Letters: Two sides of a real problem

Re “County foster care at crisis point,” Aug. 26, and “Helping to fund abortions,” Aug. 26

The front-page story describes the predicament of hundreds of children caught in this crisis. Inside, another article tells of efforts to help poor women pay for legal abortions.

There is an important link between the two articles. The right-to-lifers who are passing all kinds of state laws to make abortion more difficult would have much more credibility if they cared about the unwanted children born as a result of their actions.

As the reproductive rights leader Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher stated so eloquently: “No baby receives its full birthright unless it is born gleefully wanted by its parents.”

Phyllis Specht

Pasadena

Did you really choose to quote a woman who stated that “abortion funds are a lifesaver”?

How ignorant can we be?

H. Ashton Velasco

La Verne

Once again, The Times betrays its bias by promoting the position that abortion is a human rights issue for women while totally ignoring the fact that abortion denies a fundamental right that all human beings possess: the right to life.

It seems obvious to me that the unborn’s right to life should trump the mother’s right to deny her child the same.

And yet, with tragic irony, by framing the “Helping to fund abortions” article in this way, The Times effectively shows its opinion that abortion is a “life-saver” and a “life-line” and that any attempt to restrict access is equivalent to murder. Outrageous.

Brent Stenhouse
Torrance

This article claims that the “fundamental problem” of the foster care system is “too few foster homes.”

As usual in California, the cart is before the horse. The fundamental problem with the system is too many irresponsible parents who produce too many children in need of a foster home.

We live in a time when, instead of holding people responsible for their actions, we allow them to skirt personal responsibility because they are “victims” too.

Sadly, until this changes, the number of children in need will keep growing and no system will be able to keep up with it.

Joel Anderson
Studio City

The foster care article highlights a critical challenge: the shortage of foster parents. A consortium of several foster family agencies, including my own, is in the midst of a campaign to recruit caring adults to become therapeutic foster parents: specially trained and supported parents who take in children who have the most difficulty finding a home.

Regina Bette
Los Angeles
The writer is president of Aviva Family and Children’s Services.

It didn’t take much to connect the dots between two stories on the front page recently: “Coding well for the future” and “County foster care at crisis point.”

Los Angeles County has an antiquated computer system that lacks a real-time database of foster home facilities. Code for America helps cities and municipalities use technology to make government “simple, beautiful, easy to use.”

The county should apply to Code for America to create an app that enables licensed foster homes to update their capacities and vacancies.

Wendy Prober-Cohen
Tarzana

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