To the Editor:
Last week, as anticipated, SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade, deciding on a 6-3 vote that women’s reproductive rights are not HERS but belong to States’ law enforcement.
In states like TX, it’s also the business of vigilantes who may wish to identify for prosecution their daughters, wives, sisters, friends, enemies, or complete strangers. Because control of a zygot or fetus is far more important than the freedom of the woman even if she had been forced into conception. Will doctors be required to report pregnancies to the State for monitoring? Is a woman’s reproductive health record subject to evidentiary scrutiny? Is there no longer a “doctor-patient privilege” for women?
Senators Joe Manchin (D-WVA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) were shocked and “deeply disappointed” in the votes by Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch who had assured them that Roe v. Wade was an “important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times,” and that “any good judge would treat it as precedent.” Naïve or gullible, neither senator did their job, so it was easy for Kavanaugh and Gorsuch to hoodwink them and lie. A significant problem on the highest Court in the land?
Young women today cannot know what it was like before Roe and how many women died in self-administered pregnancy termination out of sheer desperation. While Republicans demand “choice,” and “freedom” from government interference in their lives, they routinely define and deny “freedom” for others, and now justify government intrusion into women’s most private issues. Politicians do not do this out of respect for “life” (or they would show similar concern post-birth), and certainly not for women’s lives. It is not the last intrusion into private life this Court will make. When anti-choice Republicans insist that they are the Party of Freedom, they mean THEIR freedoms informed by thirst for political power or personal religious validation. This is not “democracy.”
Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore

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To the Editor:
So, Roe v Wade is history. We’ve known this for over a month. Yet the anger remains so intense. Why? Why are so many corporations paying their employees to travel to a state where abortions are legal? Dick’s Sporting Goods is paying up to $4,000 to cover an abortion. I’m sure it’s less expensive to cover the abortion than to pay for maternity leave, health insurance coverage and for the corporation to have to deal with the affects children can cause.
I believe that individuals when choosing to have an abortion, are facing one of their life’s most difficult decisions. One that cannot be altered. That’s why there are pregnancy centers - centers that provide counter-information to the ending of a life together with support during the pregnancy and after. Is that such a bad thing? Do those who are destroying these centers know this?
In 2006 Biden said, “I do not view abortion as a choice. I think it’s always a tragedy.” Under Clinton White House always pro-choice Counsel Elena Kagan, now Superior Court Judge, urged Clinton to ban partial birth abortions. Clinton said that abortions should be “safe, legal but rare”.
Why can’t the media just tell the truth about the decision? Many states have laws on the books pertaining to abortion, California being one. They are not illegal in all states. Planned Parenthood shows six where it is not allowed. Here in CA AB2223, cosponsored by our local Assemblymember Steve Bennett, states, “SEC. 6. Section 123466 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:123466. The state shall not deny or interfere with a pregnant person’s right to choose or obtain an abortion prior to viability of the fetus, or when the abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.” Keep in mind AB2223 does not define “viability”. Some say fetal viability is when the fetus can survive outside of the womb. Is this with or without medical care? If so, viability is around 23 weeks of the approximate 38 weeks for a full-term fetus. And a fetus is not a child until it reaches its 8th week after birth.
AB2223 goes on to say, “SEC. 8. Section 123468 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read: 123468. The performance of an abortion is unauthorized if performed by someone other than the pregnant person and if either of the following is true: ...”. So, in CA can the “pregnant person” perform an abortion on herself regardless of where she may be in the gestation period? Just wondering as that too is not discussed.
Patti Walker,
Fillmore