GOP Could Criminalize Abortion
In the 19th century, vice crusader Anthony Comstock lobbied Congress to make it a crime to possess, distribute or provide information about contraception or abortion. He was successful, making contraception hard to obtain and rarely discussed in public.
Enter Margaret Sanger, who resolved that women should have knowledge of birth control, should know about their own bodies, and embarked on a lifelong quest to provide women with information about methods of contraception. Her crusade put her in the crosshairs of the Comstock Act and the determination to control women by controlling their bodies. For her efforts, Margaret Sanger was imprisoned multiple times. But through her dedication to saving women’s lives, along with support from the scientific community, the Comstock Act was challenged. Finally in 1972, the Supreme Court legalized all forms of contraception for all individuals.
Now, back in the 21st century, the march to control women by controlling their bodies continues with Republicans taking a renewed look at the Comstock Act to make the mailing of mifepristone illegal and eventually other birth control methods. Their Life at Conception Act opens up the criminalization of abortion for any reason and possibly in vitro fertilization treatments.
For Barrow County, Clarke County and the U.S., the female population outnumbers the male population. There are 4.2 million when aged 85 and older who remember when. Ladies, tell Republicans that you and only you control your body.
Peggy Perkins
Winder
Protect Social Security
On August 14, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. While FDR’s New Deal had put in place new measures to regulate business and banking, and had provided temporary work relief to combat the Depression, this law permanently changed the nature of the American government.
The SSA is known for its payments to older Americans, but it did far more than that. It established unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services. It was a sweeping reworking of the relationship between the government and its citizens, using the power of taxation to pool funds to provide a basic social safety net.
Social Security and Medicare has long been disdained by the right. They go against corporate self-interest and fly into their vision of “rugged individualism” in which men work their way up, providing for their families on their own without any type of aid to families undermining a man’s willingness to work. Just as it is still today, this vision is more myth than reality.
Republicans are prepared to implement their vision of “rugged individualism” with drastic changes to Social Security and Medicare should they retain the House, having taken back the Senate and the presidency in 2024.
Johnnie Ellington
Statham
Thank You, Randall Bramblett
To Mr. Randall Bramblett and everyone within earshot who can read:
On Oct. 18, I was blown away by your Randall Bramblett Big Band show in Athens, where you received the key to the city and a proclamation of “Randall Bramblett Day” from Mayor Kelly Girtz. Well deserved!
My father, Neil Edwards, was your former band director at Jesup High School. Every time I hear your name (often), I tell everyone within earshot to thank their teachers while they are alive, as you did for my father.
I last wrote to you on Dec. 8, 2001 to thank you for sending my Dad several personalized CDs with your work. You inscribed each one, “Mr. Edwards, Thanks for helping me get started in the music biz! … To my great band director on his 70th … Happy Birthday, Mr. Edwards!”
Neil Edwards died of kidney cancer on Sept. 1. Coincidentally, Dad’s protégé and friend, Roger Danz (former director of the UGA Redcoat Band) also died Sept. 1. Roger died in 1998; Neil died nine years later in 2007. Dad would have been amused at the coincidence, as would Roger.
In the 1990s, when I, as (what passes for) an adult, was re-introduced to Roger, he recounted that he and his wife, Phyllis, went from Athens to Jesup to see Neil’s high school band perform the Christmas concert in 1959. Roger said that no one paid as much attention to the band, as they were watching a two-year-old boy (me) who escaped from his seat (my mother was holding my infant brother born a week or so earlier). According to Roger, that two-year-old boy ran up to the podium to direct the band with his right hand while Dad, of course, directed with his left hand.
After Dad died, our family got many letters and notes of condolence from former students; some stayed in touch as they could (more than one student from Georgia Southwestern became a band director; some became musicians). I was by his bedside when one GSW student recounted that Neil told her (who was a classical pianist before GSW), “If you want to become a music educator, you have to learn ALL the instruments!” She is now a psychotherapist and author in Atlanta. Linda said she disliked jazz until Dad made her listen to Take Five, and it flipped her opinion of jazz!
As I was writing thank-you notes for the condolences, I realized that I should write thank-you letters to my teachers while they are living. I now tell everyone within earshot to thank their teachers, too! The kind notes and cards we received after Dad died, while welcomed and needed for us, was too late for him to hear, but you thanked him while he was alive.
As soon as I could, I looked through every school year book, and my muddled memory, to thank as many of my special teachers I could find.
Thank you, Randall, for teaching me to thank my teachers.
David G. Edwards
Nicholson
Jesus Loves Parking, This I Know
And God said, “Let the building be torn down.” And it was so. And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day
And God said, “Let there be pavement, for cars, SUVs and trucks.” So God made the pavement wide and vast. And it was so. God called the space a “parking lot.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day
They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a parking lot, that will destroy opportunities for housing and mixed-use buildings, and let us make for ourselves a separate parking lot, otherwise we will be forced to utilize the ample and already free parking on Sundays throughout downtown Athens.”
Ezra Schley
Athens
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