Tuesday's letters: Opinion flawed, baby or fetus, publish speech, more

Alito opinion too flawed for consensus

There are four major flaws in Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked opinion that all five justices in the majority are unlikely to accept:

• Unenumerated constitutional rights must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s History and Tradition and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

Many court-announced constitutional rights (such as same-sex marriage) have the opposite history.

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• Alito mostly attacks Roe v. Wade, but Roe was so substantially modified by Casey that it is the controlling precedent, and he fails to grapple with it.

• He wants abortion decisions to be left to elected representatives but that was what Casey already did (upholding four of the five abortion provisions).

• Alito ignores the second pillar of the Casey decision: “Roe may (also) be seen … as a rule of personal autonomy … recognizing limits on governmental power to mandate medical treatment or to bar its rejection.”

This is based on the Cruzan decision of 1990, the court’s first right-to-die case.

Alito asserts that Casey “relied on” 10 decisions, which he lists, but he fails to mention Cruzan, the “rule” of bodily integrity that goes beyond the “liberty” cases. I doubt that fair-minded justices will want to sign on to these clear errors.

Bill Cotter, Sarasota and Concord, Massachusetts, former president and professor of constitutional law, Colby College

Women bear burden, should make choice

The guest column by Patrick Brown demonstrates the religious element of the abortion problem (“I’m glad Trump’s legacy could be the end of Roe v. Wade, May 12).

At the age of 8 or 9 he attended a March for Life. Was he so precocious to have acquired the knowledge to make a choice at such a tender age, or did he accept the teachings of his religion, as was his right? (I support his right.)

But what of the rights of those who do not share his religious beliefs? What about the rights of a woman impregnated by a rapist? What about the rights of all the other women whose lives would be devastated by requiring them to carry to term?

Adoption is not the answer since it still requires carrying to term and puts society into the business of ranching babies.

There are so many facets to the problem, with poverty being a major issue. Women of means will always find access to safe abortion.

Criminalizing a desperate woman’s effort to get out of a bad situation is not the answer. Only she has the facts, and she bears the burden. She is the one to make that choice.

Milton J. Crystal, Sarasota

Publish graduation speech in full

I assume I’m not the only one who is appalled at the overbearing treatment young Zander Moricz is receiving from the Pine View School administration over his pending graduation speech (“Graduation speech to be reviewed for LGBTQ language,” May 14).

School administrators are supposed to be interested primarily in the growth and development of the young people in their care, but I suppose that some of them just cannot help being as dogmatic as your article suggests. Fortunately, I suspect that the Harvard-bound class president is smart and mature enough to let this contretemps roll off his back.

Nevertheless, I have a suggestion. Perhaps the Herald-Tribune would offer to print the speech that Moricz would like to make at his graduation, free of political “tinkering.” That would make a fine follow-up to the reporting to date and the offer might even convince the school administration to allow the speech to be given in person.

But, at the very least, doing so would allow your readers to gauge the degree of heavy-handedness the new “Don’t Say Gay” law requires.

David Cohen, Sarasota

Our tax money goes for $700,000 severance

So the chief financial officer for Moderna spent one day at his job and will receive $700,000!

It seems Moderna found out that Jorge Gomez’s previous employer is investigating financial reporting.

Modern is going to pay his $700,000 severance, but not his signing bonus and two other bonuses. Poor guy.

Since the vaccine maker received billions from the U.S. government – read you and me – it couldn’t care less how much the CFO was paid.

The U.S. taxpayers are chumps!

Tony Franzini, Bradenton

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Flaws in abortion opinion; publish graduation speech