Letters to the Editor, Mar. 21-27

Rational Discourse Alive and Well

Thanks for Eric Johnson's review of the movie Thrive (“Blinded by the Right,” Currents, March 14). You deserve some sort of award for promoting rational discourse in our community.

Bruce Holloway

Boulder Creek

Hope After All

Any comment on last week's review of Thrive is probably superfluous, but I took Eric Johnson's review as a sign that things are looking up around these parts. Given that the last homegrown film to be feted in the local press was an interminable, unedited sob story about a methhead’s road to redemption (within little over a year of that film's release its golden boy had relapsed), it's unsurprising that Thrive was recently given half a dozen pages of tail-wagging small print from Santa Cruz Weekly's only competitor, a publication that seems to exist for the sole purpose of selling snake oil to that reliable demographic of over-the-hill Santa Cruzans who wear sweatpants to four-star restaurants. Irrationality in public discourse deserves to be taken seriously and rebutted, but doing so can be like talking to a wall. I once took a Cabrillo class where an instructor played several source citation–free documentaries alleging Rothschild overfiendage, which he disclaimed as "not a Jewish conspiracy." I wonder if he had ever heard of Lloyd's, Barclay's, or Cecil-frickin'-Rhodes, and whether some of his best friends are black. Alas, there will probably always be people who are compelled by a quasi-theological tingle rather than by anything resembling cognition. Our community is living proof that the ones who don't evolve can and often do quarantine themselves voluntarily.

Aaron Cress

Santa Cruz

Notes for R. Limbaugh

Having worked as a primary care and reproductive health clinician for the last  3 years, I have learned a thing or two about contraception. While there are  umerous uses for hormonal contraception, including greatly reducing risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer, regulation of irregular uterine bleeding, preventing anemia, control of acne and suppression of ovarian cysts, among others, it is mainly used for fertility control and the (seemingly controversial) use for planned pregnancy and abortion prevention. While hormonal contraception is generally safe, it is not without potential risk, including blood clots and pulmonary emboli (though the risk is less than the risks involved with the alternative (that'd be, uh, pregnancy). When hormones are used for contraception, there is by definition a male involved (remember your 5th grade sex ed class...) who benefits equally from the contraception.  But even though both sexes benefit equally, it women who ultimately must take the responsibility to contracept, who assume all the risk involved with possible side effects and must also ultimately pay the cost. So my years of clinical experience have thown me this: when it comes to contraception, it is in fact men who get the “free ride” and, as Mr. Limbaugh rightly points out (though perhaps not quite as imagined in his fantasy), it is women who are getting screwed.

Scott Failor

Santa Cruz

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