From: Nathan Sapp
Columbus
After a leaked draft indicated Roe v. Wade would be overturned, we knew states would have the privilege to leave 50 years of legal precedent alone or to do something else. We’re seeing the something else.
Our Attorney General, Todd Rokita, has personally attacked a medical provider who, practicing under American Medical Association guidelines, quite possibly saved the life and future of a 10-year-old rape victim. In fact, Rokita is using falsified complaints to smear what appears to be an impeccable medical and legal record. Shame on him!
Our legislators are unable to reach a consensus on how much they want to restrict access to healthcare. While Indiana already has a fairly restrictive process in place to access abortion, it apparently isn’t enough. Local legislators are deciding if anyone will have access to this globally recognized right. In tandem, the legislation is also determining what kind of criminal doctors will be (a felon) and what culpability patients will have. Does our legislature understand medicine better than those who trained their life to practice?
While professionals who help the public are being turned into criminals, representatives refuse to codify access to birth control. Education and abstinence can prevent pregnancies but do not stop rape. For parents of any 10-year-old, needing birth control so early in life would be rarely realized.
Access to unrestricted healthcare is the only “safeguard” when all else fails. However, influential lobbyists are actively telling our legislators that this real child will be required to carry a rape-induced pregnancy to term in their ideal world. I suspect it’s because the Jesus projected by political ideology and media says it would be a Christian God’s will. That is theocracy.
Are we taking notes from the Taliban, the ayatollah of Iran, or the Catholic Church of the Crusades?
I don’t begrudge anyone their personal beliefs, but I do find it despicable when they want to force others to adhere to their religious doctrine. It seems that the atheists, agnostics, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and all the “others” recognize religious overreach is counter to the United States’ ideal of separation of church and state.
We live in a secular nation. When Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito mocked world leaders and their response to the decision overturning Roe v. Wade. it made me stand at attention. Alito indicated he believes religion is under attack in the United States, but if he was being honest with himself and his audience, freedom from religion is what’s under attack.
Politicians don’t surprise me — they’re human. People have a distinct history of serving themselves first, and our Indiana state and federal representatives uphold that history and tradition rather well. My confusion is with you, with me, and with all our neighbors. Why do we cede our autonomy and our right to self-determination to them with our silence?
But hey, we have bread and circuses for now. Perhaps that’s distraction enough?
