Letters: Faith and family planning

Re “Family planning and Filipinos,” Editorial, Dec. 19

The Times wrote: “The church has every right to try to persuade women to follow its dictates, but women must ultimately have the right to choose.”

Although the Roman Catholic hierarchy exercises its right to penalize those who do not follow church dictates, it fails to recognize the relationship between population and poverty. Access to contraceptives would limit unintended pregnancies and enable families to feed their children and maintain a better quality of life.

True, women must have the right to choose, but the male clergy must understand that enforcing some teachings of the church is life-threatening rather than life-giving.

Lenore Navarro Dowling

Los Angeles

At first I couldn’t figure out why The Times would be concerned about a domestic squabble between the Roman Catholic Church and politicians in a faraway country like the Philippines. But then I got to the end. There, The Times revealed its bias for a “progressive” cause: women’s right to choose. Right to choose what? Life or death?

We’ll never know until that sentence is completed. I like complete sentences, so I’ll end the editorial properly: a women’s “right to choose to kill her own baby.”

Rafael Villa

Brea

ALSO:

Letters: Fracking in California

Letters: Electoral college sense

Letters: Evaluating tax loopholes