Letters to the editor, March 24

Rejecting conscience test for birth control

I see where a growing number of doctors and pharmacists are refusing to either prescribe or fill a prescription for any type of birth control or contraception, because it violates their religious conscience.

This same type of religious defense was used as justification for white doctors not to aid in the delivery of African-American babies, or for basic medicines to be administered to Native Americans, right here in the state of Nevada not too long ago, based on nothing more than their arbitrary religious conscience.

If any woman in my family asks her doctor for a prescription for any type of birth control or contraception, or any pharmacist refuses to fill such a prescription, I will consider this as an act of religious bigotry against my family. I will fight them in the courts.

The non-affirmative defense of religious conscience fails intellectual scrutiny.

Where was the collective religious conscience of the Catholic hierarchy when they knowingly aided and abetted, pedophile priests who used their position of power to sexually violate young boys in the name of the Lord?

I would highly suggest and advise that these individuals and groups quit hiding behind the First Amendment as justification for their bigotry, racism and crimes against women and children.

It has gone on for far too long.

Karl Neathammer

Carson City

Nevada's ban on 'bath salts' was wise decision

Kudos to Nevada for banning bath salts. Synthetic drugs became illegal in Indiana on March 15. It included all analogs of MDPV, Mephedrone and Methylone.

These substances were banned by the Drug Enforcement Administration in October but manufacturers replaced those products with equally dangerous derivatives.

Warning, Nevada, a head shop owner in Indianapolis told a reporter they had shipped their supply to Nevada.

Please know the altered bath salts are just as lethal as the original ones.

Jan Lawrence

Indianapolis, Ind.