Letters: Readers discuss Damien Williams, Rush Limbaugh’s cancer and abortion limits
Helping hand
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes deserved to be named Super Bowl MVP, but he never would have received the award or won the game without running back Damien Williams. Two touchdowns, 100-plus yards rushing and a crucial fourth-down run — not a bad day.
- Bill Grossnickle, Kansas City
Students last
Go Chiefs? As a new area resident, I realized the school districts don’t seem to think about parents who actually had to work and were scrambling to find child care when schools closed for the Wednesday parade. Parents should have been required to take their children out of school if they wished to attend the parade.
Despite my disdain for the NFL, I thought winning the Super Bowl was good for the city. But going forward, I hope our teams never win another sporting event that glorifies male athletes over education.
- Laura Bowman, Leawood
Flooding here
When the headlines report on wildfires in Australia and starving polar bears in the Arctic, climate change is alarming but far away. In fact, it is here, now.
I write from Parkville. Last spring and summer, our river town was flooded (yes, again, even worse than the floods of 2011). Two hundred acres of our public parks were flooded, causing about $1 million in damage and closures during the summer season. Some are still closed.
Our rural Missouri neighbors fared far worse. More than 100 levees were breached or overtopped, causing $1 billion in damage. More than 1.2 million acres of Missouri cropland flooded, resulting in significant decreases in planted acreage of corn and soybeans.
The climate crisis can be effectively addressed without negative economic repercussions. The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act proposes a policy that has succeeded in other countries. The bill has 77 U.S. representatives as co-sponsors (thanks, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, for being one of them).
Those of us in the Kansas City chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby hope that bipartisan efforts to pass legislation to implement this practical and proven strategy will succeed, and soon.
- Theresa Noble, Parkville
This isn’t politics
I rarely agree with Rush Limbaugh’s opinions and rhetoric. However, now is the time to put aside our differences as I invite all to join me in keeping him in our thoughts and prayers and wishing him well as he battles lung cancer. (Feb. 3, KansasCity.com, “Rush Limbaugh says he’s been diagnosed with lung cancer”)
We are all God’s children, and he is our brother who is suffering.
- James D. Waterman, Liberty
Higher goals
I applaud Ann Marie Alvey for her thoughtful and timely commentary outlining her Democratic pro-life stance, which I share. I also commend The Star for publishing it. (Feb. 4, 7A, “Abortion bill in Kansas House is not a return to the Dark Ages”)
As she explains, a desire, based on powerful ethical arguments, that seeks to limit how much the law permits human beings to manipulate, initiate and terminate natural processes by artificial means is not an abdication of reason — a so-called return “to the Dark Ages.”
Rather, it is a desire to adopt reason in pursuit of reasonable laws that promote ends that aim for not just a selfish, personal good, but a more profound common good.
- Catherine Dobson, Lexington, Missouri
It’s our right
Last year, the Kansas Supreme Court recognized a woman’s right to autonomy over her own person as a constitutional right. Now, a majority of state senators think they know us women better than we know ourselves and want to change the constitution to wipe out our rights. They say they want to protect women, but everyone knows they want to be free to restrict abortion.
I’m old enough to remember the terror of the days before Roe v. Wade, when women who had unwanted pregnancies were prohibited by law from getting safe abortions. They had them anyway, and those who think outlawing abortion would stop it are deluded. Women who can afford it would travel to get one, and the poor would endure forced pregnancy or risk criminalization.
If politicians cared about our safety, they’d make abortion accessible and affordable.
At the hearing in Topeka, I saw that the decision-makers are mostly old, rural white men. They know nothing about poor women’s lives, yet they’d impose the religion of a minority and their punitive judgment on those women.
Our right to control our bodies is a human right that should not depend on these decision-makers or a vote at the polls.
-Judy Ancel, Kansas City