Roe must die
At 75, I can remember life before Roe v. Wade, a decision that came out of the 1970s, a decade when we women became talkative about how we were treated and seen on many issues: wages, access to jobs on high level, or we could work and be parents. Roe got caught up in the fight.
After all these years, it seems that Roe was an unnecessary problem. All we really needed was access to contraception. As I remember, we already had access to abortion to save the mother’s life. That’s all we need.
A woman’s right to choose and control her own body means, first of all, the ability to choose when and under what circumstances she wants to become pregnant. The right to be free from all forms of violence, including rape and incest, is already available to everyone. Equal pay, job opportunities and childcare should already be rights for all. In this way we have personal autonomy.
Let’s stop complaining about Roe’s fate and recognize that it was an unnecessary simplification of our rights. Let it die.
– Maria Bognich, Overland Park
going backwards
Does 51% of the population know that they just lost a civil right? I am 80 years old and grandmother. Yesterday I dug up my 1970s ERA bracelet and wrote to my US Representative, Sharice Davids, to offer to help with her campaign.
I fear for my granddaughters because Title IX could be next, or same-sex marriage for my friends, or one of our rights to cross state lines to seek reproductive health care.
The answer is in the ballot box, dear sisters. Get involved in a campaign to restore what was lost. And, for God’s sake, to vote to reclaim your rights.
– Carolyn Wilson, Overland Park
Oh we care
Not long ago, Senator Roger Marshall said in The Star of January 6, 2021 that “no one at home is talking about this event” (June 10, 1A, “January 6 hearings are already being downplayed in Kan., Mo.”) I am a lifelong Kansan and I have watched every minute of these hearings, I am deeply concerned about what has happened and I am well aware of Marshall’s absolute complicity in this coup attempt.
Even after the extreme violence of that day, he sided with ‘Team Coup’. Not only have I watched and spoken to my neighbors and friends, but so have my two teenage daughters – both of whom will be old enough to vote soon.
We watch, we care and we see what happens.
– Amy Felker, olathe
No big news?
You might think that the stunning and breathtaking affidavit of Cassidy Hutchinson, former top aide to Donald’s Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, with her first-hand knowledge of the former president’s deliberate, unprecedented attempts to make our legitimate elections undo on January. 6, 2021, would be screaming, big font, front page news.
Despite such bombshells as Trump’s statement about armed insurgents (“I don’t care if they have guns. They’re not here to hurt me.”), attempts to requisition his limousine to go to the Capitol and his postponement of recalling the failed coup participants from their violent, deadly actions despite pleas from his own family, GOP members of Congress and staffers, The Star sadly regarded this information as back page news and downgraded it to 11A Wednesday. (“Former aide: Trump was told protesters had guns on Jan. 6”)
Not a big deal, just another normal day.
– Jane Watters, Kansas City
Exclusive ‘public’
Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in his defense of recent Supreme Court decisions, “They reflect the text of the Constitution as its provisions were originally understood by the ratifying public.” (June 29, 13A, “U.S. Constitution Is Conservative, Like It Or Not”)
In the late 18th century, the “ratifying public” consisted almost exclusively of white, property-owning males. Nothing more needs to be said.
– Tom Witwer, Overland Park
His own life
Well, since Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wants to reconsider the same-sex marriage decision, he — a black man married to a white woman — may agree to Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage.
This game can come down from the sky in a number of different ways, Clarence.
– Donald Pickard, Kansas City