Enough is enough.  The anti-women contingent in this state keep pushing us back into the hole we crawled out of in the 1960’s. I remember when I needed summer jobs during college and looked at the “Help Wanted – Female” column in the newspaper.  I remember thinking that a neighbor’s daughter who went to pharmacy school was a disgrace to the neighborhood.  What kind of girl would want a “man’s job”?  There was a time when I wouldn’t dream of going to a female doctor.    That kind of thinking doesn’t change easily.  It’s taken some of us 40 years to really believe that women are intelligent enough to make good decisions.  Now I choose women as my primary care physicians and support women running for political office.

My letter on this subject will be in the Post Dispatch tomorrow.  I’m really fed up with playing defense on women’s reproductive rights.

How in the world did we get to the point where a handful of radicals can

dictate to the citizens of Missouri what kind of birth control they can use?

These are the same people who don’t want the government interfering with their

health care decisions and scream “socialism” when we try to help our uninsured

neighbors. These are the same people who cut funding for mental health

services, early childhood education, and who kick severely disabled people out

of the only “home” they’ve ever known.

It’s not enough that they’ve made it almost impossible for a woman carrying a

fetus that dies in the last trimester to get an abortion. It’s not enough

that they scream “sinner” at young girls impregnated by rapists who hate the

thing the rapists left growing in their belly.

I doubt that most Missourians realize what nonsense passes for legislative

action in Jefferson City. They will find out when they need emergency

contraception and can’t buy it. One of the bills passed by the Missouri House

and now being rammed through the Senate would make it impossible for rural

women to buy the morning after pill because pharmacists can decide for

themselves which drugs they “believe” will cause an abortion. That could

apply to any prescription from a woman’s doctor.

We shouldn’t even have to be discussing this. Couples should be able to make

their reproductive decisions in private. Period.

When citizens cede their decision-making power to extremists, their rights

disappear one by one. We’d better celebrate the 50th anniversary of “the

pill” now because it may not be around much longer. And we’ll have no one to

blame but ourselves.