Letters: Choices and poverty

Re “Caught in the cycle of poverty,” Column One, May 24

The subheadline reads, “Choices, challenges, chaos keep undermining a woman’s progress.” I have great sympathy for Natalie Cole and her four children. But from what I can gather from the story, her and her children’s “challenges” are the result of Cole’s “choices.”

She chose to drop out of school and get pregnant. She chose to ignore dangerous, but manageable, high blood pressure and diabetes when advised by medical professionals to take her medication and get a full physical. She chose to maintain a relationship and became pregnant by a boyfriend who has been out of work for nearly a year.

America is full of success stories of people who came from humble, if not desperate, beginnings — people who pulled themselves out of their situations to make a better life for themselves and their families. But first, they had to make a choice.

Todd Hoyle

Burbank

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