City Council should support

fight against child abuse
A request for funding by Prevent Child Abuse Rowan (PCAR) has been denied by the Salisbury City Council through its Special Community Efforts Group request. I certainly am disappointed. I realize that many do not know of our organization and its purpose. Our services are rendered in the darkest days of a child and family. Our successes are not to be publicized.
You may want to believe that our work should not be necessary, but sadly it is. In 2012, 116 children were served by PCAR at the Child Advocacy Center on Woodson Street. Yes, these children are not only from Salisbury, but all of Rowan County. A child’s needs are not determined by an arbitrary line on a map. The council encouraged us to apply again next year and told us that our name would be kept on file. I hope that more than keeping our name on file, they will keep our purpose and mission in mind.
— Dr. Kathleen Russo

Salisbury

Dr. Kathleen Russo is medical director of the Rowan County Child Advocacy Center.

Regarding abortion ‘fireworks’

Abortion is a horrible abuse of the practice of medicine, ending 1.5 million lives every year, yet our nation has made it legal. It is an invasive medical procedure, yet its practitioners are not held to the same standards of care as the rest of the medical community. If the quality of care provided by an abortion doctor was provided by any other medical provider — family physician, obstetrician, or emergency physician — it would be considered grossly negligent. At the present time, negligence by an abortion provider does not even cause a stir. In fact it goes unnoted and unreported. There is no other practice of medicine where people can suffer and die from complications of the doctor’s doing without the doctor being in some way professionally accountable, involved in their patient’s care, and at the very least, made aware of it — except abortion.
How many women really die from “safe, legal abortions”? No one knows. If the abortionist is also the doctor who fills out the death certificate, he has a strong incentive not to blame it on a botched operation performed by himself. As one government statistician put it, “That’s like turning yourself in for a tax audit.” Whether it is the abortionist or someone else, they may shade the truth to avoid embarrassing the dead woman’s family.
Abortion is bad medicine. It is bad because it pushes sloppy medical care upon women who have been led to believe that their only choice is to abort their babies. It will always be bad medicine because it takes away an innocent human life. Our nation, our community, our mothers, sisters, daughters deserve better.

— Warren Shinn

Salisbury