Dear Editor,
I just wanted to write to say bravo to Kim-Vi Sweetman for her opinion piece in the March 30 edition. of The Elm. The fact a that woman’s right to cheap, reliable, and safe birth control is even up for question has been extremely disturbing to me.
As a woman, I am thoroughly creeped out by the idea of any stranger making decisions about my reproductive rights. I am also astounded by how little common sense many members of a certain political party seem to have regarding this issue. How is it that they are unable to see the only way to eliminate the abortions they hate so much is to prevent unwanted pregnancies?
Personally, I feel that the issue is less about “morality” and more about certain people in this country being afraid and offended by the idea of a woman having control over her own body.
Which brings me to another point. The young women in this country have become too complacent. We have been raised in a world where our rights are, for the most part, guaranteed. Our mothers and grandmothers fought hard to guarantee that we would have equal opportunities for education, employment, and health care. We must not allow these rights to be taken away again! We must remember that it was not so long ago that women were not considered equal to men.
There are still plenty of people in this country who would love to go back to the way things were just one generation ago. If the young women of the current generation are not aware of this, we risk letting all the work of our mothers and grandmothers go to waste. We risk losing our own rights, and living in a world where our daughters do not hold the equal status that we ourselves have come to take for granted.
-Dana Case ‘14