Letters from Readers

But they’re all charming little curios, aren’t they? The mainstream press has spent my lifetime simultaneously depicting Republicans as the party of law and order and as incorrigible little scamps who just can’t help themselves when it comes to seeing how much of your small sacred capacity for self-determination they can steal. Acts of vandalism incurred amid popular protests are so self-evidently a mortal threat to our civic order that a newsreader can bypass the trial and the jury and progress immediately toward demanding execution. But when it comes to the people running the United States, it’s not really a big deal, and who’s to say what’s illegal just because it’s in the criminal code? It’s only the world’s largest arsenal, nearly a $7 trillion budget, and your unalienable rights, but, let’s be honest—the only real crime is if it doesn’t work. As soon as someone starts getting away with it, they might as well get away with all of it, lest anyone on a cable pundit panel seem tragically unsavvy or like they hold a disqualifying partiality for laws.

“This one woman, who I remember quite vividly, with red hair was in her mid thirties when she came in,” he said. “As I was getting ready to do her first exam, she was just shaking uncontrollably. I said, ‘What's wrong? Tell me how you’re feeling?’ And she said, ‘Well, it's so different. You're a doctor. The lights are on. It's clean. The windows are open.’” 

The woman told Dr. Hern that she’d had an illegal abortion in unsafe conditions. “Then she looked at me and she said, ‘Please don't ever stop doing this.’ So I didn't. But now I have to – and I don't like it, but that's the way it is.”