A place to post the letters and emails sent to various groups or organizations in South Dakota. This might become a source for ideas on how to compose your own polite but firm letter. There is no sense in talking to the fundamentally unchangable types, such as legislators and true believers, but business people and those who depend on exported goods might sit up and listen. That is the kind of influence we may need to encourage. Perhaps they can enable an alteration in the body politic.
Our letter is below the fold.........
Gentlepersons,
We regret to advise you that we can no longer do business with companies based in your state. Your legislature has made it clear that women are considered to be second class citizens, rendered unable to make decisions regarding their future or their health. In good faith, we find it impossible to support a region displaying such an un-American attitude.
Be clear on one thing: We do not feel good about abortion and do not encourage the practice. And we are sure that the decision to terminate a pregnancy is never made lightly. But be extermely sure about this also: We do not believe that any government has the right to decide reproductive issues for anyone. Period. That is a choice made among a woman, her family and her God. Not the God of the politicians currently steering the government.
It is difficult to believe that the majority of your lawmakers would force their wives or daughters to bear the pain resulting from rape or incest, or more tragically (if that was possible) to watch a loved one die or have their body and future destroyed by an ectopic pregnancy. Yet they proudly force that nightmare on strangers.
I can only assume that they would quietly spirit that wife or daughter to a clinic in another state to solve their "problem", while publicly pontificating about having forced their personal "morality" on the rest of the public.
How many more steps must we take before a miscarriage is treated as manslaughter? Will we confine "expecting" women in a safe place for their own protection? What dangerous direction are we taking as a nation, to deny self-determination to more than half of the citizenry?
A further awful irony is the same self-righteous legislators are the ones who block the kind of education in the public schools which would make the necessity for these extremely difficult choices more rare. Their hypocrisy is boundless.
These are our decisions:
We have replaced our two perfectly good Gateway computers with a Dell and a rebuilt IBM. The Gateways are in the garage awaiting the recycle pick-up. They have been disabled.
We have switched fron Iams to Purina food for our pets.
What we do in reaction to the laws passed in South Dakota might have little effect in the overall scheme of things, but it is what we can do. And we do it gladly.
Regretfully
Tony and Anne
This letter went to the SD Office of Economic Development