Abortion and Welfare Reform

* Robert Scheer’s musings on poverty and abortion were excellent in the sense that he put together some of the real issues involved in the decline of our society (Column Left, May 28). However, he assembled the issues and still failed to identify the root of these problems.

The root of these problems is the philosophy that says programs and mounds of cash will solve them, and that the loosening or removal of social order will enable or even encourage people to do the right thing. Since the 1940s, America has been removing the stigmas involving premarital and extramarital sex. The result has been disease, divorce, single parenthood, abortion, child abuse and poverty for the majority of the children of these “liberated” adults. The American people have been told that the cure for these gashes in society is a Band-Aid of government programs, handouts and the legalization of abortion. In reality, this “progressive” thinking only tears open more wounds.

Abortion and poverty are symptoms of a much greater ill. That ill is plain old immorality and no amount of money or programs or pronouncements from “new” thinkers will ever rescue us from the inevitable price that immoral behavior demands.

DAVID REBER

Whittier*

* Re Column Right, May 30: Personally, I am proud to take a “knee-jerk stand for children,” as opposed to the “knee-jerk stand for business” of organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Democratic and Republican parties. If most Americans would take a similar stand, this country would not hold the shameful position of being the only industrialized nation where 25 out of every 100 children live in poverty, lacking adequate food, shelter, education, health care and child care.

It is a privilege to pay taxes that are used to support children’s programs and I say, shame on James Pinkerton and anyone else who does not take such a stand.

JEANNE ERTLE

San Diego