A cemetery for whom?

Your excellent, balanced front-page article on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade (“A Plaza Divided,” Jan. 24) rightly referred to “fetuses...legally aborted” since 1973 instead of adopting the so-called “pro-life” language of saying “human beings” have been “killed.”

Of course, anyone has the right to organize a demonstration on this issue. What we find abhorrent, for the second year in a row, is the erecting of a blatant field of crosses that assault rather than “educate” people, as Stanford Students for Life claims to be doing.

Last year, with irony, I asked someone staffing the table whether fetuses aborted by Jewish women, for instance, were not equally lamentable. I was told, “Oh, I think we didn’t have enough wood.”

A peaceful green field pierced with white crosses has to evoke, at least in people aware of wars past and present, the military cemeteries harboring soldiers actually killed while serving their countries — like the 2,236 Americans killed in Iraq. A mindless and offensive equating of those deaths with legally-terminated pregnancies brings tears of anger and desperation.

John Felstiner

Professor of English

Mary Felstiner

Professor of History, San Francisco State