Fans of Planned Parenthood were surely stunned by The Day’s editorial, “Let terminally ill try it all,” (March 12), pitch citing the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And yet, how is one to enjoy liberty and pursue happiness without life?

Time was when aspiring physicians took the Hippocratic Oath which plainly bans abortion. Hippocrates was neither a Catholic nor a Southern Baptist; he was a pagan who flourished some 400 years before the birth of Christ. He was known as the father of modern medicine, till 1973 or thereabout.

Within the lifetime of many living still, a physician found guilty of performing an abortion was sent to prison and was permanently banned from the ranks of the profession.

Today, infants in this country are slain at the rate of more than a million a year. In another decade or so, the aged will constitute a majority, and who will foot the bill for their maintenance and their care?

In his prophetic novel, brave new world, Aldous Huxley envisioned a government that would provide a mandatory gentle death for every citizen at a certain age. (Brave, incidentally, means, in British English, wonderful or grand)

Writing in 1932, Huxley depicted a world in which television was omnipresent; helicopters were in general use, and happy pills were available on demand.

Are we there yet? Read the news.

Richard W. White

East Lyme