Politics

In Florida’s election we have a constitutional amendment on abortion rights to vote on. I believe that choosing to abort a child is wrong in almost all circumstances. My belief is founded on both moral and religious convictions. Every abortion causes me anguish. Yet I am voting for the amendment to restore abortion rights in Florida. Why?

I am not voting on whether to have abortions. I am voting on whether to harm women and doctors who terminate a pregnancy before a child is able to survive outside the womb. Here is the text of the amendment:

After the second assassination attempt against him, Trump claimed Biden and Harris had inspired threats to his life. Mr. Trump, I have a little advice for you. It might be in your interest to stop accusing your opponents and focus on the real danger. You yourself are inspiring threats to your life. You encourage your supporters to be violent. You tell them elections are rigged. You scam them with lies and false promises. When violent desperate people start to realize you’ve made fools of them, that’s dangerous for you. It’s not Democrats’ fault.

As soon as Justice Ginsburg died, the same Republican senators who promised in 2016 that they would never vote on a Supreme Court justice in an election year said they would vote on a new justice in 2020. It would be tempting to say I never believed Republicans anyway, but I do remember a time when I believed Republicans.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, one of the delegates heard a woman ask Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied,

A republic—if you can keep it.

I’m afraid that some of my Christian friends have forgotten their duty to keep the republic.

Cryptography is legally protected by the right to free speech. It is also protected by the right to keep and bear arms. Until 2000, cryptography was considered a weapon under United States law, and exporting strong encryption from the United States was banned. The same arguments used to defend gun ownership also apply to the right to use encryption to transmit and store information.