Letters To The Editor

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Presentations may prevent suicides

As recently noted in a Roundtable letter and a Spokesman-Review article on the subject of suicide awareness, an initial step toward suicide prevention is breaking the silence.

The subject of suicide awareness, or the S-word, has been the recent focus of the Injury Prevention committees of the East Region and Spokane County EMS Councils.

We’ve just completed the training of 27 presenters who are prepared to bring, at no charge, a 70-minute suicide awareness presentation to groups and organizations in the nine eastern counties of Washington. The presentation “Reach Out … With Hope” identifies and points out that, in most cases, there are signs, symptoms and behaviors that could indicate the contemplation of suicide.

In 1994, Washington state had the 10th-highest suicide rate per 100,000 population.

Spokane County had more deaths from suicide than motor vehicle accidents during the period of 1990-1994.

Interested persons can arrange for a presentation by calling Marcia Via in Ritzville, 659-4001; or myself in Spokane, 625-6290. Ray Tansy Jr. Spokane

Mental health insurance idea all wet

Your editorial of May 12 (“End funding bias against mentally ill,” Our view), promoting increased mental health insurance benefits, overlooks one very important factor: Increased benefits mean increased costs.

This can be dealt with in only two ways. One is to increase the cost of coverage to the point that fewer employers can afford to offer any health coverage benefits at all. The other is to offer managed care, in which a gatekeeper prevents access to the expensive mental health benefits.

Psychotherapists are already bristling at managed care’s 10-sessions-and-your-out rules. This law will not improve those rules.

The rule of unintended consequences of legislation in this case will actually lead to less access to mental health benefits, both through increased cost of health care policies and increased management of care by insurers. Glenn Bonacum Spokane

Bumper sticker got me to thinking

As I was driving to work recently I saw something that really caught my eye: a bumper sticker that proclaimed simply, “Smoker’s Rights.”

I chuckled to myself as I thought what an absurd proclamation that really is. After all, I suppose that the owner of this bumper sticker does have a right to waste good money on something that, when burned, causes your clothes, hair and breath to stink. I guess they have a right to poison their own heart and lungs by inhaling fumes from cigarettes. They even have the right to die prematurely or linger for months, crippled by cancer, emphysema or heart disease.

But one right they should not have is to pollute the air that my family or I breathe. They also shouldn’t have the right to ruin their own health and expect society to pick up the tab for their care by doctors and hospitals.

To me, that bumper sticker might just as well have said, “Hey, I’m stupid and damn proud of it!” Kim Davis Spokane

SPOKANE MATTERS

Make way for bicycle commuters

Thanks for running a front page article on bicycle commuting (“Some take gas prices in stride,” News, May 9). With an article like this, the Centennial Trail and bike racks on buses, I have found Spokane a much more bicycle-friendly place than when I used to live here as a youth.

Spokane cyclists still have a major need: a path or protected bicycle lane that can transport them safety north to south in Spokane. Part of the job is complete with the current bike lane on Southeast Boulevard. However, crossing the river and going north are problematic.

It takes a little space, some paint and upkeep to protect cyclists. Designated, protected bike lanes/paths are needed to get a lot of people on the roads because, unfortunately, motorists feel they own the road. They prove this by passing dangerously close when cyclists are on the streets and/or honking, yelling or gesturing as they pass a cyclist on the road.

Unlike the automobile, bicycling for transportation doesn’t pollute the air, doesn’t use a limited and increasingly expensive resource for fuel. It improves the health of the driver. A bicycle doesn’t require insurance to ride because of the risks involved in driving it.

Society should take away some of the seemingly unlimited power it has given the automobile. A few practical suggestions:

A protected bike lane on the Hamilton overpass.

Lanes south to Southeast Boulevard and north as far as possible

Let’s build on the positive steps already taken. Kerry Johnson Spokane

ABORTION

How can so many be so silent?

President Clinton’s recent veto of HR 1833, the partial-birth abortion ban act, has attracted a great deal of attention in the paper lately. Many voters are outraged, and rightly so.

Who would have ever thought that when President Clinton called himself pro-choice that he included pulling a two-pound baby feet first from the womb alive, and then stabbing it in the back of the head?

Testimony before the Senate and House by two abortionists and a feminist, pro-choice nurse very clearly established that of the 3,000 or so partial-birth abortions they committed, some 80 percent were elective and done for reasons other than to save the life of the mother.

Among the reasons abortionist Dr. James McMahon listed for performing partial-birth abortions was “depression.”

What is almost as upsetting as the veto itself is the apparent apathy of many Christian people toward the entire issue. A historic blow has been struck against the unborn child and life itself, and for the most part the church’s silence is deafening.

So many Christians today whine about the lack of morality in our culture of death and do absolutely nothing to curb it. What hypocrisy!

But we need to remember that darkness cannot spread where light prevails. Bobby Caruso Jr. Spokane

How come just birth is so traumatic?

Re: Ruth Ann Forman’s May 14 letter (“Not abortions of convenience”), regarding partial-birth abortion. One question.

If a mother’s health can tolerate delivery of two-thirds of her baby’s body and lying on a delivery table while her baby’s brain is destroyed and it’s skull is collapsed, why can’t her health tolerate the entire birth process or a Caesarean section? Roxanne Lind Spokane

Be honest; Abortion is killing

President Clinton’s recent veto of the partial-birth abortion ban prompts me to speak out against the radical right-to-choose mentality.

This so-called right to choose is at best not an absolute right, and it certainly does not supercede another person’s right to live. Pro choice is merely a euphemism for pro abortion.

Few if any call themselves pro abortion because that sounds too harsh, but on a practical level there is no difference between the two labels.

Current laws do not mandate abortion, they merely allow it. To vote pro choice is to vote to continue to allow abortion - this is exactly what a pro-abortion advocate would applaud. Current law even permits aborting (killing) a child whose body is entirely outside the mother except for his/her tiny head. Congress passed a law which would forbid this horrid type of abortion, which is virtual infanticide. But our President sided with pro-abortion extremists who apparently see nothing wrong with even this grisly procedure.

I assume that many pro choice people honestly think they are taking a middle-of-the-road position. But that is not the case.

If the abortion debate were merely about a medical procedure there would be no outcry from pro lifers. And there would be no need to justify one’s pro choice position by hiding behind phrases like, “I am personally opposed to abortion, but …” We must be honest and admit that abortion is controversial because it just may be destroying the life of an unborn child.

In the case of partial-birth abortions, only a person in blatant denial can fail to see what is clearly taking place. Pat Rogers Hayden, Idaho

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Oiling the skids for Clinton exit

Sixteen years ago, when Jimmy Carter was running for his second term, an “oil shortage” mysteriously appeared. Gasoline prices escalated and inflation mushroomed, defeating Carter.

Now Bill Clinton is running for his second term and just exactly like last time, in early spring, prices at our gas pumps are flying up.

Looks like the big, greedy boys are trying to manipulate us again. Obvious conclusion: Clinton is not in their pockets so they want him out of office. Their 16-year-old garbage is starting to stink. Sally Jackson Spokane

Welfare plan could help, but …

I’m sorry to disappoint anyone by correcting the misquote in the May 8 article (“States way ahead on welfare reform,” News). (It’s an easy decision on whether to defend The Spokesman-Review’s reputation or my own.)

No, I am not a sudden convert to President Clinton’s welfare plan.

What I had said was that if his executive order results in incentives for teen parents to stay in school, that’s good. However, if the consequent legislative sausage-making results in state legislatures simply sanctioning these families by reducing their already meager grants, that’s bad. Welfare grants are so dangerously low that, by definition, kids growing up in such households are economically “at risk.”

Unreported was my concern that we are again addressing symptoms rather than causes. I quoted a recent University of Washington study which found that 66 percent of teen moms had been sexually abused as children.

The key issues are: Should poor children be entitled to public assistance? Is it a violation of their human rights to thus be discriminated against due to the circumstances of their birth (the mother’s age, duration of her term, number of her kids)?

President Clinton initiated the rhetoric of “ending welfare.” It is very popular with politicians from both parties who are too lazy and timid to tackle deeper economic and social problems.

We in the human services community would rather end poverty and abuse. Morton Alexander, coordinator Fair Budget Action Campaign, Eastern Washington, Spokane