Prenatal perplexity
I read your Aug. 26 commentary piece on Planned Parenthood. I feel like everyone is missing a crucial portion of the work this organization does. The same low-income patients seen for these other issues go back to Planned Parenthood when they are pregnant for prenatal care in far greater numbers than those who ask for abortions!
They receive exams, advice and care for themselves and their unborn child that they would otherwise go without.
I am not taking a position on government funding or not funding abortions. It seems to me that simple bookkeeping could keep funds separate and allow individual donations to fund that.
But that is entirely beside the point here.
The good done by this organization for pregnant women who are keeping their baby and want prenatal care but can’t afford it should be something that the very people clamoring for the death of Planned Parenthood should want.
The biggest problem pro-life groups have, in my opinion, is that they demand control of a woman’s life and body until the moment of delivery and then they abandon mother and child as they take an ax to public and social support systems.
— Robbie Steinmetz
Tulsa
Life and death
Oklahoma has decreed Sept. 16 as the last day of Richard Glossip’s life. Richard stands convicted not of murdering Barry Von Treese, owner of the motel where he worked, but of hiring someone to murder Von Treese.
Many believe he is innocent of that.
Justin Sneed, another motel employee, confessed to the murder.
Although there was no physical evidence connecting Glossip to the crime, Sneed said Glossip had paid him to murder Von Treese.
Sneed’s statement also placed Glossip in the motel room, although only Sneed’s fingerprints and DNA were found in the room and on the motel receipts taken from Von Treese the night of his murder.
Sneed avoided the death penalty by implicating Glossip. Sneed’s self-serving testimony led to Richard Glossip’s now being weeks away from execution.
Glossip, at the time and continuously since, has proclaimed his total innocence.
Sneed’s confession and testimony in two trials is inconsistent. His own adult daughter wrote the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that she strongly believes, based on talking to her dad, that Glossip is innocent and that her father would like to recant his testimony. He is, however, fearful that recanting would result in his execution.
If Oklahomans of conscience don’t want an innocent man to be killed in their name, they need to write or call Gov. Mary Fallin and ask her to stay Glossip’s execution or commute his sentence.
— John Kalhoefer
Oklahoma City
