Dear Editor,

Throughout the centuries there’s never been any amount of cruelties done to women and girls without some kind of justification in some way or another. It’s so sad but true. So then is it any wonder that millions of females of all ages have taken to the streets, once again, yelling and screaming for their rights. Roe vs Wade was their safety net to protect their physical, mental and environmental well-being from unplanned pregnancy. It’s ridiculous and outrageous to think were still stuck in this age-old question; what rights does a woman have with her own body? It’s the 21st century!

Why are we doing these things to ourselves? It’s extremely degrading in this day and age and how far women have come to expect them to just lie down and roll over and pretend they’re second-class citizens, incapable of making their own decisions of when and when not to have a child. It’s unimaginable to think that your state could own your body for nine months when pregnant. The thought is terrifying if something were to go wrong. You could be dead before the state decided what to do with your pregnancy. It would make someone think twice about even having children.

Females are being forced down a dark and scary rabbit hole at the hands of our zealous politicians and government officials. They’re even trying to push their own radial thinking on us with nonsensical words like fetushood. Hood is a word used for a group of people that come together for a reason or cause. This doesn’t happen inside a womb. However, you may see it, they mislead and confuse the facts with scare tactics about today’s professional medical abortions. What really should scare us is abortions being done by nonprofessionals that often can end with tragic results.

My own God-fearing church-going grandmother during the Great Depression nearly lost her life during a home abortion. This can happen to the best of people with the right  intentions usually for their own well-being and the well-being of loved ones. And this should always be what is foremost important. Our forebearers who courageously fought for women’s rights must be turning over in their graves with what is happening today with centurion laws spreading from one state to the next. Including our own beloved State of Arizona with its revival of an 1800 Civil War-era ban.

When we were still running to the outhouse, the light bulb hadn’t been invented and diabetics were being institutionalized for mental illness. Is this the era we really want to return to with our mothers and daughters when they had no rights? I for one DO NOT. We need to get these 19th century laws off the books lest they turn on us in more ways than one that we’ll all regret. As it is Trump said during his presidency, women and doctors should be punished and so here we are today. Trump declared it a victory, overturning women’s right to choose. And to add salt to the wound he called it freedom for women to have their states determine their reproductive rights.

Freedom? This is not freedom. But then he’s all about smoke and mirrors thinking that if he just says it no matter how ludicrous it is, we’ll believe it. There’s nothing democratic about what Trump brags and boasts about regarding a women’s bodily autonomy. He is utterly clueless with all of the above, and more. No politician should ever have the last word or dictate to us or our doctors what’s best for us. The majority of Americans believe God gave us stewardship over our own bodies. That includes women. Its not their lot in life to accept anything less.

As we see more rural hospitals closing and ob-gyns leaving states with abortion bans they’ll be less safe places to deliver babies with consequences that otherwise would have been preventable. I shudder to think that a simple procedure as a DNC will no longer be available in our own state to protect females from an unwanted pregnancy or to save a woman’s life when her pregnancy goes wrong. Which is just what we’re seeing today in other states with abortion bans. Women and girls are being put on the chopping block with the cavalier attitude of, ‘oh well, what will be will be.’

This irrational thinking that if a woman or girl is raped, coerced or in any other unplanned way is impregnated, it’s the will of God. It is not for anyone else to say whether it is or not other than the one who was raped, coerced or etc. Period. There are those in our government that are playing God with our lives in more ways than one. Trump and his religious radicals have hitched their wagons together with a plan for them to get what they both want; a forced religious ideology on our nation and Trump in the White House forever.

So all the more I’ll be going to the ballot box in November to vote out those who do not support women’s rights and vote for those with a track record who do. And not those who flip-flop and backpedal just to get your vote. We should earnestly be asking ourselves the question, do we really want to see more women and girls with children in welfare lines and the like asking for help? I hope we all know the answer to that. We should all want a brighter future for our women and girls and a forced pregnancy should never be a part of that future.

J.M.