Rush: Pig or prig?

Re: Jack Lessenberry's item "The unmaking of a pig" (March 7), I'm glad that people are talking about what Rush Limbaugh said about that young woman. It was one of the few shows I actually heard for myself as it aired. He did have a point when he asked why cancer patients aren't speaking out for health care instead of people concerned about birth control. But besides the immature name-calling, using the trigger words slut and whore, there was one other factor to what he said that nobody, not even the feminists decrying him, are addressing at all: He basically asked that young girl to perform sex for him over the Internet. 

No one seems to be mentioning that part of the show — and it didn't even factor into his apology. It's as if any female having sex must strictly be doing it for his pleasure and his pleasure is all that matters. —Kathryn O'Connor, Bloomfield Hills

A nut-free GOP

I couldn't agree more with Jack Lessenberry's column on Rick Santorum ("Should we root for Santorum?" March 7). On primary day, my liberal attorney boss urged me to go and vote for Santorum just because he would be so unelectable if he were to become the Republican candidate. I told my boss I could not in good conscience vote for someone who is so vehemently opposed to so many things that I support. Judging by his stance on contraception, this man wants to create some dystopia where once again women's lives are circumscribed by their reproductive capacity.

If intelligent Republicans want their party to return to a semblance of sanity, they need to do some serious housecleaning. Rejecting these far-right lunatics, who in saner times would simply have been laughed out of the political arena, would be a good start. —Gail Gilchrist, Berkley

Loving the fetus

I find Jack Lessenberry's professed concern for Michigan's impoverished children hard to square with his cavalier attitude toward those who oppose abortion. What he dismisses as a woman "controlling [her] own [body]," many of us believe is murder. Yes, Santorum and his ilk are benighted to support overturning Roe v. Wade while doing nothing to stop — nay, encouraging — the capitalists' continued exploitation and oppression of working-class families. But Lessenberry is guilty of the same sin for failing to see that abortions also destroy lives. Even a glance at the image of a fetus shows that those who truly love children must be willing to protect the unborn. —Robert F. Allen, Ph.D., Redford

Two-sided pill

I just want to comment on Santorum's quote on the dangers of contraception. While the sexual revolution of the 1960s was not good for the society, it definitely helped give women more control over their reproductive activities. A recent study indicates that contraception may even have helped women narrow the wage gap because it allowed them to delay marriage and childbirth. —Pradeep Srivastava, Detroit

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