Dear Editor:In response to "Protect the People" in last week's paper (Letters to the Editor, 1/19/12), I'm tired of hearing attacks on Planned Parenthood and on abortion rights by people who want to impose their religious views on the rest of us about when life begins. After all, human sperm are alive - when they die without impregnating an egg, isn't that murder? All this is subject to debate. But what is clear to most of us is that Planned Parenthood does a great job in promoting women's health by providing contraception for those who need it and providing reproductive education and healthcare for women. As their name states, they help women to plan their pregnancies, with the goal that every child born is wanted. Unplanned pregnancies can lead to serious medical problems. According to an L.A. Times editorial of Jan. 22, 2012, studies have found that women are more likely to smoke and drink during unplanned pregnancies, raising risks to the fetus and that they tend to pay less attention to their children after birth. Do we really need more unwanted and neglected children growing up to be criminals and filling our jails? The Times article also states, "Close to half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned - a sad outcome for families, as are unwanted children. Making contraception available to every woman who wants it (a primary goal of Planned Parenthood) would help avoid these situations. Making abortions more difficult or illegal may lead women to seek unsafe, unregulated alternatives. In Argentina, Nicaragua and elsewhere, Human Rights Watch has documented the results when women feel they have no recourse to the formal medical system: self-induced abortions, with knitting needles and knives, resulting in infections, hemorrhaging and sometimes death." Our world is overpopulated right now at 7 billion, projected to grow to 9 billion by 2045. In the space of a couple hundred years, California has changed from a sparsely populated place with only a few hundred Spaniards and a few thousand Indians to what it is now. Imagine what it will be like in another couple hundred years without changes in our growth rate, to where we may not be able to support our population to survive at all. We should be grateful that Planned Parenthood allows women to make the wise decisions to have children they want to have and are able to take care of, rather than forcing women to be pregnant and have unwanted babies. In addition, it is helping to limit out-of-control population growth, so we are not yet at the point China got to, where they required that couples have no more than one child each, enforced through mandatory abortions. The author of "Protect the People" decided to have an index of who to blame for all our problems as a society in the United States: immigration, the federal government, Eric Holder, the Black Panthers, and then she ends with Planned Parenthood. With the latter the author implies that if it were to disapear, the whole problem of "murdering people" would disappear. The author misses the point in trying to blame others. If she were to study a little bit about the above topics, she probably would come up with different conclusions. Let's stop blaming others for our own ignorance. Let's look at what unites us and not what separates us from each other. Let's work together in making this world a better place to live in because we are in it a very short time. -- Guido Rivero, Downey

********** Published: January 26, 2012 - Volume 10 - Issue 41