Letter: GOP makes women second-class citizens
The Republican Party has a history of making women second-class citizens. Its political platform has nearly an absolute prohibition against the termination of a pregnancy. Congressman Todd Akin stands in this tradition of junk science. His sophomoric statement – “If it is a ‘legitimate rape,’ the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down” – is outrageous! He implies that rapists’ sperm are treated differently by the body. Idiocy!
So often we have legislatures of old, angry, white men who are afraid of women. They are a calloused, insensitive group to be making laws about women’s bodies. Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has joined with Akin to slice and dice the word “rape” and introduces the term “forced rape” as the only legitimate form! President Obama has it correct, “Rape is rape.” Wouldn’t it be better to find ways to end rape than to find ways to redefine it?
The Republican Party is against any law that allows women to control their own health care and reproductive capacity. Mitt Romney would cut any federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides health and reproductive services to millions of Americans. It is a basic economic freedom: A woman cannot be a viable part of the economic world if she cannot choose if and when she will have a family. This freedom scares some white men – so much so that the U.S. Senate tried unsuccessfully to give employers the power to dictate whether female employees would have health coverage for contraceptive prescriptions! Such an arrangement would destroy the doctor-patient relationship.
It is imperative that every woman and every caring man vote for Obama and Joe Biden on Nov. 6 to protect a woman’s right to choose.
DAVID B. HART
Laconia




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