To the editor:

Gov. Ron DeSantis is getting in the way of protecting children from an airborne virus. Hampering the success of ending the pandemic he describes his actions as individual rights. But what it looks like is risking our lives to win cheap political points (“Look, ma, I got as many people to die under the Biden administration as died during the Trump pandemic!”). DeSantis couches his sabotage as the rights of the individual. He claims he’s all for “parents rights” over the health of the community. Oddly, he does not wish to protect individual’s choice in becoming parents. Last week when the Supreme Court upheld Texas outlawing abortion, he threatened to copy that model in future Florida legislation.

Now if you are Typhoid Mary, carrying a plague, my right to not be infected should influence policy about quarantining. But mandating a teenager, raped by her father, to carry to term; seems like quite the opposite of good public policy.

The decision to have an abortion, should remain an individual decision. Many of the adult women who choose abortion report that they simply could not afford to meet another child’s needs. The intervention of the white men in the Republican Party into the uterus of each female is the opposite of small government. It is the opposite of the state allowing individuals to make their own medical choices. The intrusion carries with it poor public policy outcomes. Battered women are often mothers who stay in abusive situations for fear for the children. Welfare mothers are frequently single. Legislating coerced births without sufficient financial assistance to women we relegate to brood is just cruel. It is state interference at the most poignant personal medical decision with no upside for the community.

Let’s consider if DeSantis is, perhaps, not being intrusive enough in this matter. Should we not consider (reversible) vasectomies for a man who fathers a child out of wedlock, dumping his progeny onto the welfare rolls? Shouldn’t the state snip the lads who rape? The males who are in prison because they beat women or rape children? After all, if women and girls in the culture are to be coerced into unwanted medical procedures, why not men as well?

Ellen Starbird

Cape Coral