reads of Justice Blackmun's complaints of the abuse he has received in the last year in sheer wonderment. Here is one of the seven men who exercised their power of life or death over millions of innocent, defenseless children, and who chose death, complaining about written abuses while he and his colleagues who condemned to death these little ones are walking the streets and able to complain over the abuses they receive.

What the justice must remember, whether he likes it or not, and for which he must make allowances, is that to millions of people the opinion which he wrote and which was accepted by a majority of his fellow justices made legal a practice which is nothing less than murder, no matter how he and those who agree with him try to clothe it in fine language. This is not just an emotional issue, or even simply a religious issue, but one which touches the very core of one's belief in the value of human life.

The decision turned loose on society a killer literally without parallel in the history of mankind, the enormity and cruelty of which is such that it dims the light of this civilization. And so it is little wonder his critics have difficulty maintaining their civility and composure and in treating him with the respect he would wish, and which is ordinarily due one in his position.

Joseph T. Gill

 Morton Grove, Ill.