Letters for July 13, 2022
Leave politics out of doctor’s office
I am a retired family physician. I spent my career caring for pregnant women and their children. Pregnancy is not a benign happy-go-lucky condition that always ends with a healthy baby and an unscathed mother. There are dozens of things that can and do go wrong. Yet legislators and judges seem to think that they know better than doctors on how to manage pregnancies. People who know almost nothing about reproduction are passing laws prohibiting sometimes life-saving procedures.
Twenty-one percent (1 in 5) of all pregnancies end in spontaneous miscarriage. Sometimes this causes complications that can become life-threatening. Sometimes the embryo becomes lodged in the fallopian tube and if left untreated can be catastrophic. Yet now in some states, laws have been passed prohibiting doctors from providing procedures to treat these conditions, which up to now have been the standard of care. These are only a few examples of the many circumstances that can put pregnant women in peril.
I feel great sorrow for my former colleagues who now must balance providing exemplary care with fear of entrapment, litigation or worse – incarceration. Lawyers and judges should not be practicing medicine. Women and doctors should not be subject to the whims of politicians. If this is the world you wanted, then congratulations, you got what you voted for. If you care about the lives and health of your mothers, sisters and daughters, then please vote a different way and get politics out of your doctor’s offices.
Constance Brumm
Moscow, Idaho
Vestal gets it wrong again
Another radical rant by Shawn Vestal (“Even as the High Court rules, study shows concealed-carry laws increase crime,” July 3) against the Second Amendment as he gaslights by claiming the recent Supreme Court decision, which he clearly has not read, “radically expanded” the right to carry a concealed weapon. He has it backward. New York radically restricted that right. The SCOTUS decision noted that this is the only constitutional right that requires government approval to exercise and properly overturned that abuse of power.
In 1993, leftist U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said, “waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal.” This is clearly what New York was up to as it effectively strangled the constitutional right to bear arms out of existence there.
Vestal gaslights further as he cites an unnamed “team of researchers” (other biased leftists?) who supposedly studied the issue and “found” that crime increased with laws allowing nonpermitted concealed carry while claiming that the gold standard research on this very subject by professor John Lott, with several publications to his credit proving the opposite, has been “repeatedly discredited.”
Our founders made their intentions clear. “The Constitution shall never be construed, to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms” (Samuel Adams); “Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms” (James Madison). And on and on.
Mark McFall
Colbert
Madsen ignores crucial facts
It comes as no surprise to me that this paper would again print Sue Lani Madsen’s latest far right-wing opinion (“EPA ruling follows Constitutions original intent,” July 7) concerning anti-science, pro-corporate belief that corporate profit outweighs there safety of present and future generations. Madsen cites the latest opinion by the Christo-fascist Supreme Court that negates the EPA’s ability to regulate polluters emissions into the atmosphere. She states that conservative judicial philosophy is concerned with the original reading and intent of the Constitution.
Nowhere in her piece does she mention the words “promote the general welfare” nor “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” She also does not mention the words “climate change” or “mass extinction.” Both of those terms were mentioned in another article in the same edition of the paper (“Study: Wildfires once led to global mass extinctions,” July 7), which indicated that in the past climate change and mass extinction resulted in catastrophic consequences for all living things and are now threatening to again produce catastrophic consequences. She does use the term “judiciary progressive activists” in a derogatory manner, which I am sure will put her in good graces of the publishers of this paper and the Trumpian right wing. She cites the original intent of the Constitution, neglecting to mention that the Founding Fathers had no understanding of climate science, inferring rather that they would support going back to policies that threaten the safety and well-being of citizens.
I remind her that the Revolutionary War was fought to end the power of the East India Co., a corporation.
David Randall
Spokane