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Readers write: Care for pregnant mothers; Where’s Bernie?; GOP can take its time

Letters to the editor for the April 4, 2016 weekly magazine.

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Paul Sancya/AP/File
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign event, Sunday, April 3, 2016, in Madison, Wisc.

Care for pregnant mothers

Regarding the March 14 cover story, “Prescription: contact”: I congratulate the Monitor for showing the importance of humane, natural approaches to treating neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). What is missing are references to the proper treatment for the pregnant women. 

Most people do not become addicted when using heroin or pain medications. Women who become addicted usually have significant psychiatric problems, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, depression, etc. These disorders are often ignored, and patients may seek tranquilizers and alcohol. 

In my experience, pregnant women’s stress is the most important contributor to NAS. These women need support. And we must protect them from people and agencies who berate them.

Heinz Aeschbach, MD

Austin, Texas

Where’s Bernie?

Regarding the March 14 One Week article “Republican Party’s identity crisis”: You noticeably did not mention Bernie Sanders. I felt pretty good about Hillary Clinton as a candidate until the blackout of Mr. Sanders’s campaign in the media became so glaring that I repeatedly wondered whether he was still running. I count on the Monitor to provide an alternative to mainstream thinking and this was disappointing.

Caroline Goodell

Seattle

GOP can take its time

Regarding the March 28 Decoder column, “Person vs. principle for the Supreme Court”: While I prefer that Merrick Garland’s confirmation proceed according to regular order, the Republican majority in the Senate has every right not to conduct hearings on this nomination. The American people understand what is at stake and will consider conservative intransigence when deciding whom to support for president in November. And if Hillary Clinton is elected and Democrats take control of the Senate, then Republicans can consider Mr. Garland’s nomination in the lame duck Congress prior to the inauguration.

Paul Bloustein

Cincinnati

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

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