Letters for November 13, 2003

The scariest part of Matt O’Brien’s letter is that those poor bastards down south might eventually catch on to what Reno’s all about and move here. We should thank O’Brien for taking the time to point out to us rednecks what he obviously thinks we don’t already know. I, for one, enjoy the secret that is northern Nevada, and I’ll continue to visit Vegas to party excessively, hit the nudie bars, and puke on the street. And then, I’ll enjoy my trip home.

M.J.Bender
Reno

Missed the point
Re “Boob jobs” [RN&R, Cover story, Nov. 6]:

The recent article “Boob Jobs” took on an important and meaningful topic, but it was written like shit. I assume the headline “Boob jobs” was meant to be witty, but actually, it was childish and promotes the misrepresentation of womyn in the media, ie: focusing on the physical with sexual overtones, instead of representing the emotional and nutritional effects of breastfeeding. Second, Graham is not a topless dancer. Your subheading is misleading, an inappropriate implication of Graham and has nothing to do with the article. Is Deidre Pike writing about breast feeding, breast surgery or topless dancing? The entire piece is fuzzy and disjointed and reports little—not even the La Leche League in Reno’s phone number. Why did she leave out the fact that breast milk provides nutrients that formulas can’t provide? Why did she ignore statistics that state how healthy breastfeed children are? I suggest you send Pike back to Journalism 101, but not until she sends Mrs. Graham a letter of apology for including her in a fluff piece!

Lacey Graham
via e-mail

Support our troops
As I sit here at my computer and write this, I see the loss of more American lives on my TV screen: a bomb on the side of the road and the downing of an Army Chinook.

I knew from the moment we supposedly won this war in Iraq the occupants of that nation would turn against us. I knew that the many fighters in that nation that disappeared would come back in after they sucked us into the kill zone. Though I don’t support their actions, their strategy was an effective and fatal one for the United States.

I would love nothing more than to see our troops return home from this senseless war. My fellow countrymen and women are dying in a war where only the few profit, and the many sacrifice for it. I blame the deaths of our citizens not only on those bombers, but on Bush & Co, and would like nothing more than to see the whole lot of these murderers behind steel doors and bars.

Nick Aguilera
Sparks

Women need information
Re “Abortion by pills” [RN&R, Cover story, Nov. 6]:

A couple of items are too often overlooked in counseling a woman to have an abortion. One is the long-term risks associated with abortion, whether it is done by chemical means or surgical procedures. I encourage you to do a little research on the Internet on the link between induced abortion and breast cancer. The abortion providers don’t tell young women in crisis pregnancies about this well-established link with breast cancer. Informed consent is therefore lacking in a woman’s decision to seek an abortion. Another serious risk, specifically with RU 486, is the danger of an incomplete abortion due to the low dosage that is prescribed. You probably do not know that during the fast track clinical trials to get this drug approved by the FDA, 600 milligrams was the dosage used. Now it is down to 200 milligrams, and this results in many incomplete-abortion complications, including women’s deaths.

Another item concerning informed consent is the utter lack of information provided to women and girls about fetal development during gestation. Many post-abortive women with whom I have spoken regret their abortion decisions and lament that they were not provided such information at the time of their choice. Many have said that, if they had had such information at the time, they would have opted for other alternatives in dealing with their unplanned pregnancies.

If these new chemical means of abortion feel so natural to women’s minds, why do our bodies react so unnaturally to them? Let’s come out of our self-imposed state of denial for just a moment to consider that purposely inducing abortion is not the “natural” end of a pregnancy—live birth is.

Long ago, I gave up the false idea that abortion is a good thing for women. It simply allows men to continue to exploit us while we falsely think abortion liberates us.

Maya Zaygon
Sparks