Letters: Aug. 10, 1962

A Place in the Sun

Sir:

Thank Mr. Delbert Webb [TIME, Aug. 3] for making Sun City possible. The motto of that city should read as a well-known book reads, "Ye must become as little children again."

MARTHA M. EVERT Camp Hill, Pa.

Sir:

God forbid that I should ever commit myself to a "retirement" city. Granted that my bones will creak, my hair will grey, but to cut myself off from the swingy zing of the mainstream of life would really make me old.

(MRS.) GLADYS REINHART CLARK Oak Lawn, Ill.

Sir:

The attitude of the younger people towards our elderly citizens today is "Get them out of our hair at all costs."

Now the propaganda has begun: "Put them in reservations or concentration camps." For that is what the Sun Cities are, no matter how you pretty them up.

O. V. SEMMER Hutchinson, Kansas

Thalidomide

Sir:

The Finkbine case [TIME, Aug. 3] is a touchingly human condemnation of our cruel, vastly illogical abortion laws.

The grave danger caused by the drug thalidomide and the prospect of a hideously deformed child being born as a result of its use should be more than adequate justification for legal abortion−but there are other equally good reasons: many young lives have been wrecked because sexually overzealous youths were forced into "shotgun" marriages at an early age as a result of unwanted pregnancy; many much younger lives have been ruined when children of tender ages have found that they are not really wanted in homes where their birth was an "accident." To liberalize abortion laws would not be to encourage immorality but would, rather, save many worthwhile U.S. citizens from disastrously burdensome problems.

ROBERT F. DORR San Diego

Sir:

As a mother who had German measles during the first trimester of her pregnancy, I sympathize with the agony that Mrs. Finkbine is now experiencing. However, no end, however good it appears, can justify evil means. And killing a living being, be it still unborn, is an evil means. Abortion is murder. My child is normal and healthy despite the statistics she fought. Mrs. Finkbine's may also be normal.

( MRS .) GLORIA T. WELLS Chatsworth, Calif.

Sir:

As to the Finkbines' baby, if there is only a fifty-fifty chance to be normal, why not wait until he is born and kill him if he is abnormal? It would be more consequential.

(THE REV.) JOHN PH. PIETRA Barnabite Fathers Seminary Youngstown, N.Y.

Native Sons

Sir:

In discussing the appointment of Anthony Celebrezze as the new Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, a footnote in the July 27 issue of TIME indicates that "the Census Bureau counts as foreign-born not only those born abroad but also their children . . ."

Lest some native-born citizens fear they have suddenly been classed as aliens, it should be emphasized that the census counts as foreign-born only those persons actually born outside the U.S.

Apparently your footnote is meant to refer to native-born persons of foreign or mixed parentage, a group often referred to, when combined with the foreign-born, as "foreign stock."

RICHARD M. SCAMMON Director Bureau of the Census Washington, D.C.

Political Roll

Sir: