WOMEN: Nation turns its backs on us

What is happening to our country? 

Banning books, arresting librarians if they don’t move a book within an allotted time, teachers if they use the wrong pronoun, doctors/nurses if they assist in abortion in which woman’s life is in danger, yet, a judge can decide that her life really wasn’t in danger so you can arrest the doctor/nurse?

If you help someone go to another state to get an abortion, you can be arrested. People getting paid to report someone who has gotten an abortion. Women and their medical care are now at the mercy of politicians and judges who have no medical training. 

Some states are going back to laws passed in the 1860s. Not allowing an abortion for rape or incest victims which in essence gives carte blanche to men to rape and have women carry their child. 

Has no one thought of a 10-year-old being pregnant who has been raped by her father? Her body isn’t even ready to carry a child. Her bones are still growing! 

Line up 10 girls and at least one is being sexually abused by a family member. Incest is one of the best kept family secrets. No one reports it or someone in the family knows about it, but does nothing. 

The death rate of women from pregnancy is increasing. In 2019, the maternal mortality rate was 20 per 100,000 and in 2021 it was 40 per 100,000, so in two years, the rate doubled. 

Some states want to revoke child labor laws. As a woman, I am now a second-class human being. Am I doomed to have other laws that restrict me from owning property or being property? Be afraid, be very afraid.

JUANA PERLEY

Coeur d’Alene