LETTERS IN THE EDITOR'S MAILBAG.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Plan B can terminate a life

A Web site says, "No, Plan B is not an abortifacient. Plan B is believed to act as an emergency contraceptive principally by preventing ovulation or fertilization. In addition, it may inhibit implantation by altering the endometrium. (It) cannot terminate an established pregnancy. There is no evidence that Plan B would harm a developing fetus."

It does not terminate an established pregnancy? These new levels of pregnancy seem to take your mind off whether conception actually has occurred.

I don't think this is right, because one of the ways it works is to stop a fertilized egg from planting in the womb, which is no different than stopping one that has attached.

As far as that which is conceived is concerned, one second before implantation in the womb and one second after isn't really any difference. Fertilization is the line of differentiation.

If life begins at conception, then Plan B sometimes acts an abortifacient. The single-cell human that is conceived is aiming to continue in Plan A (alive), but may very well face a Plan B (bye).

Those taking this pill might pause to think: If it is ineffective in preventing conception yet is successful in blocking implantation, then, for a moment, life was there.

BILL NORTHRUP

Eugene

Human sensitivities lie dormant 

I was amused to read the Jan. 9 article "Scientists look to explain animals' disaster response," and the resulting assumption that humans need to develop "sophisticated instruments" to imitate animal abilities to detect earthquakes.

Humans are members of the animal kingdom, and we spent at least a million years being extremely sensitive to our immediate environment, listening and stalking and tasting intensely for survival. Only in relatively recent times have we switched our life patterns to deliberate deadening of our inner clocks, our ancient sensing abilities: not long enough to kill them off, I am certain.

As a piano tuner, I am amazed at how the simple practice of listening intently to tiny alterations in the frequency of steel strings has become a whole-body experience and sharpened my response to my entire environment. We are not elephants, fish or dogs - but we do have well-honed, latent abilities to reconnect with our natural environment. We are the sophisticated instruments, and just need to polish off the rust!

ANITA SULLIVAN

Eugene

Don't forget the disaster in Iraq

Let me see if I understand this.

Our nation's media are transfixed with the tragedy that has befallen people in the wake of the recent earthquake and tidal wave. We see never-ending images of devastation, destruction, suffering and sorrow. We see never-ending images of weeping parents and desperate refugees. Fair enough.

We see up-to-date estimates of the human death toll. There is much attention to tracking the number of dead in order to understand the magnitude of the suffering. Fair enough.

So why is it that when U.S. military forces obliterate the entire city of Fallujah, using hundreds of tons of bombs and artillery shells, we see no images of destruction? Why is it that we see no images of the devastation?

That's not fair.

Why is it that when the U.S. military forces 200,000 people from their homes and into wretched refugee camps we see no images at all? Why is it that when Iraqi mothers and fathers are sobbing, heartbroken over the deaths of their sons and daughters following the invasion and occupation of their country by the U.S. military, we see so few images?

That's not fair.

Why is it that when the most prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, estimates the death toll in Iraq at 100,000, mostly caused by air strikes, the U.S. military and government pretend that they don't keep track of the Iraqi dead?

That's not fair.

Why do the people of the United States get to feel badly about some disasters, but not about others?

ROSCOE CARON

Eugene

Friedman too glib about Iraq

I study and respect Thomas Friedman's columns about the Iraq war because he has always met President Bush's team at the level of its stated intentions in a proactive way.

At each step of the occupation, Friedman has taken it upon himself to coach, cajole and do sociopolitical scouting for an administration that doesn't do nuance. If there are good reasons to be in Iraq, Friedman has voiced them well.

Lately, though, his moral scenarios and constructive criticism seem weirdly forced, like advising crash test dummies on how to best fly through a windshield. His columns depend on the literary conceit that the Bush team listens to him and needs his advice on how to get pragmatic now that a bad idea has gone to hell.

I admire this conceit; it's optimistic. But Friedman's latest facile idea, that the election will "pop the cork" in Iraq and determine morally recognizable "sides" in the civil war there, is just that: an idea, signifying all kinds of real violence and suffering.

I'm nauseated by the glibness. Friedman makes predictions about tribal sociology that sound expert, then compares Iraq to an exploding bottle of champagne. One hundred thousand people are dead. We have yet to admit that we need a 20-year plan and 200,000 more troops to police another society after blowing it up.

This is how we model Friedman's "equitable social contract?"

DAN JONES

Eugene

New library bustles with activity

Jennifer Ward (letters, Jan. 8) wrote that she thinks she is being lied to about how many people use the Eugene libraries and decried the waste of taxpayers' money. Perhaps she should spend some time at our wonderful new downtown library and observe how many people are coming and going at all hours and occupying all three floors of the large facility. Maybe she could benefit from using the library herself.

Personally, I think that the new library is the best thing that the city of Eugene has done in the 25 years that I have lived here - much better than the Hult Center in terms of taxpayer money spent for the benefit of everyone. Hooray for the library!

FRED WESLEY 

Eugene

Officer makes poverty a crime

I was homeless here for years. I worked my way out of a campsite about five years ago, and for weeks I found myself panhandling on my lunch breaks in order to eat, while saving for rent and living out of a backpack.

Parents would teach their children classism by encouraging them to laugh and point. People would throw food at me rather than to me, and the police would harass me and ridicule me - as if homelessness isn't demeaning enough on its own.

Eugene police officer Randy Ellis once followed me for blocks on foot until I asked him what I had done, to which he replied, "Why, you got a guilty conscience?" More recently, he showed up at a yard sale I was having to threaten me with fines for putting up a sign on a telephone pole.

I may no longer be homeless, but he continues to single me out for harassment. Being homeless is abject misery, but people like Ellis make certain that if it can be worse, it will. I agree with him on one point: Compassion is absolutely absent from his character.

I resent the newspaper's depiction of him as anything more than a thug who goes out of his way to make poverty a crime.

McLEAN SCHNEIDER

Eugene

Freedom is gradually eroding

I haven't seen "Is it fascism yet?" bumper stickers on any cars, but Vip Short's Jan. 7 letter "Why aren't Americans alarmed?" resonated with me when he mentioned the frog in the slowly heating water.

Not only did I use this same metaphor in "Fish in the Aquarium," the introductory chapter to a book I wrote, but I had just been thinking of it the previous day when I read in The Register-Guard about the woman from Creswell who has been consistently pulled aside for humiliating searches at airports, and whose 9-year-old grandson was treated the same way.

Because we are adaptable social creatures and tend to accept as normal or necessary the small increments of change continually going on all around us, how will we know when things have gone too far? When it's too late?

Our stridently divided country is far from being fascist yet, but something is wrong when individuals sacrifice their freedoms in order to live in a free society. At some point, when individual rights have been superseded by the state, which has become an absolute entity with a will and purpose and personality of its own, then the answer to that question on the bumper sticker would have to be "yes."

I have too much faith in this country to believe that day will ever arrive, but sometimes you can't help but wonder.

EDWIN STUART 

Eugene

Hospital staff offers compassion

Those of us who have lived around Eugene for any length of time have heard many stories about Sacred Heart Medical Center and usually can tell a few as well. Here's my latest tale.

I am a single man who does not make enough to afford health insurance. Recently, my 23-year-old daughter came to live with me. She also has no health insurance. A few days ago she got unexplainably ill, then really ill.

We went to Sacred Heart's emergency room. After an initial checkup, she was registered by a very courteous clerk. When the clerk asked if my daughter had insurance and was told no, she checked the appropriate box.

The next morning, my daughter had an inflamed gallbladder and stones removed by a very kind, competent surgeon. She spent three days in the hospital. From entrance to exit, from the cleaning lady to the surgeon, my daughter was treated with the utmost care, dignity and friendliness. Not once was either of us asked how we might pay for the treatment.

Among the many terms used to describe Sacred Heart, here is one from me: a treasure. My daughter and I are deeply grateful.

SCOTT LANDFIELD

KARINA WARREN-

LANDFIELD

Eugene