Letters: No to raising retirement age

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I would just like to say that I disagree with "old Jim Adams" about raising the retirement age, least of all to raise it to 70.

He may be 84 and still working so how he thinks about taking the pension as well as wages, has to be coloured by the size of his bank balance.

With all the talk about raising the age coming from the Beehive, you have to remember that all those involved don't really care about the average run of the mill Joe Bloe because they all get a pension and other perks for the rest of their lives anyway and what would a few extra dollars mean to them. Not much!

That's why they don't care if it went up (the age).

It's not really the baby boomers that are at fault for being born and blamed for any shortfall in funds.

That goes down against a government that has looked after the rich, causing the poor and down trodden to become more numerous.

ROD PETTERSON
Rotorua

In response to Rosemary McLeod's column "My body, thank you, not yours" (Rotorua Daily Post February 23) defending the right of pregnant women to abort their developing babies, it needs to be emphasised that the fetus is not part of the mother's body right from the point of conception.

The mother's body recognises this by producing "Killer T-cells" to destroy the developing zygote (fertilised ovum). The "Killer T-cell" mechanism is what is employed by the body in tissue transplant operations resulting in the rejection of foreign tissues unless combated in some way.

This is exactly what the embryo does. On day six it starts producing a compound (abbreviated to IDO) which counters the mothers "Killer T-cells" so that when the embryo attaches to the mother's placenta on day seven it can safely do so, and start drawing nutrients from its mother bloodstream. How's that for ingenuity!?

This shows clearly that the developing baby is an individual separation from the mother's body and, in my view, the mother does not have the right to destroy it.

DAVID PREEST
Rotorua