Editor’s note: The following Letter to the Editor was printed in the Sept 15th edition of The Daily Sun.
How dare Florida Republicans call themselves pro-life while refusing federal aid benefiting Florida’s most vulnerable children!
Republicans failed to expand Medicaid which would have provided healthcare for many of those children and failed to distribute the bulk of rent assistance from the pandemic relief fund which would have helped keep some of them housed. DeSantis is now inclined to turn down $820 million from the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer program, enough to feed 2.1 million children in low-income homes. Hungry, homeless, sick kids? Not a problem for him and Republican supporters. How dare Republicans preach about the “rights of the unborn” when they won’t take care of the born.
How dare Republicans rail against sex education in our schools, refuse to make women’s reproductive healthcare and contraception readily and inexpensively available and then rant about ending abortion. They’d rather fund vigilantes to prevent abortions than fund programs like Planned Parenthood to help prevent unwanted pregnancies and reduce infant and maternal mortality rates. It’s beyond incomprehensible.
And how dare any government, but especially one run by old, white men, tell a woman the decision about her pregnancy which may have resulted from rape, including incest, which may threaten her life, or jeopardize her family’s precarious existence is its decision is not hers to make. Who’s worried about the Taliban controlling women’s lives?
Hell for some children and their mothers begins with birth.
Until Republicans are willing to help change that, they can’t call themselves pro-life with a straight face.
Penelope Mayer, Englewood
