Speak Out 3/22/06

Woman's choice

IF A woman gets pregnant and chooses not to bring an unwanted child into the world, she is doing what she feels is right for her life. Why bring a child into the world whom she can't afford to support? It's a woman's choice, just like it's anybody's choice to smoke or to be overweight. It's nobody else's business.

Cheerful Chaffee

YOU CAN go to any license office in Missouri to take care of business. I've lived in Cape Girardeau my entire life. For the past 12 years I've been going to the license bureau in Chaffee. I rarely have to wait in line, and even if I do the cheerful greetings waiting for me when I do get to the counter make the wait worthwhile. I tell my friends and coworkers all the time to go to Chaffee.

American judgment

THOUGH DAVID Limbaugh and others still do a brilliant job toeing the GOP's talking points and party line, the Bush presidency is teetering on the brink of being judged America's worst.

A hard decision

I CHOSE life for my unborn, out-of-wedlock child nearly 40 years ago, the hardest decision of my life. Sex education was not an open topic. Ignorance was. I have wondered daily about my son how life has treated him. I've never located him. The birth records are sealed. I would like to know about him and his family. I am not his mother. That is the wonderful woman who raised him. My children and husband know about him. And they would embrace him as part of our family if he chose that route. Should there be some medical issues down the road, he could turn to us as a family for help. I have always prayed and wished God's blessings for him for a happy and successful life, a life I was not in authority of terminating. There is only one God, and I'm not it. He may be worshiped in many ways, but he is still God. And he said, "Thou shall not kill."

Trash along the road

IT ISN'T my job to pick up someone else's trash along side the road. That is government right of way. It is the job of those driving on the roads to use trash bags rather than throw out their trash. We do clean up along our property. I don't want where I live to look like Hooterville thanks to passersby who think a rural road is a wide-open trash bin.

Religious tyranny

THE LEGISLATIVE resolution about living under a Christian God is one more attempt of the far right to say, "It's our way or the highway." Are the Christian supporters or this resolution trying to exclude Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and atheist people from government? Didn't our ancestors come to this country to get away from this sort of tyranny?

Responsible for bills

I THINK there would be fewer unwanted pregnancies if people were held responsible for their own medical bills, poor or not. I recently had a baby. Before my medical insurance paid about $20,000. I heard an unmarried girl talking about how she was on Medicaid and didn't have to pay a dime to have her baby. My husband and I work our fingers to the bone to pay our bills and the hospital. We just get by. It's so upsetting to know that the people who work for a living and want the American dream have to struggle, and those who choose not to wear a condom don't have to pay a cent. If those on Medicaid had to be responsible for the cost of having babies, they would think twice.

Not a theocracy

I WOULD suggest to the extremist religious folks who seem to think we are governed by the Bible that they move to some other country. America is not a theocracy. If they want to live under religious law, there are plenty of countries out there for them.

ID stops fraud

THANKS TO Michael Gibbons, president pro tem of the Missouri Senate, for making it crystal clear why we should require a photo ID in order to vote and for explaining how easily a photo ID can be obtained. One must wonder if those who are against requiring voters to have photo IDs like the idea of fraudulent voting just in case the party they lean toward is losing an election.

Always a baby

IS AN egg not an egg until the shell is broken? It was an egg from beginning to end. A baby is a baby in each stage of development regardless of the names given to each stage. This is the simplest analogy that I can think of.

Politics as usual

IN RESPONSE to the story "Fight over voter ID more politics than policy spat": The quote, "Democrats were suddenly agreeable to requiring a photo ID -- if Republicans would put off the change until at least 2008," is politics at its normal best, isn't it?