Doing what is right

This letter is in response to Elsie Hillman's claim that Republicans need to disregard our pro-life platform. What does it benefit a party to pick up a few moderate voters if it costs us our soul?

Republicans are supposed to stand up for what's right, regardless of who disagrees. The percentage of Republicans in Congress who voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act was larger than the percentage of Democrats who voted for it. It was Republicans who ended slavery. It was Republicans who protected the rights of Southern black people during Reconstruction.

Republicans are supposed to protect the weak, the innocent and the helpless. I have been pro-life since I was 9 years old. I joined the party in 1993, when I was 18 years old, because the Republican Party stood for what I believe in.

Let's disregard the euphemisms "reproductive rights" and "choice"; what we're talking about is abortion. If there's nothing wrong with it, why is there a need to hide it behind grandiloquent language? No one wants to take away someone's right to "choose" contraception. No one wants to take away a woman's right to "choose" the pill, or anyone's right to buy condoms. We want to take away the "right" to snuff out a nascent life because it dared to come along at an inconvenient time.

What is being proposed is that we turn the Republican Party into the Democratic Party. We already have one party with elastic ethics and fluid principles. We don't need two.

 

WALTER GIBSON
North Versailles