To:          The Dallas Morning News
Date:      March 29, 1999
Subject: Refugees from Kosovo
Result:   not printed

Dear Editor,

Looking at the film coverage of the operation in Yugoslavia, one of the most striking images I have seen so far is all the refugees heading into Albania, with reports that many children have already been killed by the genocidal Serbs. And then there are the children fleeing with or without their parents across the border into Albania.

What I regret is that the parents who had all those suffering, uprooted children did not take into account the kind of uncertain, unstable and dangerous world they would be bringing them into before they had the children. I don't think the problems they are experiencing now are anything new or particularly surprising, as far as that goes. I guess they don't have much going in the way of birth-control options over there, or at least certainly there is nobody pushing and encouraging it.

To me, wherever there is poverty and misery and suffering and great instability in the world, there should be somebody there actively promoting the wisdom of birth control and enabling it. There could be no more efficient and economical way for the world to spend its money and resources trying to fix the problems and ease the suffering in the world than promoting birth control, down to the level of every little village in any place where there is the strong probability that the children born there will never have happy, productive, and fulfilling lives. With all the missionaries and monitors and whoever that we already have in many of those places, it seems this would not be so difficult to accomplish.

Of course one strong opponent of and obstacle to birth control in the world is the Catholic church. It's a shame, because that is immoral and it is not respectful of God and life.

Thank you, John Vehon