Dear Editor:

My parents were life-long Republicans, but there was one Republican policy they deeply resented — governmental restrictions on reproductive freedom.

A few years after I was born, mom gave birth to twins. They didn’t make it. A couple of years later, she was pregnant again, but the doctors said there were serious complications and although her life wasn’t threatened, the doctor recommended an abortion.

Somehow my parents were able to follow their doctor’s advice and get an abortion. Perhaps they resorted to illegal means? For my dad, my mother’s health was more important than what the politicians said.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, any doctor in Wisconsin providing the healthcare procedure my mom got would become a felon. My dad would speak with outrage that government could overrule what my mother, father, and their doctor agreed was best for them.

As a conservative, he rejected the idea of politicians taking away a woman’s control over her body and the invasion of a big government into an intimate family decision.

Given the recently released draft opinion of the Supreme Court, it appears that Republicans will have their way again. The radical, activist justices they recently appointed to the court will break with American history and for the first time, retract a right that Americans have possessed for half a century.

Individual states will be able to pass draconian restrictions on their citizens’ freedoms or allow repressive laws from long ago take effect, such as Wisconsin’s law from 1849.

Ask any candidate running for office “Do you support such governmental intrusion on personal liberty?”

David Barnhill

Hazelhurst