Congratulations to reporter Ruth-Ellen Cohen for her excellent front-page story on anti-abortion activist and geologist Terry Hughes (BDN, Aug. 10-11). Within legal limits, Hughes certainly deserves the right to express his “pro-life” views, however upsetting his messages and signs may be.

Yet one wonders how Hughes would feel if fellow geologists who once questioned his most controversial theories had interrupted his classes or his professional presentations. For that matter, how would he have felt if such persons had repeatedly picketed his home and his office with signs denouncing his research as unscientific and, in this respect, immoral? It is one thing to picket the Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center (from a distance), quite another to disrupt unrelated activities in schools and churches and on residential streets.

Moreover, Hughes’ rebuke of the Maine Right to Life Committee for “kicking out those who are willing to sacrifice their jobs and their freedom” hardly applies to him, given the security of his tenured professorship at the University of Maine and the modest limits to date placed on his freedom of speech there.

Finally, notwithstanding Hughes’ obvious belief in his own moral superiority, one wonders if the area’s obstetricians have not accomplished at least as much as he has for Maine’s children. For that matter, one wonders if Rep. John Baldacci, a clear target of Hughes’ wrath for being pro-choice, has not already contributed to the public good in Maine in the course of his career no less than Hughes has. The fact that Hughes’ geological research, however distinguished, involves “human subjects” in only the marginal fashion may have no bearing on his activism. But it surely shields him from the traditional challenges to scientists who seek to reconcile science with religion.

Howard Segal

Bangor