Second look: New views on week's top talkers

Some letters to the editor and comments from Facebook on hot topics covered in Your Say this week:

DNA, HUMAN LIFE NOT THE SAME

I found the recent discussion of abortion in Your Say to be misleading ("For sexual assault, should there be exemption?," Thursday). The issue, as I see it, is not human life biologically defined, but rather human meaningfulness religiously defined.

In Thursday's Twitter comments, one reader stated that "A baby ('fetus') is a human being. It has a separate DNA. Therefore, abortion is murder always." A human DNA molecule and a human being are two different things.

But this is what is so difficult about the issue. People have many divergent ideas about when human life begins.

Let us not be so banal as to equate a human life with a DNA molecule. Otherwise, I must confess that I am destroying thousands of them when I brush my teeth. I don't think that anyone would consider this mass manslaughter.

John L. Indo; Houston

A FETUS IS A HUMAN LIFE

A fetus is a human being, and a woman has no right to take away its right to live. That life within her is not hers.

Regardless of how the fetus was conceived, the fact remains that it is a human life and any woman who tries to end the life of a fetus, even if it was conceived without her permission from a rape or from an abhorrent act like incest or from a husband who has abandoned the mother and child, is a murderer. The penalty for a woman who aborts her fetus should be the same as the penalty for the murder of a child.

Milo Bendech

POPULAR VOTE TRUMPS ALL

Columnist Curtis Gans in "Don't dump Electoral College" uses a form of mental gymnastics and convoluted logic to try to defend the indefensible Electoral College.

The bottom line: In American presidential elections, it is a subversion of democratic principles to allow the candidate with fewer popular votes to win the presidency as former president George W. Bush did in 2000. Based upon current polls, it is possible President Obama may win the electoral vote and not the popular vote. If this happens, perhaps GOP leaders will spearhead a bipartisan effort to change our system to one that actually reflects the will of the people.

Thomas Hanley; Fulton, N.Y.

PROTECT SMALL STATES

The Electoral College is the only firewall a small state has.

The Founding Fathers deliberately avoided a true democracy because they saw its inherent danger. Simply winning the popular vote is not enough. A candidate must also carry enough states.

Steven Andrew Zaelit