Letters to the editor: Ominous ‘other plans’?

ORIENT

I’m voting for equality

“It’s been two years since the disastrous Dobbs decision – every week we seem to see a new assault on basic reproductive freedom, from IVF to contraception. That’s why passing the Women’s Health Protection Act needs to be a top priority when Democrats retake the House.” That is a quote from John Avlon, who has my vote to represent our district in Congress, and has pledged to vote for that act.

Our current representative, Nick Lalota, voted against it. He applauded Dobbs; he supports Speaker [Mike] Johnson, sponsor of a national abortion ban, who wants to criminalize doctors for providing health care, and opposes contraception.

Criminalize doctors for providing health care to women? If you miscarry, doctors who are afraid of state bans will refuse care and you will die. This has happened. Where will it end? Restricting access to IVF as Project 2025 calls for? This is terrifying. This is a slippery slope from having rights to having none.

Like Taylor Swift, Liz Cheney and her dad, I’ll be voting for Harris/Walz to protect women’s rights and freedom. “When I talk about freedom, I mean the freedom to make your own health care decisions,” Tim Walz said.

Why does anyone want to criminalize women’s health care, to go backward? It is wrong. It is dangerous. Most Americans agree with me — we want our sisters, daughters, nieces and granddaughters to be equal, to feel respected, to live as equals. They deserve it. We can give them that.

Mary Morgan

CUTCHOGUE

Foreseeable and preventable

In many areas of the law, foreseeability of damage to another is an essential element in establishing liability on the part of the actor.

When Donald Trump appointed three right-wing actors to the Supreme Court, it was foreseeable they would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade He said he’d appoint these kinds of people, and he did. Then, each of them perjured themselves under oath at their [Senate] confirmation hearings, claiming that Roe was “settled law” or they believed in stare decisis (to wit, following precedent) and, since there was no case before them to overturn Roe, they could offer no other assurances other than to follow settled law or precedent.

These three, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett, justices Thomas and Alito, who years ago had given the Senate the same dishonest assurances on settled law and stare decisis about Roe in their own hearings.

But the Supreme Court didn’t say that women do not have the Constitutional right to health care. No indeed. Instead, they cleverly said Roe v. Wade was incorrectly decided because whether a woman is entitled to reproductive health care is a matter for each state to decide, not the federal courts.

And again, it was clearly foreseeable that if the matter of reproductive health care were sent back to the states, it would not take very long before red state legislatures began enacting abortion bans. And it was clearly foreseeable that once those bans were in place – threatening health care professionals with jail terms for performing an abortion – it would only be a matter of time before someone died because of failure to deliver needed and obvious lifesaving medical treatment.

And now we see the cases of Candi Miller and Amber Thurman, who didn’t need to die. But their deaths, which were preventable, were foreseeable. They were foreseeable to the president who appointed Supreme Court justices who would eliminate their Constitutional rights. They were foreseeable to the justices who voted to take away those rights. And they were foreseeable to all the right-wing Republican legislators and governors who enacted laws that virtually guaranteed their deaths — and who knows how many others.

No one is being held accountable for their foreseeable and preventable deaths. Not Donald Trump, not the justices who ended Roe v. Wade, not the right-wing legislators who passed Draconian laws, not the governors who signed those bills, not anyone.

The only way these foreseeable deaths will ever see any accountability is when we all go to the polls in November. We need to vote as if someone’s life depended on it, because it does. The people who did this must be removed from positions of power.

Michael Levy

LAUREL

Thumbs-up on reuse of commercial space

I applaud the Town of Southold’s plan for the use of the former Capital One Bank branch in Mattituck.

It is in keeping with the commercial uses along Love Lane, provides affordable rental units that are far preferable to a hotel, is within walking distance to public transportation and is not far from shopping.

I would like to see attention given to the Arcade building on Front Street in Greenport, a building that in its present state provides no benefit to the community.

John Viteritti

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