Abortion laws and overturning Roe vs. Wade
Re: “If Roe vs. Wade is overturned,” July 24 Ed Quillen column.
Ed Quillen is correct. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, statehouses across this country would become focused on outlawing abortion. Note the number of anti-abortion bills introduced in our own statehouse when Republican anti-abortion zealots controlled the legislature.
This year, Rep. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, tried to redefine pregnancy from a medical definition (implantation) to a religious one (conception). This would have been used to outlaw all abortion and hormonal birth control, including the birth control pill and morning-after pill, on grounds they cause an abortion.
Equally as frightening will be a new Supreme Court justice’s vote on the so-called partial birth abortion ban to be heard later this year. Judge John G. Roberts Jr.’s anti-abortion views may be in check enough not to vote outright to overturn Roe, but his vote – opposite of Sandra Day O’Connor’s, endorsing vague language deliberately designed by rabid anti-abortion legislators to include first-trimester abortions – would force doctors to stop performing abortions under threat of prosecution.
By this time next year, with Roe still the law of the land, first-, second- and third-trimester abortions, including for the health and maybe even life of the woman, could be illegal.
Peggy Loonan, Fort Collins
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Ed Quillen twists himself into a human pretzel trying to justify abortion. But if one were to accept Quillen’s logic – that abortion is an extension of an implied constitutional “right of privacy” whose moral responsibility rests with the individual – what then would prevent applying those same criteria to murder?
My mother used to joke that “It’s too bad abortion isn’t legal until a child is 21.” Perhaps in Ed Quillen’s world, that wouldn’t be considered a joke – so why stop at 21? If someone presents a problem or even a mild headache, invite him or her over for dinner or a hand of gin rummy – and then in the privacy of your own home, off ’em! Oh, and don’t worry about that little issue of “mutually consenting adults” – just repeat over and over, “I don’t consider you an adult; to me, you’re not even human and your continued presence on this Earth is bad for my mental health.”
This mantra has provided all the rationale necessary for pro-choicers to embrace abortion, for even if there is no explicit right to murder in the Bill of Rights, there could be provisions for murder and it should, therefore, seem logical that since government claimed power over abortion in Roe vs. Wade, it could just as reasonably up the age limit to include adults.
Dennis Goldman, Aurora
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Weaning the U.S. off foreign oil
Re: “Energy bill powers up,” July 27 news story.
Development of Colorado oil shale does exactly the opposite of weaning the U.S. from from dependence on foreign oil. Nothing but developing our own sustainable energy sources will do that. We have the opportunity and the technology to develop renewable energy, but measures like the comprehensive energy plan passed by Congress demonstrate that what we can’t wean ourselves from are special interest groups, short-sighted pork-barrel policy, and shortcuts endangering the environment and the single most crucial resource on the planet: drinking water.
Piper Stevens, Denver
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When Granny turns out to be a terrorist
Re: “Why is security worried about ‘Grandma’?” July 27 Open Forum.
At face value, and emotionally, it sure seems like a waste of time and resources to screen Granny at the airport. But in all actuality, Granny is precisely the person the Transportation Security Administration must be wary of.
The TSA is constrained by regulations that do not allow for the profiling of possible terrorists. This fact alone means random searches are required, lest the TSA be sued by some disgruntled passenger who feels discriminated against.
What most people do not consider is that the best terrorist is the one who blends in perfectly with the surrounding population. One should consider that Granny may very well be an unwilling participant. Terrorists are known to use threats against family members and to kidnap family members to force unwilling persons to either do their dirty work or assist them with it.
The general public might well scream for heads to roll at the TSA the first time a grandmother (or perhaps a young mother) blows up a commercial airliner because that person was “obviously no threat.”
Dan Kearney, Black Hawk
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