Thanks to City for running the article about RHAPP, the Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Bill ("Look Ma, No Abortions, April 23). Writer Jeremy Moule explains better than the bill's opponents just how extreme the bill is by coming to the conclusion that "only physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners can be licensed to perform abortions...." This makes our case that RHAPP will repeal current statutes that say only "duly licensed physicians" can perform abortions.

Furthermore, RHAPP provisions would override the state educational (or other current) laws, since RHAPP would make abortion a "fundamental" right in New York. Thus, RHAPP would open the door to non-physicians doing abortions. There wouldn't need to be other changes by professional boards.

This roulette with health care is all about an attempt to stop the tide of duly licensed physicians unwilling to perform abortions, not just in the United States, but globally. (See "Big Rise in Italian Doctors Refusing to Perform Abortions," Agence France-Presse, April 22). Abortion-rights activists know what the rest of us know: that very few idealist medical students entering the profession today aspire to be an abortionist

RHAPP would give strength to a recent committee opinion by the American College of Gynecologists that would diminish rights of conscience of ob-gyns. RHAPP could apply this aberration of civil rights by extending it to the broader health community, many of whom will object to performing abortions for reasons of conscience. This should concern every civil libertarian in the country, whether pro-life or pro-choice.

The judicial system recognizes the rights of trial attorneys to recuse themselves from prosecution because they oppose the death penalty. Those of us who oppose systemic violence support the rights of conscientious objectors to war. Remember the anti-Vietnam slogan: "What if there was a war and no one came?" All people legitimately concerned about violence and rights, whether war or abortion, should not only respect that adage, but welcome it.

CAROL CROSSED, BRIGHTON

Editor's note: Crossed notes an error in our April 23 article. We said that her essay in the Democrat and Chronicle stated that RHAPP "would compel all state-employed health-care providers, even a dentist or a podiatrist, to perform abortions." Crossed's D&C piece said the law could compel them.