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Wednesday's letters: Protecting access to women's health care

 
Published Oct. 4, 2016

Title X family planning

Protecting access to health care

Over the past year, politicians in 24 states including Florida have been trying to take away women's access to basic health care at Planned Parenthood and other trusted women's health providers. Thankfully, President Barack Obama recently took steps — by reinforcing longstanding federal law — to ensure that no one can stand in the way of the care women need.

The administration announced a proposed rule that reinforces existing protections in the Title X family planning program that prohibit states from discriminating against women's health providers. Title X is meant to help ensure that every person — regardless of where they live, how much money they make or whether or not they have health insurance — has access to basic reproductive health care.

Planned Parenthood turns 100 years old this year, and our health centers provide care for approximately 1.5 million of the more than 4 million patients served by the Title X program. Here in Florida we serve 80,000 women, men and young people every year. People turn to us because they know and trust us, and because they know they can get quality, affordable care. For many of the patients Planned Parenthood serves in our region, public funding such as Title X is the only way they are able to access our care. The Obama administration is standing up for millions of people who would have nowhere to turn without Planned Parenthood. With Zika cases on the rise in Florida, this care is even more important.

The Title X program is especially important for women of color. For some, Planned Parenthood is the only place they can turn. We may be the only place they can go in their community, or the only place that offers the screening or birth control method they need. For our patients, it's not about politics. It's about their health care.

Barbara Zdravecky, Sarasota

The writer is CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida.

Campaign 2016

An unworthy spectacle

Will someone please stop the madness. I don't care about allegations against former President Bill Clinton (he isn't running for office), and I don't care about Twitter. I care about the candidates and what they propose to do to make our lives better and our country safer. Someone please tell them to stop wasting precious time on bad-mouthing each other and just stick to the issues all Americans are asking about and for which we need some solid answers. I know I am not alone in my frustration. The world is laughing at us and we are all in pain with the uncertainties out there.

Lillian Ferencz, Clearwater

A raft of Clinton scandals | Sept. 30, letter

Compare the candidates

It seems to me that this catalog of complaints against Hillary Clinton just proves that she has been relentlessly attacked, accused and harassed by the right for 30 years with nothing to show for it.

If there was anything to these witch hunts, there would have been fines, like the one Donald Trump paid when he made an illegal contribution to Pam Bondi. There would have been actual prosecutions, like the one Trump was involved in for housing discrimination against black people in the '70s. Now, it looks like he was breaking the law during the Cuba embargo.

There are no perfect candidates; however, her mistakes pale in comparison to Trump's misdeeds and outright breaking of the law.

One more point: At least she can admit to making a mistake. He has stated that he has never apologized for anything in his life. What kind of ego cannot even admit to ever making a mistake?

Yvonne M. Osmond, Clearwater

A son of the white working class Oct. 2, Perspective

Spiritual values missing

I found the analysis of Donald Trump voters by J.D. Vance in his book Hillbilly Elegy insightful yet wanting. He does not consider the role of education (or the lack thereof) in the emergence of the Trump foot soldiers. Trump has made ignorance and incivility a badge of honor and a motive of pride. In the same issue of Perspective, Peggy Noonan eloquently highlights how a generation that has learned history and philosophy from movies and viral videos is all but incapable of deep thoughts and is liable to adopt Internet slogans as revealed truths.

Perhaps more important, Vance neglects the abandonment of a spiritual perspective of life as the root cause of the current political and social confusion. Since Ronald Reagan, conservatives have used Christianity as a Trojan horse to promote a political agenda that could not be more callous toward human life, and in doing that they have misrepresented and overturned basic Christian values.

For the late Jerry Falwell, life began at conception and ended with birth. Not surprisingly, former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, devoted to this brand of Christianity, bragged about executing more people than any other governor in U.S. history and in doing it without any angst. His successor succeeded in bringing the rate of pregnancy-related deaths in Texas to the level of a Third World country by depriving poor women of the assistance of Planned Parenthood.

In the meantime, leftist Democrats hold Christianity as a form of superstition unworthy of any consideration by enlightened individuals. They all but ignore that the values they promote are rooted in the Christian revelation of universal brotherhood and sisterhood and that the whole tree will wither once it is severed from its roots.

As a devout Christian who believes that life begins at conception and ends with natural death, I oppose the death penalty and I support the safety net that allows every person to develop in full his or her human dignity. I just wish to be heard by Hillary Clinton and her entourage, who dismiss my views with hubris and prefer to cater to a fringe of rabid feminists as motivated by hatred as the Trump voters are.

Lodovico Balducci, Tampa