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Letter: Abortion issue still compels: Keep it legal
Op-Ed · April 13, 2017
Is there anyone out there who is FOR abortion?
One can see abortion as a grave evil or hardship without giving the government power to criminalize or regulate this most private of circumstances.
Our Republican Representative Bobby Kaufmann abandoned his credibility on the value of limited government by voting against women for one of the more draconian “abortion bills” in the country.
Why did he abandon the long-held Republican belief in limited government to allow the State to intrude on this most private state of womanly existence?
Representative Kaufmann voted to let local communities set the minimum wage but cannot seem to keep the government out of a woman’s uterus. What is going on here?
You can generally look at his votes as supportive of the capital side of the equation, at the expense of workers, but this vote seems to reflect the overvaluation of the male sperm and the undervaluation of a woman’s intellect and moral sense. It would be helpful if he could articulate either the principle or the constituency which commanded his vote on abortion.
Until then, the aura of arrogance and ignorance of these proposals remains paramount. Can you even conceive of a female dominated legislature spending one second of time on the problem of sperm production inhibition because of erectile dysfunction?
So, the chant of “Keep Your Laws Off My Uterus” cannot yet be retired, since a whole new generation of Republicans vote not by principle but by, dare, I say it, anatomy?
And if you think all politicians are the same, not one Democrat voted with Rep. Kaufmann on this issue.
Before Roe v. Wade there were 700,000 protesters on the streets to decriminalize abortion. I was one of them, for years. At 75 this issue is still compelling not because of the memory of my maternal grandmother dead at 29 from an illegal abortion, although that still hurts, but because I trust and respect women to make informed choices. That they may not be my choice is less important than they are free from governmental compulsion.
Contact Rep. Kaufmann on this issue. Do it in remembrance of my grandmother and the other 10,000 women who died annually from illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade, or your daughter or for yourself.
Clara Oleson
West Branch
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