I’m a woman.  Further I’m a woman with a daughter and four granddaughters. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court decided that women in the United States had a fundamental right to choose whether to have an abortion or not.  It was a matter of privacy guaranteed in the 14th Amendment which protected a pregnant woman’s decision.  The government had no right to interfere in this basic human right.

I was 23 years old.

I remember well the bad old days when friends needed to visit the “backroom” to undo an unwanted pregnancy.  I had a friend who almost died when one of those unsanctioned operations failed.  I’m sure the trauma from that continues.

However, now with the recent Supreme Court decision overturning this basic human right, the bad old days have returned. Just in time for my granddaughters’ generation to take up this fight again.

But I can do one thing which can help ensure the right to privacy for my granddaughters.  I can vote. And my Congressional vote will be for Francis Conole. He stands unequivocally for a woman’s reproductive freedom.  He says:

“I’ll always support a woman’s right to choose. This starts by codifying Roe v. Wade with federal legislation to ensure a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions is the law of the land.”

So when my granddaughters ask, “Grandma, what was it like when you were young”, I will tell them the reality of the bad old days and how voting is now their pathway to freedom.

— Judith A. Jerome, Syracuse