Access to affordable birth control is essential | Letters to the Editor

Published 9:27 am Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Access to affordable birth control is essential

Washington has a reputation as a nationwide leader on things like access to abortion and birth control, but the truth is that there is still a lot of work to be done. Right now, fair access to affordable birth control does not exist and it’s going to get worse.

It’s been proven that the types of birth control that work the best are methods like IUDs and implants. With an IUD or implant, you are set for years instead of having to take a pill every day. Increasing access to IUDs and implants does amazing things. In Colorado, an anonymous donation made these methods available at free or reduced cost to anyone who wanted them. The results? Five years in, the teen birth rate has dropped by 40 percent.

We should be able to do the same in Washington. Right now unfair treatment from Medicaid is making it harder for low-income women to get IUDs and implants, and that has to change. Gov. Jay Inslee and the legislature should do something about this problem and make sure that all women in Washington have equal access to the birth control method that they choose.

Holly Quimby

Seattle

Shell protestors use petroleum too

I have no quarrel with those who use their Constitutional rights to object to Shell Oil drilling for petroleum. That they are wrong in their concern has been adequately documented by responsible scientists is another issue.

What I find humorous is their hypocrisy. Did they come to the party on horseback. No! They drove their vehicles spewing what they are demonstrating against. They are wearing clothing and using kayaks which in at least some part have benefited from petroleum. I suggest that we might take them more seriously if they did not use any thing that had petroleum behind it.

I suppose they could wear all cotton clothing, ahh, wait a minute. Machines that harvest the cotton use petroleum fuel.

Oh well, they provide some entertainment for the six o’clock news.

Dave Lewis

Bothell

Sound Transit light rail work too late

Recently, the issue of light rail has been in the news as Sound Transit obtained public input on which of four routes they should select when extending light rail to Federal Way.

I have two brief comments to make regarding this issue:

1. Sound Transit should have built this light rail system about 25-30 years ago (like San Francisco did with their Bay Area Rapid Transit system).

However, when it involves politics and obtaining funding to build it, Sound Transit (unfortunately) goes only three speeds: slow, slower and slowest.

If I had to pick one of the three, I would pick the latter.

2. Last, but not least, when Sound Transit finally gets around to building it (if they ever do), a lot of senior citizens (like myself) won’t be around to take advantage of light rail (unless we live to a ripe old age and the odds are against that). There is plenty of blame to go around but my vote goes to the state government (and its leaders) for not having the foresight to start this project in the 1980s so it could have been built/completed in the 1990s.

Gary Robertson

Federal Way