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To the Editor:

Re No Right Way to Mourn, by Sian Beilock, the president of Barnard College (Op-Ed, Feb. 3), about criticism on social media of the different ways that people grieve:

I lost a classmate when Tess Majors, a Barnard freshman, was killed, and a hometown legend when the basketball star Kobe Bryant died.

Im a first-year Barnard student, and Im from Los Angeles; I didnt know how to deal with either loss because of the proximity I felt to them. Ms. Beilocks article, as well as her actions on campus since Tess died, have comforted me as I found myself feeling self-conscious about my public grieving process.

I didnt post about Tess, and I didnt post about Kobe. Was I a bad classmate? A bad Angeleno? No. Ms. Beilocks article helped me acknowledge that there was no way I could have grieved incorrectly.

Any way I grieve and mourn is the right way for me, and anything I do or not do doesnt make me less of a Barnard woman or a Los Angeles resident.

Naomi RubinNew York

To the Editor:

As Sian Beilock points out so eloquently, the downside of social media is possible exposure to vilification by a world of strangers. Everyone just judges you.

When youre grieving, however, youre at your most fragile. Be prepared.

Florence IsaacsNew YorkThe writer is the author of Do I Have to Wear Black to a Funeral? and My Deepest Sympathies.

To the Editor:

Re Court to Decide Whether Employers Must Offer Birth Control (news article, Jan. 18):

When the Supreme Court debates the right of employers to refuse coverage of birth control for their employees, one fact cannot be overlooked: Each form of birth control holds powerful health benefits separate and distinct from preventing pregnancy.

Some are approved for these noncontraceptive indications by the Food and Drug Administration: The hormonal intrauterine device is first-line therapy for heavy menstrual bleeding, and many brands of birth control pills are approved for the treatment of acne and/or premenstrual mood disorders.

The three most common contraception methods (the pill, the hormonal IUD and the copper IUD) have powerful protective effects against uterine cancer, the most common gynecologic cancer. Long-term use of the pill halves the lifetime risk of ovarian cancer, the most lethal of gynecologic cancers.

I often start young women on the pill or a hormonal IUD to improve heavy, painful or irregular periods that otherwise would keep them home from school or work.

The health and financial burdens to women and society of unplanned pregnancy are one reason to ensure access to birth control. The health benefits that birth control provides independent from contraception are a critical second.

Laura MacIsaacNew YorkThe writer, an obstetrician-gynecologist, is associate director of the Fellowship in Complex Family Planning at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Health System.

To the Editor:

Re Why Politicians Get a License to Lie, by Charlie Warzel (Opinion, Jan. 8):

There is only one fundamental license to lie: when theres a credulous public. You cannot be insulted (lied to) without your permission. We have glommed super-high-tech glitz and slickness onto a 24/7 media blitz of entertainment and salesmanship that relies almost exclusively on the mass of its readers suspending disbelief. This is the essence of 21st-century culture and thus of its politics.

I have never seen one thing on Facebook. I have never seen Twitter or any social media vehicle other than texting. The majority of all those who have ever lived have never done so.

I read The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and The Economist, among other traditional print news organizations. And from those I get two things: serious, long-trusted sources of legitimate news and a verification or not of that news (they all, too, make mistakes sometimes).

We the people grant the license to lie by submitting ourselves to the simple-minded pleasure of the commercial/entertainment con.

Would someone then retort that well, thats just the world we live in? Im sure. And my response would be that we used to live in a world where almost no one was educated or could read, then one where a good number were educated; and we used to live in an accepted, entrenched system of legalized slavery.

An old Chinese saying is: the beginning of wisdom is to call things by the right names. I submit that we should always start at the beginning.

Lyndon DoddsSan Antonio

Link:
Kobe, Tess and the Many Ways We Grieve - The New York Times