In a recent newsletter, Heather Cox Richardson details the genesis of women’s right to vote in this country. The suffragettes’ manifesto was structured like the Declaration of Independence. The language made all citizens responsible for giving their consent to the governed — white and black men and women and all others.

I thought of the mostly white men in this country who have re-exerted their tyranny over women, doing their best to delete history. Those arguing in favor of zero tolerance for abortion keep talking about “saving the children.” How is forcing a woman to bring an unwanted baby into the world doing anything to “save” that child?

That dumbfounding and arrogant lack of logic leads me to another observation. Why are anti-abortionists not demanding an equal right to control a man’s body? Why is it that men retain the right to get a vasectomy and thus prevent a child’s inception? Women are being forced to endure nine months of pregnancy in order to assure that another unwanted child struggles into life, very possibly destined for abuse and rejection. We know what happens to damaged children. They damage themselves and others while often ending up in jail. Why, then, is it not logical to force men to always be aware that the use of their regenerative organ could result in children they might be obliged to pay for, even spend time with? Will the child of such a reluctant father prosper?

Indeed, what of the men who do not want the woman they impregnated to have the baby? At least in the fictions I have watched and read, men are the first to want to help the woman get an abortion, rather than accept responsibility for an “accidental human.” How do they feel now that women AND men must parent an unwanted child?

Linda Egan
PORT TOWNSEND