Saturday, January 31, 2009

An open letter to Sen. Gordon Howie

January 31, 2009

Dear Sen. Howie,

This note is in response to your explanation of Senate Bill 92 at the Rapid City crackerbarrel this morning.

With all due respect, if you want to see people on both sides of the abortion issue to come together, a good first step would be being straight on the facts about Planned Parenthood.

Clients of Planned Parenthood have counseling available to them, in fact counseling and education are a large part of their activity. I honestly think asserting otherwise shows either a conscious disregard for the facts or a mendacious repeating of false talking points to get support for an idea by sowing confusion. I trust you just don't have the facts.

I strongly suspect that a main reason you are a vocal opponent of PP is not as much as to the services they provide but because you disagree with the unbiased, complete reproductive health care information and counseling they provide to young men and women.

In this time of economic challenge, I urge you to give this issue a rest and do more to support women and encourage sexual responsibility and discourage abortion in other ways... radical ways such as supporting health education and working to improve our economy so couples are more able to afford reproductive health care and support their families.

The majority of voters in South Dakota have shown they agree by decisively defeating abortion bans, twice. Improving the economic lot of South Dakotans would be a much more effective way to reduce abortions than fruitless efforts to make South Dakota a nanny state for more than half of our population.

Thank you.

2 comments:

  1. All the SD legislators are rubber stampers for the religious right preferring power and prestige to actually helping the people. A legislator from a few years ago said directly to me: "I'm not going to let them get me." The power of ignorance in South Dakota is extreme. Social progress is made only grudgingly. Education of the public, state internet information, open public meetings, etc, are given with an air of disdain and superiority. The attitude our state's power leaders, all Republicans, have towards the people of this state is shocking in the extreme. We are the untouchables...unless we have money, are Republican and support the power structure...Governor's pheasant hunt anyone?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Senator Howie responded:

    One thing we do agree on is that ONE of us does not have the facts straight. Unfortunately, it is you. If you are really interested in the facts, I would be glad to share with you the testimony which established the facts. Your "facts" are simply regurgitated propaganda that you have accepted as truth.

    Senator Gordon Howie
    District 30

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.