To the Editor,
In yesterday’s issue of the News, Leah Libresco’s letter (“Subsidized birth control should be available regardless of personal morality”) implied that I had intentions to “muddy” the contraception debate and that my beliefs regarding the subject are akin to those of a Catholic. I assure the editor that I had no such ill intention, and I would like to make clear that I am not Catholic, but Lutheran.
I yield entirely to Libresco’s point that $300 is more than $56. Her arithmetic is pristine. However, there were a few (minor) logical faults in the letter. First, just because the cost of a good goes up, it does not follow that an external agent is actively “burdening” someone. This is tantamount to saying that everyone who doesn’t carry my backpack for me is burdening me with my backpack. Furthermore, it does not follow that I could ever impose the belief that “life begins at conception” by hindering the distribution of birth control. The two beliefs I could “impose” would be 1) That life begins before conception and 2) That birth control itself is immoral. I made neither point. In addition, the words “murderous expenditures” did not refer to contraception, but to a service provided by UHS which I did not want to mention by name.
I object to the premise of Libresco’s last sentence, i.e. that undergraduates cannot make moral decisions unless all of the options cost about the same amount of money. If this were true, all undergraduates at Yale would necessarily steal their suitemate’s belongings.
AJ Espinosa
Oct. 30
Espinosa is a sophomore in Trumbull College.