Letters to the editor — Saturday (7-19-14)

Published 12:00 am Saturday, July 19, 2014

Recently Hobby Lobby has come under fire for not wanting to comply with four out the 20 forms of contraception mandated by the federal government they need to provide for their employees. These four differ from the other 16 because they deal with a fertilized egg. Hobby Lobby considers that a form of abortion. Therefore, because of their religious beliefs, they feel they can’t go along with this requirement. They made a distinction between prevention and termination. The U.S. Supreme Court concurred.
Predictably various politicians, women’s groups, and the media cried foul, claiming a violation of women’s rights. To hear these folks you’d think Hobby Lobby was clubbing women, grabbing their hair and dragging them back to the nearest cave.
Nonsense. No rights have been violated here. Nobody is getting fired because they terminated a pregnancy. That would be a violation. Women still have 16 other forms of contraception Hobby Lobby will cover. But that’s not good enough. It should be.
Personally, I’m not even sure contraception should be covered in the health care law. I’ve always viewed insurance as protection against things that, for the most part, are out of your control. Birth control is not.
In the meantime, leave Hobby Lobby alone!
— Allan Gilmour
Salisbury

Nation of addicts! So true! We wouldn’t have this epidemic of pain killer addictions if the pharmaceutical companies were banned from the usage of illegal drugs in the medications. Opioids, which are in hydrocodone and other pain killers, come from opium, an illegal drug dating back as far back as the 1960s and 1970s.
All medications have a list of side effects. Pain killers made from opioids (opium) have two major side effects I haven’t seen listed, which are hallucination and violent behaviors. These side effects cause people (addicts) to abuse others both verbally and physically.
There are three ways an addict can get their fix of pain killers. (1) People selling their prescription pill to them. (2) A relative freely giving their own prescription pills to that addict. (3) The addict will fake or cause themselves to have an injury or just have fake pain so they can make a trip to the ER.
One would naturally assume that people who had that much pain, that required a prescription, would be using their common sense and keeping their pain pills for their own use instead of selling or giving them away to addicts. Apparently they also don’t realize what others endure because of the drug addicts’ hallucinations and violent behaviors.
All pain killers and other medications made with illegal drugs such as opium should be banned permanently. Then maybe those people who get verbally and physically abused by drug addicts can live a more peaceful life!
— Ellie Mae Lambert
Salisbury