BILL: Insulting and violating

I was shocked when I read the front page of the Coeur d’Alene Press, March 16, to learn the Idaho Senate passed a bill requiring women to have an ultrasound before having an abortion. I am appalled at certain groups of people in this country who sit in judgment of women and think it is their moral duty to attempt to persuade, convince, coerce and force a woman to carry a baby full term. This law is an insult to women and their doctors everywhere who seem to think they don’t have the intelligence to make an informed decision without this violation forced on them.

This same group of people are the very ones who would like to overturn Roe vs. Wade. They also teach contraception is a sin, and would like to ban that as well or make it unaffordable. This same group of people are the very ones who say that government is the problem and we need to reduce or eliminate it. Yet they are the very ones who think it is their duty to use the federal or state government to enter into our bedrooms, doctors offices and our bodies to enforce this practice. This is absolutely not part of their business.

I know of one girl who when growing up was subjected to daily abuse and neglect. By the time she was 10 years old she wanted to run away from home. She had her bag packed and hidden under her bed so she was ready to go. She lived in fear, but she also feared leaving. So she stayed until she was 16. By then she was anorexic and suffering from depression.

This girl wished she had never been born. She was silenced whenever she attempted to express what she felt. She was supposed to be grateful her parents gave her life. However she clearly knew that she was born to parents who did not want her nor could financially or psychologically support her or her siblings. This girl was one of the fortunate ones. She was rescued by her childhood sweetheart and believed her nightmare was over when she left home, but it wasn’t a happy storybook ending as she fought years of depression and suicidal tendencies in the years to follow and unknowingly passed her legacy on to her children. This girl is still alive, but others aren’t so fortunate.

This story is all too common, and when adoption is unaffordable, foster care inadequate, homelessness, drugs and alcohol abuse is out of control, high unemployment, inadequate jails and prisons, crime at an all-time high, and our legislators want to mandate a procedure that might discourage a pregnancy.

If this Republican Congress and Legislature really wanted to reduce spending and lower taxes they would stop using the government to assault women’s health issues and focus their energy on the real problems we already have.

BEV NOBLE

Dalton Gardens