Letters: On Oklahoma abortion laws, pandemic relief funds

After abortion ban, it is time for legislators to offer for reluctant moms

The Oklahoma Legislature is beginning a brand new session, they usually have some unfinished enterprise for ladies. When the abortion ruling got here down from SCOTUS, some Oklahoma legislators stumbled over one another to get to the chamber to ban abortions. They evidently regarded on the scrolls from the Darkish Ages and wrote a draconian invoice telling girls that politicians had been presupposed to be answerable for their reproductive rights. With their new regulation, politicians and the governor, ignoring girls’s and medical medical doctors’ voices, now have that proper.

Now could be the time to comply with up on final session’s regulation. By saving a mass of cells, legislators made themselves accountable for its livelihood. Subsequently, they have to hurriedly be certain that the cells have a steady and protected place to develop. They need to write and go follow-up legal guidelines to offer well being and hospital care, wholesome meals and protected shelter for the ladies who’re reluctantly carrying the undesirable cells as they mature.

If the governor and politicians can’t or won’t do that, it proves they had been responsible final session of staging a efficiency for political publicity. They don’t truly consider they had been doing a right-to-life feat to avoid wasting a life if they don’t seem to be prepared to offer take care of each.

— Nadine Jewell, Norman

Pandemic funds aren’t ‘pork,’ and Bice does not have the chops to signify us

As our Legislature in Oklahoma goes into particular session for funding state initiatives from the American Rescue Plan Act, I want to remind the individuals/voters of Home District 5 that our elected consultant, Stephanie Bice, voted towards this funding calling it “pork” on Twitter. Oklahoma’s Joint Committee on Pandemic Reduction permitted 60+ initiatives for spending nearly all of our state’s $1.87 billion, together with broadband enlargement, workforce improvement and badly wanted water initiatives throughout the state. Do the individuals of the fifth District name these initiatives “pork?” Do our rural communities who require help for these initiatives name this “pork?” Will the Oklahoma Home and Senate legislators whose communities will profit from this funding that our state can’t present however the federal authorities has, name it “pork?” Will these similar state Republican legislators who appear to consistently name out Democrats for his or her aggressive socialist agenda, name it “pork?” I ask the individuals/voters of the fifth District to recollect our state wants a consultant who will vote for these payments within the U.S. Congress that may profit nearly all of our working households, these of us who depend on our leaders to look out “for the least of those” in our communities. Not solely did Stephanie Bice vote towards the ARPA, she additionally voted towards different payments vital to the individuals/voters within the fifth District: the Funds Decision Act, the Apprenticeship Act, the Dream Act, the Paycheck Equity Act, Older Employees Discrimination Act, the Labor, Well being and Human Providers and Training Appropriations Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Development Act of 2021, the Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act and the Inflation Discount Act, plus too many to call right here. Our state is in dire want of efficient illustration. We’re a wealthy state in our various inhabitants; we’re a poor state in our illustration in Congress. We are able to change it for the higher; that should imply getting Stephanie Bice out of workplace within the fifth District. 

— Penny Barber, Edmond