Dear Washington Post Editor

Well, I guess The Washington Post is not going to publish my letter to the editor, since the original letter to the editor it references is no longer available on their website. I thought I wrote a good letter, so here it is:

Dear Editor:

In a 16 June Letter to the Editor, Sophia Panieczko of Manassas wonders rhetorically "If the goal of antiabortion activists is to reduce or eliminate abortions, why aren't they enthusiastic advocates of the use of contraceptives?" Perhaps Ms. Panieczko is unaware of actual contraceptive failure rates. A June 2008 study published in "Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health" showed average contraceptive failure rates of 12% per year. This is "substantially unchanged" from other studies in 1995 or 2002. If half the undergraduates at a university of 10,000 students are sexually active, unmarried, and using contraception, then this results in approximately 300 children per year. All of these children are, by definition, unwanted, and most will be aborted. If advocates of "planned parenthood" really have "every child a wanted child" as their goal, why aren't they advocating for the elimination of contraceptives? Unlike Ms. Panieczko, I won't engage in idle and insulting speculations about what others' motives might be.

I hope The Post's readers eventually learn the truth about the ways in which contraception leads to abortion.