An assault on women’s rights

RE: OOSTERHOFF PLEDGES TO MAKE ABORTION ‘UNTHINKABLE,’ MAY 9

We are seeing an all-out assault on women’s right to a decision only they can make. A man can have an opinion on the subject, but he has no basis whatsoever to intervene, influence or impede a woman’s choice regarding abortion.

Each woman knows her material and psychological capacity to raise a healthy, loved and secure child.

It disgusts me that Sam Oosterhoff, a 22-year-old home schooled politician in a highly conservative community, feels he has the authority and right to tell women whose situation he knows nothing about how they should manage a pregnancy. Like so many fundamentalist opponents of abortion rights, Mr. Oosterhoff’s “deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God” (as Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey declared when she recently signed a bill that strips women of their reproductive rights) seems to end at birth.

Perhaps Mr. Oosterhoff should pay more attention to the very real pain and devastation his government is wreaking on Ontario children through cuts to programs such as autism support, education and public health. These policy choices might not be unthinkable, but they are unconscionable.

Don Sawyer

St. Catharines