Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Re “Shirtless Bodies in Pointless War” (editorial, Aug. 22):

I attended the High School of Performing Arts from 1956 to 1960 when it was in the Times Square area. I remember the seediness, the pornographic sex shops, the X-rated movie houses and the pimps standing in doorways. I applaud city officials for making the area safer and more tourist-friendly.

Recently I attended a Broadway show in the Times Square area and was taken aback by the throngs milling around on the pedestrian plaza taking endless selfies with half-naked women. While I am not a prude and don’t begrudge New York its tourist trade, it became an effort to get where I was going.

It seems the sexual incivility of the past has been replaced by a different sexual distraction, albeit less offensive. Some might argue that sex is a part of the Times Square mystique and that the women are legally within their rights (which they are), but isn’t it possible for Times Square to still be the “crossroads of the world” without such distractions?

BETTIJANE GARSON

White Plains

To the Editor:

Thanks to the Times editorial board and Michael Kimmelman’s Critic’s Notebook (“A Case for Nurturing Plazas in Times Square,” Aug. 22) for hard-hitting critiques of the frothing over bare breasts in Times Square. I’ve been enjoying the free-for-all atmosphere of Times Square since college days, more than 50 years ago. It’s one of the demonstrations of the city’s ability to handle diversity of all sorts. Freedom of speech surely includes freedom of dress.

PETER D’ERRICO

Leverett, Mass.

Note from KBJ: Interesting that the woman (Bettijane) doesn't like the display of breasts, but that the man (Peter) does.

A lot of people wonder if taking EPO is risky to health. I'd like to reply to that concern with the following list:

Elbow

Shoulder

Collarbone (twice)

Back

Hip

Fingers (multiple)

Ribs

Wrist

Nose

Those are the bones I've broken during my racing career. This is not an unusual list in our profession. It's funny: in the States, everybody connects bike racing with health. But when you get to the top level, you see the truth: bike racing is not a healthy sport in any sense of the word. (As my former teammate Jonathan Vaughters likes to say, If you want to feel what it's like to be a bike racer, strip down to your underwear, drive your car 40 mph, and leap out the window into a pile of jagged metal.) So when it comes to the risks of EPO, they tend to feel pretty small.

(Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France [New York: Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks, 2013], 57)

Note from KBJ: The list is familiar. During my 34 years of cycling, I have broken an elbow, a collarbone (twice), my back, and ribs.

Any major dude will tell you.

The Original Soundtrack (1975). After 40 years, I finally own this wonderful album (on compact disc)!

Sorry, Jeb. America wants nothing more to do with the Bush family.

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To the Editor:

Your article and editorial (“Abortion and Down Syndrome,” Aug. 25), about proposed legislation in Ohio to prohibit abortions because of a Down syndrome diagnosis, pointed to the lack of prosecutions in North Dakota, the only state with such a law, but did not mention the true purpose and potential impact of the law.

North Dakota enacted its Human Rights Act to protect people with disabilities in 1983. The federal government followed in 1990 with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Nevertheless, protection from discrimination did not extend to the womb.

Until the passage of North Dakota’s prenatal nondiscrimination act in 2013, the message sent to people with disabilities was: Your disability does not make you any less of a person, but it would have been O.K. to kill you in the womb solely because of your disability.

We then inexplicably expected our state’s agencies, businesses and residents to embrace and take seriously policies against disability discrimination. We should not be surprised that wrongful discrimination against people with disabilities continues when society says that such people are so much a burden that it would have been acceptable to kill them, if only their disability had been spotted early enough.

Bans on abortion for reasons of sex selection and genetic abnormalities may not lead to prosecutions. We may never know if they stop any abortions. They do, however, give greater consistency to our laws, and legitimacy to our claims to become a more inclusive society.

CHRISTOPHER DODSON

Executive Director and General Counsel

North Dakota Catholic Conference

Bismarck, N.D.

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