Editor’s note: This story originally ran in The Smoky Mountain News in November 2018 following Politics Editor Cory Vaillancourt’s trip to Georgia to meet President Jimmy Carter.  The former president died Dec. 29, 2024.

There, in Sumter County, Georgia, not far from the Alabama line lies the tiny town of Plains (pop. 784), a most unremarkable place home to a most remarkable man. 

To the Editor:  

I am still trying to figure out Dave Webster’s motive for telling your readers about his personal journey and I would like to know what his comments have to do with the First Amendment.

To the Editor:

Donald Trump persists in declaring himself “an innocent man.” Yet, juries of his peers believe otherwise. In the E. Jean Carroll case. The New York civil fraud trial. And, the Stormy Daniels hush money trial.

To the Editor:

I’ve never written a letter to an editor but I cannot sit silent after reading Mr. Hoffman’s opinion that “fertilized eggs are not living beings.” Obviously he has never carried a child in his body and heard the heart beat nor felt the movement of the child.

It is time to have a fact-based discussion about the biology and history of our knowledge about human reproduction. Much of the current discussion does not reflect the reality of human reproduction. Declaring a fertilized egg to be a person is ridiculous from biological, historical and religious perspectives.