To the editor:

John Rasmussen compares Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln and Robert Kennedy, using the abortion issue. (Public Forum, Sept. 30). This saddens me. There are so many significant problems facing our country, and his focus is on regulating women’s choices.

When I was in college we debated the issue of controlling unwanted pregnancies among those on welfare by using forced birth control. Since it was state money that they were receiving, did they have a right to procreate? Did the government have the right to regulate?

After much discussion, my professor made one simple statement that I will never forget. He said, “Do you really want the government in your bedroom? After all, if we live in a country where the government can tell you that you cannot have a child, who’s to say that same government won’t tell you that you have to have a child?” And vice versa.

It intrigues me when men want to regulate women’s morality. Yet it has been when men have run our country that women’s children have been lost to poverty, prejudice and war. Issues, Barack Obama wants to address and solve.

Educating people, not controlling them, is the way to make change. Offering solutions instead of judgment will render a different path. I am not comfortable in someone else’s bedroom or deciding their moral choice on abortion. That is one issue that I will leave where it belongs: between a woman and her God. Not on the ballot.

Tammy Sabol,
Lawrence