Readers comments: July 22, 2022

COURIER off the mark with Roe story
Dear editor:
The first edition of the COURIER to come out since Roe v. Wade was overturned [July 1] and you choose to feature the views of local religious leaders? (Four men and two women.) We who are stunned and grieving over this ruling opened the COURIER to be greeted by the delight of the Catholic priest. “Great!” he says, in his reaction to the news. “The sexual revolution really did the number on us.” You couldn’t give voice to more than one woman of child-bearing age? This article could not have been more tone deaf or clueless; it is emblematic of the disregard women face in this country.

I don’t give a flying fork what the male religious leaders think about Roe’s reversal. Organized religion is the main reason why over half of the United States population just lost the right to control their own body and be treated as equal human beings to those who can’t reproduce. It is beyond ironic, and bewildering, that you chose to focus on religious leaders when it is thanks to the far-right conservatives’ Christian religion and influence that has led to this ruling. Your article added insult to injury for all the women who woke up [June 24] gut punched by a new reality, one that we are still grappling to comprehend as all the consequences play out.

The men legislating women’s bodies mostly don’t understand basic female anatomy. They don’t know or don’t care that as with an ectopic pregnancy, a fertilized egg can attach and grow inside the fallopian tube (outside of the uterus) and can cause the tube to burst and the mother to hemorrhage. The emergency surgery necessary to save her life is now deemed illegal; to remove the nonviable fetus from the fallopian tube so she does not bleed out and die is now against the law in some of the United States of America.

If anyone reading this doesn’t understand women’s overwhelming rage and fear over the reversal of Roe v. Wade, or why the article that appeared in [the July 1] COURIER was so pathetically off the mark, go back and reread this last paragraph and imagine your dearest female family member or friend in that situation.

It has become like a mantra since 2016: I don’t recognize my country anymore.
Gina Ortiz
Claremont