To the editors:

In her recent column (Opinion, Feb. 4), Susannah B. Tobin expresses dismay over the trend toward an increasing confluence of church and state. In particular, she cites the recently successfully plea of Pope John Paul II to commute the death sentence of a Missouri criminal. Like Tobin, I appreciate the outcome of the papal gesture but do not believe that religious leaders should determine political policy by sole virtue of their sectarian positions.

Unfortunately, Tobin then proceeds to characterize abortion as a religious issue. For a long time, this approach has conveniently allowed supporters of abortion rights to dismiss undisputed biological facts about human development. Indeed, at the time of its abortion, each fetus is a human being with a unique genetic code.

Although a fetus may look different from a human adult, so do newborn infants, toddlers, adolescents and the elderly. Human growth and development occur along a continuum, not in fully distinct and separate stages. Because there is no significant developmental change in the fetus from one day to the next, any point chosen for the termination of its life is necessarily arbitrary. Such scientific facts indicate that a fetus is entitled to the same Constitutional protection afforded to a newborn infant, from whom the fetus is separated in age by less than nine months of development.

Surely abortion has a religious component, just as does any form of injustice. However, the portrayal of abortion as a purely religious issue only allows supporters of legalized abortion to justify a relativistic stance toward human life. Feb. 8, 1999