By Claire L. Kelly, Stevensville
Open letter to Rep. Gianforte:
First, your positions do NOT support every woman’s right to “REDUCE cases of UNPLANNED pregnancies.” You dismiss pregnancy caused by rape, statutory or not, incestual or not. Mandatory emasculation as punishment for rapists would be just.
Your letter demonstrates your ignorance of medical situations that cause a woman and her family to resort to abortion. A member of my family had to abort an embryo that was anencephalic. Look it up. This was the wanted potential child of a happily married couple with other children. My grandson was brain dead ab initio. His physical body was being temporarily maintained by his mother’s body. His heart could have stopped inside her body at any moment, leaving her with a decaying organism inside her. This was a traumatic tragedy and disappointment for the entire family.
As a law maker, you have no right to be ignorant and/or dismissive of the medical conditions women face. The absolute minimum you should do on the issues surrounding abortion is inform yourself.
Second, how dare you lecture me on our founding documents. They intended to give us freedom to practice a particular religion AND, MORE IMPORTANTLY, freedom FROM the imposition of the religious beliefs of others. If you knew anything about what caused many of the first immigrants to come to North America, it was to escape mandates by larger religious groups. Declaring an embryo small enough to fit on the head of a pin to be a complete person is a RELIGIOUS BELIEF. Even the largest proponent of this idea, the Catholic Church, in my life time, bestowed personhood at “quickening”, NOT conception. Again, inform yourself.
Third, Planned Parenthood is an unfortunate misnomer. This organization does not use tax dollars to perform abortions. They do use tax dollars for services like exams to detect life threatening medical problems such as cervical and uterine cancers, especially to low income women and girls. As a man with excellent taxpayer-funded medical care, I would not have expected you to know this. As a Member of Congress making public policy of these issues, you are expected to be informed.
Fourth, Montana’s only voice in the House should put the needs of the Country and our State above loyalty to a political party or to a president who once again brazenly displayed his racist and sexist beliefs and disdain for the rule of law.