I wrote last week that the New York Times was guilty of journalistic malpractice. Behind-the-scenes efforts by anti-abortion advocates and even its own public editor, Byron Calame, failed to remind the paper's editors about those antiquated ideas of honesty and accuracy.

However, the full light of public scorn that comes with an article in The New York Times seems to have elicited a change of heart.

Editors’ Note

An article in The Times Magazine on April 9 reported on the effects of laws that make all abortions illegal in El Salvador. One case the article described was that of Carmen Climaco, who is serving a 30-year prison sentence in El Salvador.

The article said she was convicted in 2002 of aggravated homicide, and it presented the recollections of the judge who adjudicated Ms. Climaco’s case during the pretrial stage. The judge, Margarita Sanabria, told The Times that she believed that Ms. Climaco had an abortion when she was 18 weeks pregnant, and that she regretted allowing the case to be tried as a homicide. The judge based her legal decision on two reports by doctors.

The first, by a doctor who examined Ms. Climaco after the incident, concluded that she had been 18 weeks pregnant and had an abortion. A second medical report, based on an examination of the body that was found under Ms. Climaco’s bed, concluded that her child was carried to term, was born alive and died in its first minutes of life.

The three-judge panel that received the case from Judge Sanabria concluded that the second report was more credible than the first, and the panel convicted Ms. Climaco of aggravated homicide.

The Times should have obtained the text of the ruling of the three-judge panel before the article was published, but did not vigorously pursue the document until details of the ruling were brought to the attention of editors in late November.

A picture caption with the article also misstated the facts of the ruling. Ms. Climaco was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a case that was initially thought to be an abortion but was later ruled to be a homicide; she was not given 30 years in prison for an abortion that was ruled a homicide.

Ms. Climaco is now preparing to appeal her conviction. The Times is continuing to investigate the case. (Go to Article)

I'm happy to hear the Times will continue to "investigate." You'll have to excuse me if I believe -- based upon previous pattern and practice -- that this is the last we'll hear of Ms. Climaco unless she suddenly turns out to be innocent.

All of which brings us to the letters in response to Calame's column.

In the "what alternate universe is your moral compass located" category we have this comment from Enid Klauber, M.D. from Tampa, Fla., who chooses to blame the victim.

If Carmen Climaco performed infanticide, the lesson should be that abortion should be legal, which would have allowed her to abort the fetus earlier.

Really? That's the lesson?

Let's try to apply Ms. Klauber's "lesson" to other potential, purely imaginary crimes. Leave your answers in the comments.

The girl was wearing a really short skirt and a really tight blouse and got raped. The lesson is:

The convenience store clerk didn't have access to the safe, so the robber shot him before taking the pittance that was in the till. The lesson is:

Dr. Enos Klauner (not a real person) was operating on a patient and mistakenly left a scalpel in the poor chap's chest after sewing the incision shut. The lesson is: