Thursday's letters: Extreme left wing, hiding history, no constitutional right to abortion

Sarasota Herald-Tribune
·4 min read
President Joe Biden called the "MAGA crowd" the most extreme political group in recent U.S. history.
President Joe Biden called the "MAGA crowd" the most extreme political group in recent U.S. history.

Extremist actions, policies of left wing

These are extreme actions:

  • Calling more than 74 million voters extreme (or deplorable).

  • A proxy war that could lead to nuclear Armageddon.

  • Abruptly leaving Afghanistan (before all U.S. citizens, allies, U.S. weapons and systems, etc., are out.).

  • Skyrocketing inflation.

  • Open borders.

  • Defunding the police.

  • Ambush attacks on police officers.

  • Mob rule (Calling violence and arson “peaceful protests,” tacit acceptance of violence, arson and chaos).

  • Organized retail theft and burglary.

  • Illegal aliens getting rights of U.S. citizens.

  • Opposition to inviolable voting (voter ID, valid voter rolls, ballot integrity).

  • Publishing home addresses of Supreme Court justices.

  • Calling anti-CRT parents “domestic terrorists.”

  • Attacks on parental rights.

  • Use of taxpayer dollars to fund Planned Parenthood.

  • Allowing dismemberment abortions and infanticide.

  • Illegal sanctuary policies and cities.

  • Killing the filibuster.

Roger Grossel, Lakewood Ranch

America’s sordid past cannot be hidden

The fact is America has been built on institutionalized racism.

The fact is the economy of the South and cotton depended on slavery. The fact is Black people were kept down even after emancipation.

The fact is the U.S. interned more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

The fact is our country could have saved thousands, if not millions, of Jews from the Nazi death camps.

The point is we must teach our schoolchildren these facts rather than bury them, like Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sarasota County Commissioner Christian Ziegler and his wife, Sarasota County School Board Member Bridget Ziegler, want us to do.

It should not be disturbing to children. It will help us to evolve into the more perfect union our founders wanted.

Louis Grossman, Sarasota

No right to abortion in Constitution

I generally write from a liberal or “progressive” view, but I have to side with the conservatives in the raging battle over Roe v. Wade.

Nowhere in the Constitution is a woman’s right to an abortion stated or guaranteed. In 1973, the Supreme Court drew the flimsy conclusion that a “right to privacy” buried in the 14th Amendment somehow guaranteed an American woman the right to have an abortion.

In 1992, the justices either agreed with the previous finding or rested on precedent (“stare decisis”).

If today’s Supreme Court, in the “leaked” arguments, is questioning the legal basis of the Roe decision, so be it. In my mind, it should be questioned.

Like the conservatives who misconstrue the Second Amendment as the unlimited right to buy and possess firearms, the left has misconstrued the Roe decision as a woman’s unquestionable right to have an abortion.

Because there is no clear right to an abortion spelled out in the Constitution, we are left with two choices: Add an amendment to the Constitution that guarantees the right to abortion or send the issue back to “the several states,” where all matters not specifically addressed in the Constitution belong.

Michael F.K. Phelan, Sarasota

Answer to abortion? Prevent pregnancy

Historically, the only choices for women were motherhood, adoption or abortion. These could be agonizing decisions, causing feelings of guilt lasting years.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2018 there were 619,591 abortions, in 2019, 629,898, making a total of over 1.2 million reported abortions in just two years!

Expenses raising one child from birth to 18 are about $267,000, or a potential cost of over $333 billion if all those abortions had not been performed.

From where would that money come? Most likely from taxpayers!

Here we are, a whole nation, ignoring the big picture: the prevention of pregnancy!

For years there has been on the market an implant that will prevent pregnancy for five years. This must be the most well-kept secret of all time.

Our government has spent trillions for free COVID testing, vaccines in every pharmacy, boosters and so on. Why shouldn't we have that same availability for 50% of this nation’s citizens who deserve better treatment in this enlightened, conscientious 21st century?

Unwanted pregnancy is the biggest pandemic of our time – and one with no end in sight.

Carol Finley, Bradenton

Stay out of my bedroom, my business

Termination of a pregnancy is one of the most difficult and intimate decisions a woman will ever make. No one – male or female – has the right to tell me (owhether I should or should not follow through with a pregnancy.

There are social, emotional, medical, spiritual and financial issues that influence that decision and I, in consultation with my partner and my doctor, should determine the outcome based on those issues.

Neither elected officials nor the Supreme Court has any business in my bedroom, my mind, my heart or my soul. Thank you very much, but I choose to control my body. I neither need nor want help from any other entity.

Sally Steele, Longboat Key

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Left wing to the extreme, don't hide our history