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Readers write: The abortion debate, magazine layout

Letters to the editor for the May 23, 2016 weekly magazine.

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Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Colored tabs outside an exam room at one of the Planned Parenthood clinics tell staff who the patient sees next, in Austin, Texas.
  • By Grace Weber Monitor reader
  • Gerry Bates Monitor reader

Language for abortion debate

In the April 4 cover story, “Inside Texas’ abortion wars,” the Monitor describes one side positively, by what it’s for, and the other side negatively, by what it’s not for. Calling one group “abortion rights” while calling the other group “antiabortion” legitimizes the first and discredits the second. Both sides in this debate should be referenced by the positive descriptor of their own choosing: hence, abortion rights and pro-life, without quotation marks.

Perhaps the Monitor was striving to be evenhanded, but a pro-choice slant was evident, especially in the widely differing tone of the two related articles. The reporting on judicial bypass featured no interviews or critiques from opponents of that practice, while the report on crisis pregnancy centers gave significant space to sharp criticism from activists on the opposing side. Let’s have evenhanded treatment.

Grace Weber

Weybridge, Vt.

Editor’s note: Like many news organizations, the Monitor uses impartial terms such as antiabortion and abortion-rights to describe advocates on opposite sides of the issue. Terms like pro-life and pro-choice are too general, and some people object to their use. 

Readability in the magazine

I am writing with regard to the Points of Progress feature. I very much appreciate these reminders of worldly progress. However, my habit (as it probably is with most readers) is to begin reading from left to right. In so doing, the column on the left page is the first taken in, but it directs you two pages away to its conclusion, thereby passing up the text on the map. To me, it would flow better if the column were on the right-hand page, making the natural transition to turn the page after having read the two-page feature.

I have much gratitude for all the Monitor provides our world. I have especially looked forward to the dovetailing of one article to the next throughout the issue.

Gerry Bates

Chickaloon, Alaska

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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