Letters on letters: Sex -- and judges

The Times receives between 500 and 1,000 printable letters each week, of which we publish about 70 among six pages. Though the letters draw plenty of eyeballs, they seldom draw huge volumes of response.

But sometimes, a few words of the weekly thousands change that.

In his July 22 letter responding to a Times editorial supporting abortion rights, reader Vincent Sheehy wrote: “Sex is for procreation. If a woman does not want to become pregnant, she should refrain from sexual activity.”

More than a dozen readers, all women, dashed off pointed rebuttals. Here is a selection, in addition to a response from People For the American Way to a letter by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) on confirming President Obama’s judicial nominees.

-- Paul Thornton, letters editor

I want to thank yet another man for letting us women know how to handle sexual activity. The same advice is good for him, which he probably didn’t consider.

It is mostly men who are pushing personhood laws in a few states, telling women how to handle their bodies. It makes this grandmother and great-grandmother tired. I thought this issue was settled long ago.

Men want to limit family planning and legal and safe abortion for women but do not make any attempt to limit their erectile dysfunction drugs that make sexual activity possible or more enjoyable for them. I guess irony is only for women.

Sandy Sciortino

North Hollywood

My response to Sheehy: If men refrained from sexual activity — because in his opinion sex is only for procreative purposes — then there would be no babies. Problem solved: no abortions needed because men would have created no babies.

Jill Polsby

Pasadena

Re Sens. McConnell’s and Grassley’s July 18 letter

McConnell and Grassley rely on a misleading statistic to cover for their party’s outrageous obstruction of President Obama’s judicial nominees. They claim that the Senate “has confirmed 152 of [Obama’s] lower-court nominees, compared to only 119 of Bush’s under similar circumstances.” They are comparing the confirmation rate in Obama’s first term to that in President Bush’s second term —when, because of a cooperative Senate, he

had many fewer judicial vacancies to fill.

By this point in Bush’s first term, the Senate had confirmed 197 lower-court nominees, far more than the number under Obama so far. What’s more, Senate Republicans have forced Obama’s nominees to wait an average of 104 days just for an up-or-down vote from the Senate. The average under Bush by this point? Just 34 days.

The blind obstructionism of McConnell and Grassley has led to an unprecedented vacancy crisis in our federal courts.

Marge Baker

Washington

The writer is executive vice president of People For the American Way.

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