On Jan. 6th and state’s abortion rights

From Jessica Erlandson,

A 2012 MAHS Graduate 

formerly of Lowry

Delighted to once again see the Tribune publish factual documentation related to deaths surrounding the January 6th insurrection. One hopes it can pierce through the false narratives peddled on right wing channels that continue to drive such division from reality in support of those endlessly seeking to have their bias confirmed, no matter how impossible the mental gymnastics required to maintain it. It will also be very interesting in the coming months to following the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News and its revelations of how Fox laid the groundwork in deceiving viewers about the election that lead up to January 6th. Text messages unearthed in the suit detail such omissions as “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Tucker Carlson wrote to Laura Ingraham on Nov. 18; to which Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

On another note, additional letters submitted to the editor in relation to abortion contained a great deal of metaphorical brow furrowing and hand wringing with so much reference to biblical verses I almost thought I was back in Sunday School! Again, America is fundamentally not a Christian nation (perhaps one based on Judeo-Christian ideals that circulated greatly in the ancient near East at a parallel time period when the first Western democracies were in their infancies), and the founding fathers greatly valued the separation of Church and State. They looked with weary and learned minds to the shores of Europe whose lands had their soils drenched in blood for centuries over wars fought by powers who thought their interpretation of the Bible was correct and believed God was on their side, no matter the cost to human lives. Ireland, one of the historically most religious countries in Europe, voted in 2018 overwhelmingly to overturn the abortion ban by 66.4% to 33.6%. One of the tragic cases that spurred this legislation was the 2012 death of Savita Halappanavar, a pregnant woman of Indian origin living in Ireland that died of sepsis after her water broke at an unviable 17 weeks’ gestation and she was denied an abortion due to Irish law influenced by historical Catholic doctrine that her fetus still had a heartbeat. Savita, who was not a Catholic, had a heartbeat as well. In less than one week, Savita died of a cardiac arrest secondary to the sepsis.

I am pleased that the Minnesota legislature is enacting legislation to ensure nothing like what happened to Savita would happen in Minnesota. Legislators are protecting the rights of individuals by ensuring funds are used appropriately by responsible science-based healthcare organizations rather than faith-based groups that could provide misleading information in a deceptive environment. Minnesota will continue to have a reputation as an oasis of reproductive freedom in the Midwest. Many pro-life states are interested in extending anti-abortion laws beyond their borders. Say I continue to live in Ohio but chose to visit family in Minnesota, would that entail a pregnancy test for women of reproductive age when boarding a plane to a “blue” state and another on arrival back to the home state to ensure no pregnancy was terminated? What if a miscarriage was suffered in Minnesota, does that person undergo criminal investigation in their home state? This is the importance of blocking extradition for such nonsense. For late trimester abortions, they are a small minority (often less than 1%) often due to conditions incompatible with life for fetus (such as anencephaly) or severe health risks for the mother that only present in later trimesters. It doesn’t seem extraordinarily pro-life to force a family to bring a child to term only to watch the infant struggle to survive for agonizing hours after birth when there are humane alternatives to that suffering that would ease the pain, not only for the fetus but the emotional state of the family by not having to witness it if they so choose.

A contrast in our Presidents

From Barb Kramber,

Glenwood

On Dec. 1, 1862, 149 years ago, President Abraham Lincoln stood before Congress and spoke to them about  emancipating slaves in  the southern states.  Jan. 1st 1863 President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation,  declaring “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” . The Thirteenth Amendment was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on February 1, 1865.   

Feb. 7th 2023 President Biden, in his State of the Union address, said  “The Vice President and I are doing everything we can to protect access to reproductive health care and safeguard patient privacy. But already, more than a dozen states are enforcing extreme abortion bans. Make no mistake; if Congress passes a national abortion ban, I will veto it.”

Monday, Feb. 22nd we honored the 46 presidents that have served the United States of America with a national holiday. There’s a contrast in the way many of them would be defined as leaders of our country. The greatest contrast I find is how one stood and spoke for the dignity of a life, for the ending of the evil of slavery; and the other one, our current president, spoke (again, as he has done for the past two years) to the union of ending a life by abortion under the guise of ‘health care’. Over 63 million innocent lives (human beings) ended by abortion since 1973; and yet the President of the United States of America is on a mission to codify future abortions, guaranteeing the death of millions of more children.  Slavery was wrong. Killing children in the womb, or born-alive (failed abortion) is wrong. Two presidents. Two different agendas.