Letters to the Editor: Abortion, legislative transparency, and student debt.

Financial accountability

It’s pure sleaze.

In between robbing trans children of their youth, confiscating women’s bodily autonomy, and dramatically reshaping Kentucky’s tax system to shift tax burden from the wealthy to the working class, Republicans in Frankfort found time to exempt themselves from simple rules of democratic transparency.

The GOP supermajority overrode Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of HB 740, which reduces financial filings of legislative campaign committees to once a year during non-election years. These filings are critical to our understanding of who has whose ear in Frankfort. They tell us what interest group and what well-to-do financier has the attention of the folks who write our laws and spend billions of our money.

Money in politics is a necessary evil, but Republicans deliberately do everything in their power to frustrate reasonable attempts to mitigate that evil with this override. Republicans have made Kentucky politics less transparent and, irritatingly, more corrupt.

Roy Harrison, Lexington

Parental maturity

I’m confused. According to Kentucky’s new anti-abortion law, House Bill 3, a judge can deny an abortion to a minor based on the grounds that she is found not to be mature enough to understand the consequences of her decision to terminate a pregnancy. If that is true, how can she be mature enough to bring a child into the world and meet its physical, emotional, intellectual, and social needs?

Joan Stansbury, Danville

Student debt

As a current postsecondary educator who has over a decade of experience in academia, I am troubled by a letter to the editor titled “Student Debt,” in which the author laments the “far left” agenda of canceling student debt, and frames it as a concern for “fairness.” Let’s talk fairness. In 1992, the inflation-adjusted tuition for public universities was $10,460 (for private, $26,960), and by 2007, those figures were $16,410 and $38,700, respectively. In 1992, across all majors, the median annual salary (in 2016 dollars) 4 years after receiving a bachelor’s degree was $44,900. In 2007, it was $43,900. I’m not sure if the author noticed, but the cost of goods is rising alarmingly fast, while the value and employability of a bachelor’s degree continues to be minimized. So, sure, people can talk “fairness” all they’d like, but they really should paint the full picture when they do. This is not remotely an apples-to-apples comparison.

Aaron Kruse-Diehr, Lexington

Sun-down towns

Looks like new updated version of “sun down towns” is coming, but this time it’s not based on race, but on right wing religious righteousness: Banned Book Towns. Free thinkers, atheists, liberals, LGBTQs and anyone else who thinks a public library should be for diverse, sometimes controversial ideas, enter at his or her own peril. Since they now censor the children’s classic, “In the Night Kitchen,” because it depicts a nude cartoon boy, one can only speculate that the infants of these new censors are born clothed --otherwise, their own infants would have to also be found “obscene.” Ignorance marches on!

Sally Wasielewski, Lexington

Abortions solutions

Ironically, before Kentucky legislators in the General Assembly voted to ban abortion, North Ireland voted to legalize it in 2019. Their hospital staff lacked resources, and administration was still not following through with implementing the law, but as of October 2021 resources have been funded in Ireland. You can do an internet search for the phrase, “BBC timeline Ireland abortion,” to read the history of legislation overseas.

Not mentioned in the timeline was the 2012 case of Savita Halappanavar, who died of maternal sepsis. When a pregnancy turns into a septic infection, there is less than one day to treat the infection. Doctors in Ireland refused her request for an abortion citing law at the time that forbade abortion is a fetal heartbeat was present. Making a hospital afraid to use their training renders the hospital useless and costs two lives instead of one, forcing the patient’s family to pay for an unnecessary death sentence.

Officials in Denver, Col. cut the abortion rate in half by funding free arm-implant IUDs for high school students. IUDs are effective even if people are drunk, throwing up pills, or just have ADHD and fail to complete the same routine for 30 days in a row.

Vessel is a free documentary on IMDB Movies/Amazon Prime about abortion pills and 2013 perspectives in different countries. Please consider poor and disabled people.

Teresa D. Lee, Owensboro

Republican voters

The reason why Kentucky Republican Congressman get their way so often is because the majority of Kentuckians don’t pay attention to what is going on in our state until it is too late to turn things around. They’re not television news watchers and they don’t read the daily newspaper. Many people claim they’re both too depressing. How are Kentuckians going to know what is going on in their state if they don’t make the effort to keep up with what’s going on at our capital? Why do we keep doing everything backwards? We wait until unpopular bills become law before we decide to do anything about them. By that time it’s too late. I blame the women in our state for allowing this to happen. I have held full-time positions at Ford Motor Manufacturing, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, and Trane Ingersoll Rand. At each of those locations I have worked besides women who used the term “Let a man handle it” way too often. Whenever they found themselves stuck with a task they didn’t want to deal with, tasks they were very capable of handling themselves, they would say “Let a man handle it”. Stop saying that ladies, please.

Yolanda Averette, Lexington

Dire predictions

I’d like to give some predictions given the current state of affairs in Kentucky.

It will not be enough for conservatives and Republicans to make abortion illegal in conservative backwaters like Kentucky.

After all, as Adam Server noted in the Oct. 3, 2018 edition of The Atlantic, “The Cruelty is the Point.” Prohibition is not cruel enough without the threat of punishment. And, sure, you can be as cruel as your little Christian heart wants to be in your own state, but what if women can just go across the state line to defy you?

It’s obvious. I predict that some state legislature will realize this and make quarterly pregnancy tests mandatory for all women of birthing age. The results will be reported to the state and a woman with a positive test, but no subsequent baby, will be subject to arrest and prosecution. Oh, and the tests will not be covered by insurance.

Also, women will be subject to some sort of house-arrest for the duration of the pregnancy if virtually anyone gives the authorities cause to think she might get an abortion somewhere.

Now, I’m still American enough to hope the courts would step in and toss these ideas. But I’m familiar enough with Conservatives to know that they’ll keep trying. If more Republican judges are appointed, especially to the U.S. Supreme Court, who wants to bet I’m wrong?

And for those who will say that I’m just another liberal Democrat, I started out my political life as a Republican and as a member of a church. But after a while, I decided I just didn’t have enough hate in me as either position demanded.

None of this applies to Paul Prather. He seems to be nice.

H. Stephen Midkiff, St. Augustine, Fla.

Required safety plan

Recently there has been an increase in active shooter incidents in shopping malls across our country. The most recent occurred in Columbia, S.C. These incidents are creating a need for all shopping centers in the U.S. to have in place a well-documented safety plan.

The required regulation is the Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s Emergency Action Plan. This document requires mall management to inform all staff on the proper means to address an active hazardous incident.

They cover every phase of response from alerting staff, guests and 911 of an ongoing hazardous incident, assigning qualified staff in medical needs to assist in safe evacuation, and requiring management to determine if sheltering in place or full or partial evacuation is necessary. Mall management must also select a location away from structure for all to gather so as to allow first responders to stage their apparatus under this plan.

Prepare now to save lives with a well-planned safety program.

Bob Sweeney, President, RES Associates, Warwick, R.I.

Better journalism

I expect better journalism in the Herald-Leader than David Cantanese’s piece on U.S. Rep. James Comer (R-1st) on April 15. It was less of an interview than a platform for one politician’s political agenda. Not one question was posed in the front-page piece. Not one position or claim challenged. In fact, several paragraphs were not attributed to Comer by quotations or credit, but stated as fact. Please vet your articles better by critically framing politicians’ claims in context instead of lazily passing off misinformation.

Joy S. Miracle, Nicholasville

Disturbing trend

There is a disturbing trend noticed recently in the local media, both press and television. In reporting of serious and fatal motor vehicle accidents, there is a glaring absence of mention of use or non-use of seat belts and helmets. Not only is this incomplete news coverage, but it misses the opportunity to reinforce the importance of these devices to readers/viewers who might be positively influenced by such information.

Mike Daugherty, Lexington

This story was originally published April 22, 2022 at 1:24 PM.