Sanders is a champion of the working class
Bernie Sanders, in contrast to the last five American presidents, is like a soothing summer breeze (“Citizen Sanders,” Aug.13-19, 2015). He has no cloaked agenda. With Sanders everything is up front for you to like or dislike. He says he stands and works for the average American and his record as a legislator for the past 30 years proves it; unlike the past five American presidents and Hilary Clinton, his political history isn’t polluted by 1-percent seepage. The average contribution to his campaign is $43. Americans haven’t had a political opportunity to elect a working class champion like this since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I only hope we have the good sense and energy to get behind Bernie and push him into the White House.
On Donald Trump and abortion
Two letters to the editor published in the Aug. 13, Valley Advocate raise serious concerns for the possibility of reasonable discussions about American women’s reproductive rights. Abortion is an emotional topic — we all get that. No one likes the idea of cutting off budding life. But self-righteous rhetoric appalls me. In “Editor loves murder of unborn children,” the letter writer is “sickened” by the statement that a mother’s life should come before that of the fetus. In “Donald Trump will bring sanity to D.C.,” the letter writer compares the martyrdom of Telemachus who died attempting to stop gladiatorial combat to Donald Trump’s speaking against abortion. Our rhetoric regarding the topic of abortion has fallen to the lowest common denominator. We feel entitled to yell epithets at those who support reproductive rights for women even if we have no idea what it is like to be a woman. I honestly believe that if men could get pregnant, we would not be having this conversation.
Pregnancy changes virtually everything for a woman — her body, her psyche, her life. Her pregnant body can be at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, a prolapsed uterus, urinary incontinence — and those are the easy ones. Some women develop toxemia, post-partum depression; some are single mothers terrified that they cannot support their children; some lose their jobs, or cannot afford childcare, or find that they, as mothers, are considered “less committed” to their jobs. I am a mother, and it is the best thing I ever did. But as a single parent — the only parent because their father died when my children were young — I know how hard parenting is. It is also joyous, exciting, and downright fun. But parenting must be a personal choice. The last thing we need is to thrust unwelcome parenting on the unprepared, especially given the inadequate support our country provides poor children. In the richest country in the world, a third of our children live in poverty. So I don’t want to hear about our responsibility to the unborn. How about the born?
Don’t take pregnancy for granted
I am now close to 60 years old, and was so lucky, at a late age and with lots of medical help from a prominent medical center in NYC, to have my own son. He is the light of my life.
Back when I was about 27-28 years old, I had two abortions. The reasons were good ones, I suppose. Back then once a woman became pregnant and decided she wanted an abortion, she had to wait several weeks to have the abortion so that the “it” could grow and the doctor could “get it all out.” Waiting for something to grow inside you to abort it is a true nightmare. And I had no idea at those times that I was aborting something that had a heart beat.
From 1984 until 2007, I was never able to get pregnant. I went to great lengths to be able to have a child, with the help of medical science, lots of loans, financial assistance, and inheritance. Most women would never be able to afford what I was able to do. When I was finally pregnant in 2007 and first saw the ultrasound, I was shocked to realize that I had aborted two fetuses that same age many years prior. That’s when I first realized about the heartbeat.
I wish someone, before my abortions, had reminded me that it might not be that easy to become pregnant again, when I was finally ready. Remember, young women, you might end up pining away to be a mother, many years later — long after your abortions. And you might have ongoing dreams about the little acorns you aborted.
