This is an open letter to anti-abortion legislators and evangelicals whose laws seize control of women’s reproductive decisions and impose restrictions on the practice of medicine. It is clear to the world that you have no knowledge of anatomy, physiology, fetal development, or reproductive biology, yet are practicing medicine and imposing untenable mandates on medical practitioners.
The anti-abortion laws end basic freedoms including a foundation of American life, the freedom of religious choice. The few of you imposing these laws who are licensed physicians should be shamed, shunned, and have your medical licenses removed. You should be held liable for injury to life, the mental health and financial burden on affected families.
Harm from these laws is immense with no thought to the broad implications of what a forced pregnancy does. Women are not wards of the state, nor vessels of your god. Women’s bodies are not your purview. America was founded on religious freedom. But this means you don’t have the right to impose your particular belief system on others.
Have you forgotten early female and male activists fought for a woman’s right to vote, and the strong women who spent their lives and risked imprisonment to help others obtain sex education and access to birth control? At that time, women were relegated to poverty and chronically pregnant with no hope of an education or quality life. Now, are you really trying to rescind our rights for autonomy? Are women not deemed equal to men?
A vote for a Democrat in the coming election is a vote for tolerance and freedom. Democrats defend human and women’s rights and condemn the current path of religious conformity pushed by Republican congressional leaders in Montana and nationally. Women of America must vote for rights and freedom.
Betty Kuffel
Whitefish