To the editor:

I write to present a different perspective from that presented in a recent Barrington Times. 

As a family physician, I care for men, women, children and families throughout their lifetimes. When my patients struggle with questions about when and whether to become a parent, I offer them all of the available medical and health options-and abortion is one of these. It is not my place to share my personal moral values with my patients-about either their choices regarding reproductive health care or any other medical issue they bring to me. Likewise, it is not the state's role to interfere in a woman's private medical decisions about her body or her pregnancy.

The letter in the recent newspaper dismissed common medical knowledge about pregnancy, fetal development and viability. These are in fact important issues in how we care for pregnant women, and the options that are available to them.

Raised a Catholic, I have held different beliefs about abortion at different points in my life, yet I support the individual choices that any Rhode Islander makes about their own reproductive health. This is why I refer to myself as "pro-choice." It is never my decision to make for another person.

Rhode Island is a state founded in religious liberty; carved into the South Portico of our State House is this inscription, taken from the Royal Charter establishing the state of Rhode Island: "To hold forth a lively experiment that a most flourishing civil state may stand and best be maintained with full liberty in religious concernments."

As a physician, I take seriously this crucial foundation in our state, to separate one's personal religious view from decisions about liberty in a civil society. I don't dismiss important medical evidence; I don't use my own moral sense or individual conscience to judge or persuade my patients toward any decision. And I believe that the state has no business ignoring medical science in favor of an individual's sense of morality as the basis to enact laws.

Andrea Arena, MD

Pawtucket