Letters: On Oklahoma abortion laws, pandemic relief funds

After abortion ban, it's time for legislators to provide for reluctant mothers

The Oklahoma Legislature is starting a new session, and they have some unfinished business for women. When the abortion ruling came down from SCOTUS, some Oklahoma legislators stumbled over each other to get to the chamber to ban abortions. They evidently looked at the scrolls from the Dark Ages and wrote a draconian bill telling women that politicians were supposed to be in charge of their reproductive rights. With their new law, politicians and the governor, ignoring women's and medical doctors' voices, now have that right.

Now is the time to follow up on last session's law. By saving a mass of cells, legislators made themselves responsible for its livelihood. Therefore, they must hurriedly ensure that the cells have a stable and safe place to grow. They must write and pass follow-up laws to provide health and hospital care, healthy food and safe shelter for the women who are reluctantly carrying the unwanted cells as they mature.

If the governor and politicians cannot or will not do this, it proves they were guilty last session of staging a performance for political publicity. They do not actually believe they were doing a right-to-life feat to save a life if they aren't willing to provide care for both.

— Nadine Jewell, Norman

Pandemic funds aren't 'pork,' and Bice doesn't have the chops to represent us

As our Legislature in Oklahoma goes into special session for funding state projects from the American Rescue Plan Act, I would like to remind the people/voters of House District 5 that our elected representative, Stephanie Bice, voted against this funding calling it "pork" on Twitter. Oklahoma's Joint Committee on Pandemic Relief approved 60+ projects for spending almost all of our state's $1.87 billion, including broadband expansion, workforce development and badly needed water projects across the state. Do the people of the 5th District call these projects "pork?" Do our rural communities who require assistance for these projects call this "pork?" Will the Oklahoma House and Senate legislators whose communities will benefit from this funding that our state cannot provide but the federal government has, call it "pork?" Will these same state Republican legislators who seem to constantly call out Democrats for their aggressive socialist agenda, call it "pork?" I ask the people/voters of the 5th District to remember our state needs a representative who will vote for those bills in the U.S. Congress that will benefit the majority of our working families, those of us who rely on our leaders to look out "for the least of these" in our communities. Not only did Stephanie Bice vote against the ARPA, she also voted against other bills important to the people/voters in the 5th District: the Budget Resolution Act, the Apprenticeship Act, the Dream Act, the Paycheck Fairness Act, Older Workers Discrimination Act, the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, plus too many to name here. Our state is in dire need of effective representation. We are a rich state in our diverse population; we are a poor state in our representation in Congress. We can change it for the better; that must mean getting Stephanie Bice out of office in the 5th District.

— Penny Barber, Edmond

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Letters to the editor: On Oklahoma abortion laws, pandemic relief funds