Letters to the Editor - The Lakeville Journal - 5-19-22

Flawed plan at Sharon Hospital

I commend Nuvance Health for investing in Sharon Hospital as announced in a full-page advertisement in the May 5 issue of The Lakeville Journal. The ad listed the purchase of a new MRI scanner, 3-D mammography unit, and a telemedicine kiosk. Sharon Hospital needed a new MRI scanner. Among other uses, the MRI scanner is needed to promptly evaluate stroke symptoms in patients that should be transferred to a stroke center.

State of the art mammography necessitated a 3-D unit. It would be even better if the unit was used for stereotactic biopsies at Sharon Hospital as they had been done in the recent past, rather than making patients travel 45-60 minutes each way for an already emotionally stressful procedure. Optimally, Nuvance should invest in a breast surgery program here if it truly wanted to serve our community. It takes more than bricks and mortar to make a hospital.

More importantly, we need more primary care doctors, not just nurse practitioners, as Nuvance touted in the ad. About 20 years ago, there were about a dozen primary care doctors and now there are five, plus three doctors at Sun River Health at the Federally Qualified Health Center (EQHC) facility in Amenia, N.Y. The 50,000 residents of the Sharon Hospital service area deserve more than a mobile van in the hospital parking lot one day weekly and a telemedicine kiosk as stated in the ad. They need a hospital that truly supports ALL the doctors here.

Some of the money spent on the capital equipment could have been better used to maintain primary care service, maternity, a full service ICU and 24-7 surgical services. It could be used to institute a pain management program, a vein center, an alternative medicine center and other initiatives to expand services.

With a vigorous fundraising campaign, millions could be raised from our community. Unfortunately, Nuvance and the Sharon Hospital Board do not have a dialogue with the stakeholders in the community. The Nuvance “Transformation Plan” is fatally flawed.

Respectfully submitted.

David R. Kurish, MD

Sharon

Inherent rights of citizenship

Whether or not the Supreme Court of the United States nullifies Roe v. Wade, as is suggested by the leaked decision/argument of Justice Alito, and throws the many difficult real world issues of women’s right to abortion back into the cauldrons (excuse me) “laboratories” of democracy — state legislatures, a meaningful percentage of men as well as women will have their lives altered.

As a man who much earlier in life, because of personal circumstances, had to confront the issue of abortion directly, I find the political and ideological opponents of a woman’s “right to choose” simple minded in their approach to such a complex human situation.  For me, the complexity came from the intense intersection of caring for my partner’s needs and wishes, biological instincts, societal pressures, financial situations, career goals, familial history and expectations as well as my religious and moral background. And I am a man.

Having grown up in a time when abortion was illegal, I heard the whispered stories about where and how any well-connected woman of “means” would have to travel to get an abortion. I also heard the other stories of how dangerous it was to pursue having an abortion if you were from the other side of the economic divide.

In our system of government, no single ideology, religion or politic is allowed to usurp the fundamental rights of the population at large. We live in a pluralistic society. We do not live in a society where religion, any religion, necessarily dictates the laws we live by. The belief that a full human life begins at conception and is therefore sacrosanct is a link in a chain of logic based solely on religious considerations.

Religion informs society.  Science also informs society.  And although science and religion have a long history of controversies, yea antagonisms, that have spilled over into battles royal, we must not forget that the United States has its own long history, slow though it may have been, of fully vetting arguments about the “rights” inherent in personhood and citizenship. These rights have necessarily accumulated and have expanded over time.

Science can inform with new empirical knowledge — religion and politics must accommodate this.  Religion can inform by actively refining our awareness and commitment to the human condition — science and politics must understand this.   

As it is now reported that many states have “on the books” laws that immediately outlaw abortion if Roe v. Wade is nullified, one wonders how the complexity of their citizens’ lives and their trust in their citizens’ personal judgment could possibly have figured into the decision making process for these cauldron stirrers (excuse me) legislative bodies.   

Michael Moschen

Cornwall Bridge

Students so impressive

Student projects from the recent “Coloring Our Past:  Troutbeck Symposium” are on display at the Salisbury Association’s Academy Building on Main Street in Salisbury until June 4. Students from nine public and private schools, including Indian Mountain, Sharon Center, HVRHS and Salisbury School, researched local civil rights history and created exhibits and short documentaries that are exceptional.

Topics range from W.E.B. Du Bois to the history of Troutbeck, where early civil rights meetings were held;  from pig iron and slavery to Black churches and authors. A short documentary narrated by Sharon students is very moving.  It shows their illustrations of the famous poem “One-Way Ticket” by Langston Hughes.

Thanks to all the students and their history teachers who participated in this student-led collaboration. Your projects are very informative, creative, and impressive.  We hope many in our community will stop in to see the exhibit ... and become more optimistic for our future!

Jeanette Weber, President

Salisbury Association

Salisbury

Right to life, responsibility for life

“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with progress …institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.” - Thomas Jefferson Memorial

All indications are that the U.S. Supreme Court is aiming to overturn Roe v. Wade, a case that all the newly appointed justices under oath in their Senate Confirmation Hearings agreed was stare decisis, a legal doctrine that obligates courts to follow historical cases in ruling on a similar case. But should it be that Roe v. Wade is overturned in June 2022, then it isn’t just an unborn child’s mother who should be subject to right-to-life laws but also an unborn child’s father.

Among numerous disagreements of pro-choice and right-to-life advocates, there is no dispute: a child is conceived by the act of a man and a woman. If “Equal Justice for All” is to be, then right-to-life governing principles and statutes must include accountability for both parents – prenatal and after birth.

How would fatherhood as a condition be brought to equity with motherhood related to unborn children?  There are easily legislated means if the privacy of sexual activity and resulting pregnancy is no longer a constitutional right, as privacy is eliminated as “in” the Constitution.

Two means for fathers of unborn children to be held accountable for the life they fertilized:

1) A national DNA database is created – easy with today’s technological know-how. With a DNA database, determining an unborn’s father is simple and valid. A father identified is subject to state or federal right-to-life laws stipulating his responsibility for his unborn child:  prenatal and post birth financial stipulations to share medical, housing, care costs for the child within the mother as well as criminal responsibilities/penalties for rape, incest, or non-consent. Losses or reduction of the mother’s income during the pregnancy is a shared financial responsibility.

2) Expand birth control – men can be the sex partner providing prevention with no impact on an egg, no potential life compromised. Seventy % of U.S. women of birthing age utilize numerous conception preventions methods. For men there are two contraceptives, the condom and vasectomy. Forty-five% of men utilize a condom and 5% of married men have had a vasectomy.  A non-hormonal contraceptive pill for men is in active research and being tested in 2022.   

For justice, men must own responsibility for their sexual activities – accountability must no longer be defined by narrow laws targeting only the female participant. Governors and state legislatures do not for other crimes eliminate accountability for one of a pair of law breakers – if a man and woman rob a bank both are criminals. The father of an unborn child ought to be held responsible for his actions, an active participant in the creation of life.

“You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”

— Thomas Jefferson

Kathy Herald-Marlowe

Sharon

Relevant historical memories

When America came into World War II after Pearl Harbor in late 1941, President Roosevelt pledged to send armaments and food to Britain to help them in their struggle against Hitler’s forces, which he did after much argument with the Republican “America Firsters” in Congress, who thought the U.S. should stay out of another war in Europe.

A few days ago, we heard that our government was discussing sending materials to Ukraine through a program called Lend Lease. This reminded me of breakfasts in my childhood during World War II in England.

I was 6 at the time, and my younger brother was 5. I was just beginning to read. So one day I picked up a dark brown glass bottle from the breakfast table and tried to read the small label. “Lend Lease. What’s Lend Lease, Mummy?” “Well, it means that the Americans are giving you that concentrated orange juice in that bottle.” “Nice Americans,” we said, and drank our juice and went off to school, well nourished with the Vitamin C that could not be obtained in Britain during the war.

More than 60 years later, when reading a book about Roald Dahl’s activities in  the BSC (British Security Coordination) in Washington during World War II, (“The Irregulars” by Jennet Conant) I came across the following information: “Dahl found that the euphoria of VE Day and VJ Day had given way to a mood of nervous distrust. Victory in Europe, so long anticipated, had come in May. The victory over Japan in August was achieved with shocking finality by the atom bomb. America was already looking to the future and was tired of feeling Britain’s hand at their back.… The  (Truman) Administration was following an increasingly hard line, abruptly terminating Lend Lease the minute the European war was over, paring down the loans to Britain for reconstruction … Ships bearing Lend Lease cargoes to Britain remained docked, and those already under way had to be recalled.”  

Are we going to allow Senator Rand Paul to repeat this ungenerous history on our behalf today?

Gaile Binzen

Salisbury