To the Editor:
Re “Republicans Are Finding Out That ‘Pro-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 are attempting to elucidate their stance on abortion now that their decades-long struggle 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 aren’t as pro-life as we would have thought.”
The medical neighborhood just isn’t stunned. You see, there are not any celebration affiliation necessities for unplanned or medically doomed pregnancies. Docs have seen staunch Republicans get hold of protected and authorized abortions for many years. I’m certain that each single white male Republican legislator who indicators “heartbeat” legal guidelines, piously claims he’s pro-life and rails towards Deliberate Parenthood is aware of a girl who has had an abortion. And he could have brought about one himself.
As a substitute of spinning the message on their horrible insurance policies, her recommendation to her G.O.P. shoppers needs to be to cease blocking funding for dependable contraception, cease interfering with medical choices between girls and their docs and begin writing legal guidelines that assist girls who can’t afford one other being pregnant due to poverty, an absence of postpartum job safety or abusive companions.
You recognize, “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 aren’t anti-life, however we disagree with those that name themselves pro-life in two elementary methods. We don’t consider that people can declare to know what God — who definitely permits miscarriages — desires, and we don’t consider that people claiming to have this data have a proper to impose their spiritual beliefs on others.
Republicans could proceed to succeed politically by demagoguing the abortion concern, however most Individuals, spiritual or not, don’t consider that the regulation ought to forbid girls from acquiring a protected abortion.
Jamie Baldwin
Redding, Conn.
To the Editor:
Liz Mair is totally appropriate 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 look after 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 not the largest reason behind unintentional loss of life amongst U.S. youngsters, and, not least, extra dedication to combating local weather change.
Republicans want to contemplate these issues once they (or if they) resolve to provide you with a greater, extra marketable definition of “pro-life.”
Nadine Godwin
New York
The Texas Abortion Ruling
To the Editor:
Re “Texas Supreme Court Rules Against Woman 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 folks’s cruelty?
Linda Grunbaum
New York
The Campus Conflict of Free Speech and Antisemitism
To the Editor:
Re “Censorship Can’t Help University Presidents,” by David French (column, Dec. 11):
Mr. French argues that what American campuses want is extra viewpoint variety 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, mentioned “the objective of schooling 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 function. 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 chief 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 in regards to 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 rising voter suppression.)
The Electoral School has overturned the nationwide widespread vote five times in America’s almost 250-year historical past, however twice already on this nonetheless younger century. It’s more likely to occur once more, most likely quickly (’24?).
One cause the founding fathers determined to not have direct elections to the presidency was a worry of a principally uneducated and ill-informed voters voting in both a fraudster or a populist demagogue as president. Some would say we bought two for the value of 1 in 2016.
We should always abolish the Electoral School and immediately vote for the president (as we do for the Senate and the Home). Failing that, embrace the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, by which states conform to award their electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide widespread vote.
I dread the day when many extra Individuals despair of the poll field and as a substitute select way 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 Toward NATO Alarms Europe” (entrance web page, Dec. 10):
I’m 73 years outdated and frightened. So many issues I’ve taken as a right my complete life are threatened. My dad fought abroad in World Conflict 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 consider 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 will’t enable a sense of helplessness or a perception that such issues might by no means occur right here forestall us from defending what we will not take as a right.
Stephen F. Gladstone
Shaker Heights, Ohio