Abortion and poverty

Dear editor:

Reply to Abortion letter:

Why did the right-wing billionaires decide on abortion as a red-button issue? This is my guess: In the years prior to the fateful decision of the 1973 “Roe v. Roe,” rubella was of epidemic proportion and many children were born with disabilities. Some states were discussing giving limited rights for abortion. Naturally, a controversy began that has never ended.

Since the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964, the right-wing elite leaders decided to up their game and the late Louis Powell wrote the famous memo that outlined the group’s plans for taking over all major institutes. They immediately formed think tanks (lobbying organizations) with highly paid propagandists. Their operatives couldn’t help noticing the groups that opposed legalizing abortion.

William Buckley, right-wing guru, had long pushed to get Catholics into the far right. Catholics and Jews had been shunned by groups such as the right-wing John Birch Society supported by Fred Koch and had been helped by Roosevelt’s New Deal. So with a look at demographics, the right had a perfect ploy to get the Catholic vote. Using perfect timing, right-wing Powell, then a Supreme Court judge, was a deciding vote for “Roe v. Wade.”

The right has never intended to do anything constructive about abortion, so it is nearly a cost-free issue for them. Providing for the births of these children costs money and prevents the right-wing billionaires from getting additional tax cuts for the rich under Trump’s budget. Providing for prenatal care for mothers costs money. We

now have the highest infant mortality rate of any developed country.

Keeping the parents healthy so they can provide for their children costs money. Yet the right wants to cripple the Affordable Care Act, which will cost the lives of many parents and children. Sending these children to school costs money, so the right has savaged federal/state funding for schools. Right-wing Gov. Brownback gutted the school system in Kansas to cut taxes for the rich. Parents want decent paying jobs to feed, clothe and house their children. But the right-wingers buy much of their goods from China, which incidentally has had forced abortion.

Much of abortion is connected to poverty, which has increased since right-wing voodoonomics. Though right-wing propaganda has, mostly successfully, blamed everything on “liberals,” statistics ironically show that abortion goes down with a Democratic president since poverty decreases. Abortion is illegal and punitive in South America, but Latin America has a much higher abortion rate than Europe and North America because of poverty. The right-wing rich seem to hate the poor. Wealthy women have always been able to get safe abortions; most middle-class women will continue to get them, even if illegal. Poorer women and their families will become sacrificial lambs.

We pro-choice people are not for abortion. We would like abortion to be nearly zero. That will need a ton of money for public service ads, targeting at-risk girls and women, and a nation that supports all women. Proud middle-class mother of five, Linda Woodbury Hot Springs