Readers react to child abuse, President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
End child abuse
Many community leaders and organizations that serve children across Johnson County, the Kansas City area and our nation will join forces this month to recognize National Child Abuse Prevention Month.
Abuse knows no geographic or socioeconomic boundaries. It can happen to anyone.
However, children who live in families challenged by poverty are at greater risk of experiencing abuse and neglect, development and learning delays, future incarceration, and poorer physical and mental health outcomes.
In 2014, 37,000 people were living in poverty in Johnson County, and more than 12,000 of those were children.
As an organization, Growing Futures works to provide children in poverty with high-quality early learning opportunities and to provide its families with access to comprehensive family-support services that can ameliorate the many risk factors associated with living in poverty.
As a Head Start program serving Johnson County families since 1965, Growing Futures is proud to join the many voices in our region that take April to recognize that we all have a part to play in preventing child abuse.
Let’s keep our children healthy and safe so they have the opportunity for success in school and in life.
Terrie
VanZandt-Travis
Executive Director
Growing Futures
Early Education
Center Inc.
Overland Park
Obama’s legacy
The obstructionist tactics of the Republicans in denying a hearing to any nominee from President Barack Obama to the U.S. Supreme Court may backfire.
Voters may so thoroughly dislike their behavior that in November they elect both a Democratic president and U.S. Senate controlled by Democrats.
Others have observed that six times in the 20th century, a lame duck president nominated and the Senate confirmed a new Supreme Court justice.
Like Obama, John Adams, our second president, had made two appointments to the Supreme Court when another vacancy occurred. Unlike Obama, who has less than 10 months remaining as president, Adams had lost his bid for a second term (to Thomas Jefferson in 1800).
With about six weeks of his only term as president remaining, on Jan. 20, 1800, Adams submitted John Marshall’s name to the Senate, and it confirmed him. Marshall became chief justice in 1801. By serving until his death in 1835, Marshall became and remains both our longest-serving chief justice and one of our greatest.
Harriet C. Frazier, J.D.
Professor Emeritus
University of
Central Missouri
Kansas City
Safe Haven Day
Safe Haven for Newborns laws in Kansas and Missouri provide a legal option to birth parents who are not ready to raise a child and may think their only option is to abandon the baby.
Relinquishing a newborn (45 days or younger) at a Safe Haven location ensures that the baby is left in a safe place with those who can provide the immediate care needed for the child’s safety.
Safe Haven is a primary child-abuse, child-neglect and child-abandonment prevention strategy and is an important part of National Child Abuse Prevention Month efforts this month on both sides of the state line throughout the metro area.
At 8 a.m. Thursday, the mayors of Kansas City and Kansas City, Kan., will hold a news conference to announce the area’s first Safe Haven for Newborns Day. Area residents can attend.
There are many heart-wrenching stories about babies found in public restrooms or dumpsters that underscore the importance of educating citizens about the legal options provided by Safe Haven laws in both states.
These laws were designed to save babies’ lives but can only do so if we make sure every citizen knows about them.
David Francis
Mission Hills
Hillary Clinton
So Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is going “to make the country whole again,” huh?
What a joke.
Clinton is a proven liar, one of the richest political establishment members and who as secretary of state was responsible for the deaths of four Americans at Benghazi.
Clinton does not have the character.
Hillary Clinton will dig a bigger hole for this nation, not make it whole.
As a phony and a fraud, Clinton gives credence to the admonition that has been attributed to President Abraham Lincoln: “You can fool some of the people all of the time ...”
Bob Tobia
Kansas City
This story was originally published April 2, 2016 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Readers react to child abuse, President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton."