LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Late-term abortions a concern
8/14/2013Your concern about Ohio’s high infant mortality rate is justified (“Rankings in shame,” editorial, July 30). Ohio’s rate of 7.7 deaths per 1,000 births is high. But where is your concern about late-term abortions, many of which occur close to the time of live birth?
As you say, the number of dying babies is “not a record to be proud of” and a shocking example of “man’s inhumanity to man.” You quote a report called Kids Count. Many people feel that fully formed children with a heartbeat who are destroyed shortly before official birth also count.
Most people in favor of abortion have been fortunate enough to be born. Where does this stand in your “rankings in shame?”
LARRY MICHAELS
Oregon
Bible answers life’s question
The writer of the Aug. 6 Readers’ Forum letter “Law must stay out of abortion issue” said that the question of when life begins is unanswerable.
Not so. When cell division begins, there is life. Only living things grow and develop.
The Bible is not silent about abortion, as the letter writer states. “Thou shall not kill” is a commandment from God, and it is widely recognized as wrong by all peoples.
PAULINE ENGLISH
Marengo Street
Columnist misses mark on Detroit
Paul Krugman’s July 29 op-ed column, “Detroit’s woes not self-inflicted; it’s the changing economy,” was not the first time he failed to connect cause and effect relationship. It won’t be his last, as a Keynesian economist.
Detroit’s decline started with middle-class migration to the suburbs in the 1950s and accelerated with the 1967 race riot, followed by the election of Coleman Young as mayor in 1973. The icing on the cake was the city’s public-employee pensions.
The misguided notion that the dysfunctional federal government should help dysfunctional cities such as Detroit is a dog that will not and should not hunt.
JIM BOEHM
Drummond Road
Middle class poised to take a fiscal hit
Tucked away in your July 2 edition was the article “Ohio officials: Health rates expected to skyrocket.” It said that individuals will pay 41 percent more and businesses 18 percent more in monthly health premiums when Obamacare kicks in this year. I thought President Obama said that because more Americans would be insured, health-care costs would drop.
The President talks about helping the middle class, but who does he think is going to pay for these higher health-care costs? Who else but the already strapped middle class?
TODD GABEL
Fremont