Mail Call: Home At Long Last

Jennifer Elison's description of the relief she felt after her husband's death is poignant and understandable given the abuse she endured. She is also correct about our culture's rigid expectations of how the bereaved should behave and feel. In my experience as a young widow, a common expectation is that we should be "over" our grief in about a year. Here's another kind of relief many widows and widowers feel: relief that our spouses won't have to experience the pain of widowhood.

Corinne Stevenson

Silver Spring, Md.

Prenatal Testing Examined

In his Jan. 29 column, "Golly, What Did Jon Do ?" my favorite columnist, George Will, finds it repugnant that obstetricians and gynecologists have guidelines that recommend testing all pregnant women for Down syndrome. He states that this will predictably lead to abortion--in fact, it does so 85 percent of the time--and that nothing in the professional qualifications of these doctors gives them the standing to make disclosures likely to lead to abortion. It is their obligation to inform all pregnant women of every fact relating to their pregnancies. Irrespective of one's posture on the morality of abortion, it is legal within limits and is the woman's choice. To withhold this critical information either from failure to test or disclose the result smacks of gross dishonesty, ethics blindness and dereliction of duty.

Arch Wright