Need to protect them

As our population increases, we have become the sad witnesses to unimaginable acts of horror. I am referring to the insane carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary which claimed the lives of our beautiful, innocent children and adults.

Now, after the fact, it appears our only recourse is to honor those who are no longer with us and make sincere efforts toward preventing this from happening again.

I, for one, praise our president and his staff for sincerely working toward finding a way to prevent these types of insane crimes from happening again.

Do we, the American people, need to have access to assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips more than we need to protect the lives of our innocent children and adults?

Our precious children deserve a chance to live out their lives in peace. Let us pray that God and the professionals find answers to solving the age-old problems of the mentally ill. DOROTHY REIF

Fayetteville control to their female employees. And now Republicans in the state Legislature want to ban abortions almost as soon as pregnancy has begun.

Many of these same people deride entitlements such as welfare, Medicaid, etc. Do they not realize the public burden of raising unintended children? If women do not have the ability to access or afford the means to control how many children they produce, our society will end up subsidizing these extra children in one way or another.

Those who want to limit birth control and abortions need to realize that we all end up paying for these unintended pregnancies. If a woman’s right to choose becomes limited, then we are going to need more adoptive families, more foster care, more money for entitlements—in other words, more spending and more government.

You can’t have it both ways. Birth control and safe abortions were a public health and societal revolution. Limiting them threatens to return us to the pre-20th Century in more ways than one. KATRINA KING North Little Rock