Editor, Commonwealth:
It is difficult to read the very liberal Cynthia Tucker’s columns, though sometimes I glean something with which I can agree.
However, this week’s column (“Pro-life only until birth,” April 2) first made me angry, then after a while I began to sense her frustration and have a “little” empathy for her. I, too, am frustrated with the poverty of many of Mississippi’s children. I want more and better for them, and I want it now.
However, she is wrong in many of her conclusions. There are so many people, and not just Catholics, who care deeply about the issues she describes. We are not all hypocrites who don’t care about the child once he is out of the womb.
So many people throughout our state, both liberal and conservative, volunteer, read to poor children, mentor, teach and tutor. They give money to the state’s children’s hospital, where our children get care whether or not they can pay. They visit prisons, and they help prisoners’ children have gifts at Christmas. They are foster parents and adoptive parents. They are teachers who really care about their poorer students, enough to be sure they have a ride to take the ACT, a warm coat or a homecoming dress, and to fill many other needs.
I could tell of many such actions, but it would take too much space in this paper. In our area alone, I couldn’t begin to name all of the people who volunteer in countless ways to make life better for others less fortunate than themselves. These volunteers are all ethnicities, and all political and religious stripes. Clubs, churches and civic organizations do many good works. No, we have not arrived. We have a long way to go. But to say we conservatives and Christians don’t care about children after they leave the womb is incorrect and insulting.
I care enough to want them to survive the womb first of all, and, yes, I wish all children had well-prepared parents to care for them. I am pro-life all the way, but that is from conception to natural death, and I am willing to do what I can for those among us who need help. So were my parents, who are gone now. And so are many other Mississippians. I am proud to be a part of the most charitable state in the union.
Ruth Jensen
McCarley
