OPINION

Letters to the editor

Reader gets an answer that wasn't expected

My wife and I attended a Town Hall meeting in Rogers held by Rep. Steve Womack. My wife asked Mr. Womack his thoughts about the association of heavy weapons and crime. His answer was astounding. He said that the problem was not the weapons but was due to two things. One was that we the people had turned away from God. The second was that over half the kids were being raised in single family homes. How many members of our society have been raised in single family homes and have made wonderful contributions to our society? I would let you reach your own conclusions in regard to how appropriate his answer was.

Thermon Crocker

Fayetteville

Women's health should not be a political issue

I am pro-life. I am also pro-choice.

In my reality, pro-life includes babies, children, teens and adults, elders and those who are limited in their ability to keep themselves safe. I will vote, always, for those who recognize the reality that many Americans need health benefits to allow them to maximize the quality of their lives.

Here's what disturbs me most about women's health being a political issue.

  1. If legal abortion is abolished, women will continue to have abortions. Well-off women will pay for private, secretive, safe abortions with OBGyns in their sanitary clinics; they will live to manage their lives as before Roe v. Wade. Poor women will have unsafe abortions with hidden "practitioners" in what we used to call "back-alleys," or they will try to manage it themselves with whatever tools they think will work; many will die from the consequences of either attempted solution. I am old enough to remember when that was the tragic norm.

  2. The current administration is working to abolish the Affordable Care Act (and no, they don't have a replacement, or they'd have revealed it some time in the past 3-plus years). Poor women on Medicaid and many of the "working poor" will have no affordable access to birth control without the ACA. At least some of them will not have spouses or significant others who will take responsibility for contraceptive use, and there will be unwanted pregnancies.

  3. Without the ACA and Medicaid, babies will be born to women who have little or no means to give their children a safe and decent growing-up environment. If you care, check out https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3171291/ to see how that works and how it affects the future.

  4. If judges who promote husband-dominated marriages have majority, see No. 2 and No. 3 above.

A self-serving, power-hungry government knows this and uses it to their advantage, A responsible, aware, mature government will correct it.

Sue Garland

Fayetteville

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