To the Editor:
Re “Republicans Are Discovering Out That ‘Professional-Life’ Has Too Many Meanings,” by Liz Mair (Opinion visitor essay, Dec. 6):
Ms. Mair, a G.O.P. marketing campaign strategist, writes about all of the determined methods Republican politicians try to elucidate their stance on abortion now that their decades-long combat to make it unlawful has taken a step ahead.
It appears her shoppers are scrambling, stunned to search out that “rank-and-file G.O.P. voters usually are not as pro-life as we’d have thought.”
The medical group will not be stunned. You see, there are not any social gathering affiliation necessities for unplanned or medically doomed pregnancies. Medical doctors have seen staunch Republicans acquire protected and authorized abortions for many years. I’m positive that each single white male Republican legislator who indicators “heartbeat” legal guidelines, piously claims he’s pro-life and rails in opposition to Deliberate Parenthood is aware of a girl who has had an abortion. And he could have triggered one himself.
As an alternative of spinning the message on their horrible insurance policies, her recommendation to her G.O.P. shoppers must be to cease blocking funding for dependable contraception, cease interfering with medical choices between girls and their medical doctors and begin writing legal guidelines that assist girls who can’t afford one other being pregnant due to poverty, a scarcity of postpartum job safety or abusive companions.
, “pro-life” stuff.
Cheryl Bailey
St. Paul, Minn.
The author is a retired gynecologic oncologist.
To the Editor:
In recommending that Republicans finesse the abortion concern, Liz Mair doesn’t point out one level. Professional-choice advocates usually are not anti-life, however we disagree with those that name themselves pro-life in two elementary methods. We don’t imagine that people can declare to know what God — who actually permits miscarriages — needs, and we don’t imagine that people claiming to have this information have a proper to impose their spiritual beliefs on others.
Republicans could proceed to succeed politically by demagoguing the abortion concern, however most People, spiritual or not, don’t imagine that the regulation ought to forbid girls from acquiring a protected abortion.
Jamie Baldwin
Redding, Conn.
To the Editor:
Liz Mair is completely right that “pro-life” has many meanings, however she mistakenly focuses solely on abortion.
Being “pro-life” additionally means issues like good pre- and post-natal take care of all moms; good well being care for everybody, together with infants born to the poorest amongst us; accessible and inexpensive youngster care and preschool for all; gun security legal guidelines to make sure that bullets are now not the most important reason for unintentional dying amongst U.S. kids, and, not least, extra dedication to combating local weather change.
Republicans want to think about these issues after they (or if they) resolve to give you a greater, extra marketable definition of “pro-life.”
Nadine Godwin
New York
The Texas Abortion Ruling
To the Editor:
Re “Texas Supreme Courtroom Guidelines In opposition to Lady Who Sought Abortion” (information article, Dec. 12):
I hope the ladies of Texas go on strike and march to the state capital. Ladies, particularly moms, all around the nation will stand with them.
Eve Rumpf-Sternberg
Seattle
To the Editor:
Is there no finish to those individuals’s cruelty?
Linda Grunbaum
New York
The Campus Conflict of Free Speech and Antisemitism
To the Editor:
Re “Censorship Can’t Assist College Presidents,” by David French (column, Dec. 11):
Mr. French argues that what American campuses want is extra viewpoint range and true freedom of speech — not the present hypocrisy of some speech being favored and different speech censored.
However what Mr. French doesn’t point out in any respect is the necessity for morality and fact to be a part of the curriculum. President John F. Kennedy, a Harvard alumnus, stated “the objective of training is the development of information and the dissemination of fact.”
The college presidents’ failure earlier than Congress to unambiguously repudiate requires “the genocide of Jews” mirrored how far these faculties have strayed from that goal. Permitting extra speech on campus with out a ethical compass will yield solely extra noise and little else.
Nathan J. Diament
Washington
The author is the manager director for public coverage of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
The Undemocratic Electoral School
To the Editor:
Re “‘The Exploding Cigar of American Politics,’” by Gail Collins (column, Nov. 30):
Ms. Collins’s glorious column concerning the Electoral School ought to have commented extra on the U.S. Senate, which is much more unrepresentative and undemocratic.
Two out of three of our elected nationwide arms of presidency are unrepresentative. (The third “arm,” the Home, is roughly consultant, however tainted by gerrymandering, “darkish” cash and growing voter suppression.)
The Electoral School has overturned the nationwide standard vote 5 instances in America’s practically 250-year historical past, however twice already on this nonetheless younger century. It’s prone to occur once more, most likely quickly (’24?).
One motive the founding fathers determined to not have direct elections to the presidency was a worry of a largely uneducated and ill-informed citizens voting in both a fraudster or a populist demagogue as president. Some would say we acquired two for the worth of 1 in 2016.
We must always abolish the Electoral School and immediately vote for the president (as we do for the Senate and the Home). Failing that, embrace the Nationwide Well-liked Vote Interstate Compact, by which states comply with award their electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide standard vote.
I dread the day when many extra People despair of the poll field and as an alternative select much more harmful methods of expressing their will — i.e., extra Capitol insurrections, however profitable ones.
The founding fathers have to be spinning of their graves at our lack of ability to modernize our now dangerously outdated Structure.
Michael Northmore
Staten Island
Trump and NATO
To the Editor:
Re “Trump’s Stance Towards NATO Alarms Europe” (entrance web page, Dec. 10):
I’m 73 years previous and frightened. So many issues I’ve taken with no consideration my complete life are threatened. My dad fought abroad in World Battle II. He, and I, at all times assumed that the issues he fought for would stay protected.
I by no means contemplated that the coalitions we established with our allies after the struggle can be threatened. I got here to imagine that the isolationism thriving earlier than the struggle had been primarily put to relaxation.
However now Donald Trump and his disciples have woke up the blind nationalism that raises the specter of totalitarianism. That menace ought to strike terror in all who treasure our democracy.
And we are able to’t permit a sense of helplessness or a perception that such issues might by no means occur right here stop us from defending what we are able to now not take with no consideration.
Stephen F. Gladstone
Shaker Heights, Ohio
