Letters to the editor
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Abortion clinics should have the same standards
I read the May 16 editorial about HB 574 ("Phony Response: The Pa. House Uses a Clinic Tragedy to Hurt Women"). The author argues that Pennsylvania's abortion facilities are being unfairly targeted by HB 574, which will force them to come up to code and meet the safety standards that all other surgical facilities in the state must meet.
Pennsylvania's abortion facilities are in no position to argue that they're being treated unfairly. They've enjoyed completely unreasonable exemptions from basic safety regulations for decades, including being exempted even from simple safety inspections.
None of Pennsylvania's stand-alone abortion facilities have ever been required to meet the same safety standards that all other surgical facilities in the state are required to meet. That cushy, little exemption has indeed, as the author of the editorial pointed out, saved abortion facilities hundreds of thousands of dollars each on the costs of updating their facilities to meet the 21st-century safety guidelines that every other surgical facility in the state must meet. Everyone else has followed the rules or accepted the consequences for years, while Pennsylvania's abortion facilities have been exempted.
It's ironic that the supposedly progressive Post-Gazette so vocally defends primitively substandard safety conditions in certain surgical facilities. It is not progressive to flippantly dismiss concerns about substandard conditions in these facilities, or to support regressive enforcement from the state to allow abortion facilities to obtain still more unreasonable exemptions to the standards that everyone else must follow.
BRYCE C. McMINN
Bethel Park
Unfair sentences
Stories like Eric Brewer's ("Old Law Lengthens Pittsburgh Man's Sentence," May 23) should outrage Congress, because they make a mockery of one of Congress' best efforts to do justice.
Last year, after decades of criticism from judges, sentencing experts and defendants, Congress reformed unfair crack cocaine sentences. In doing so, Congress agreed that these lengthy crack sentences were unsupportable since day one. Yet Congress failed to extend the new law's reforms to people like Mr. Brewer and thousands of others who are still serving them.
First Published May 27, 2011 12:00 am
