Dialogue

WOMEN HELPING WOMEN

Thank you for this article (“Access Denied,” Feb. 20) and for shedding light on a huge issue for women internationally. I have worked in abortion care for 20 years, and my organization, Whole Woman’s Health, has a clinic in McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley near the Mexico border. We offer compassionate care with a completely bilingual and nonjudgmental staff. We see many women who have been in the situations you describe, and many more who cross the border specifically to obtain safe and legal abortion care. We are here to help any and all and can offer financial aid. Please visit www.wholewomanshealth.com for more information.

Amy HagstromPosted at www.texasobserver.org

Foreign nationals, raped in a foreign country by foreign nationals while in conspiracy to commit various crimes, are upset with the U.S. government because of violent illegal actions by individuals in a different country. The violence from Central America spills into the U.S. at an ever-increasing level. Yet the U.S. open border movement looks for every possible excuse to justify the unending illegal migration of drugs, violence, rape, and depressed wages.

John SmithPosted at www.texasobserver.org

ON A WING AND A PRAYER?

How does one become a dentist with “little scientific training”? (“The Curious Faith of Don McLeroy,” Feb. 20.) The dissonance thundered in my brain so loudly I couldn’t continue.

Alicia WilliamsPosted at www.texasobserver.org

It’s sad that I, a secular humanist, know Christian theology better than Don McLeroy. Does he really think that we humans were created by God in his exact physical image? A human body is covered with bacteria; frequently hosts parasites; is susceptible to pathogens; has a vestigial caecum [where the appendix attaches to the large intestines] and tailbone; suffers from hemorrhoids, hernias, and varicose veins; and is subject to genetic diseases. Our sex organs are closely adjacent to or are the same as our organs for waste elimination. All of these human “features” have excellent evolutionary explanations. Is this the image of God in which Christians believe?

Of course not. Christians believe that humans were created in the spiritual image of God, not in the image of a physical body.

When he claims that humans are made in the physical image of God, and that the evolutionary origin of humans contradicts this, McLeroy is holding to a very literalist and aberrant interpretation. Most Christians would not accept this interpretation. McLeroy’s anti-scientific beliefs are a consequence of his extreme sectarian theology, not a mainstream Christian theology, and especially not science.

Steven SchafersmanPosted at www.texasobserver.org

BEATDOWN IN AUSTIN

Knowing Alan Pogue, it doesn’t surprise me that he knows how to defend himself (“My History of Violence,” Feb. 20). What does is that he has found the need so often in Austin. I had no idea. I would have expected that his prowess with martial arts might have been necessary in the Middle East, Africa, or even Central America. But Austin? Now I’m thinking about that .45/.410 for myself.

Alison DieterPosted at www.texasobserver.org