Mail Call: From Paul Shaw, junior construction science major

I was surprised and dismayed to see that in an opinion column discussing problems caused by abortion ("Gendercide," Feb. 13), the author still managed to defend the practice. I take issue with the logic behind any set of values that defends the practice of abortion with one side of its mouth, yet calls for the end of the ‘gendercide' of baby girls in China with the other. "Women in every single culture must be valued," says the column. Does it not follow that all people in all cultures should be valued? The author refers to 160 million baby girls missing from China, but fails to mention the 55 million children that have been killed in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade. It seems that abortion proponents want to decide when it is convenient for a baby to count as a person and when he or she is only an embryo. The problem in China is very saddening, but until the underlying moral problem is addressed, nothing will change, and women's rights advocates will continue propagating the contradictory ideas that women in the U.S. should have the right to choose, yet women in China should have the right to live.