Letters: Adoption not a simple substitute; Incomplete picture from Ukraine

Adoption not a simple substitute

Adoption is not the solution to abortion.

For the family that wants and can afford to adopt a child, adoption is wonderful, but for many women, a forced pregnancy is a crisis. Carrying a baby to term is an enormous undertaking — and for those lacking health care, family support, a flexible job, child care, affordable housing and reliable transportation, a pregnancy can bring utter despair. Despite politicians’ simplistic rhetoric, adoption is not a simple substitute for those seeking abortion services.

While adoption releases birthmothers from the responsibility of parenting, it does not relieve them of the health, economic or mental costs of pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum stresses. According to CDC statistics, women are 34 times more likely to die during pregnancy than by abortion. (How many more women will die during pregnancy now that access to abortion is no longer legal or accessible nationwide?)

Giving up a child is difficult! Studies detail the long-term emotional and psychological consequences to both birthmothers and their surrendered babies — and overlooking “relinquishment trauma” is cruel.

Supreme Court Justice Alito, who abolished a woman’s constitutional right to abortion, said the “domestic supply of infants is lacking.” Justice Barrett, an adoptive parent, believes safe haven laws for abandoning newborns could eliminate abortions. Simply wishing adoptions to erase the need for abortion is naive at best and heartless at worst.

Adoption does not address the need for safe, accessible abortion — and it will not stop abortions.

This November vote for candidates who will protect a woman’s right to choose.

Incomplete picture from Ukraine

Few Americans know about Walter Lippmann and his warnings about the threat to democracy posed by citizens too ill-informed to address their country’s issues. Lippmann knew, because he was personally involved in the broadcasting of wartime propaganda about fictitious World War I battlefield victories.

In his classic work, “Public Opinion,” Lippmann asserted that “news and truth are not the same thing.” News signals an event, truth requires the bringing to light the hidden facts related to that event. In his even more pessimistic book, “The Phantom Public,” Lippmann asserted, “effective virtue, as Socrates pointed out long ago, is knowledge; and a code of the right and the wrong must wait upon a perception of the true and the false.”

Speaking about hidden facts: on Aug. 3, America’s mainstream news media reported that Ukrainian forces took out an ammunition railway connecting Kherson with Crimea. However, it did not report that Russian forces destroyed much of the 21st Battalion of Ukraine’s 56th Motorized Infantry Brigade, causing it to retreat from Pisky (Pesky), before suffering total destruction by its own artillery.

Neither did it report that as many as 900 Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded on Aug. 2 alone. Showing its bias, it often speculates about Russian casualties, but not Ukrainian. It fails to report widespread Ukrainian desertions.

The biased American mainstream news media cherry-pick pro-Ukrainian news. Often, they spread lies submitted by the Biden and Zelensky governments. Worse, they intentionally avoid giving Americans a complete picture of events. News, not truth.

A forever changed State College

I was saddened to read Matt Disanto’s story about the new luxury housing. What is missing is occupancy rates of these building for all these students and the glaring reminder of how much the retail space remains empty. Local businesses were displaced with the demolition of many of the original buildings and the look and feel of downtown State College is forever changed without them. There are fewer and fewer reasons for those of us who live in this region to venture to a downtown who places a high value on these monstrosities and not the local business owners who are a staple. To top it off, in the same edition of the CDT in the Classified section is the “Notice of Demolition of a Historic Structure.” So what will replace the University Club at 331 W. College Ave.? I don’t know why I continue to be amazed and saddened by those making decisions for this region in regards to building and housing.