ABORTION: The hanger's shadow

I recently read an article in Time magazine about abortion laws. Before Roe v. Wade, Chicago’s Cook County Hospital had 5,000 patients annually in the abortion ward, women bleeding, infected and sometimes dying after shoddy or self-induced abortions. Obviously making abortion illegal never meant it didn’t happen.

Now primarily all male legislatures (Alabama, Georgia) want to take women back to the 19th century. E. Vasquez lambasts The Press for a cartoon depicting Alabama and a hanger, but that clothes hanger was a tool used by desperate women. And, newly born viable babies are not being killed as Vasquez believes. That was an outrageous lie told by Trump. But, it is just one of his more than 10,000 lies since the election.

A male can impregnate a female against her will and walk away, never to take responsibility for the child he spawned. Perhaps if he could be required to support his child through college, male abuse of women would change. I believe that until the day men can become pregnant, abortion rights should be decided only by women.

Before Vasquez decides to attack me, I am a great-grandmother, with three productive college-educated children, no abortions, no miscarriages, no one on welfare. And, yes, I believe in climate change.

JANET CALLEN

Coeur d’Alene