Speaking out about birth control

Dina Gerber, Henderson

Friday, March 2, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.

I am a 65-year-old Catholic woman who attends Mass weekly and financially supports my parish. I am also in total agreement with Monday’s column by Maura Casey, “Catholic women must speak out.”

I am a mother of three and a grandmother of three and part of the 98 percent of Catholic women who have used artificial birth control. I have been very disturbed that a woman’s right to access contraceptives, as a part of her health care insurance, is under attack. The saddest part of this effort is that access to contraceptives can deter unnecessary abortions.

Also, to those who oppose welfare, free access to contraception is infinitely more cost effective than the welfare costs for a child born as a result of an unwanted pregnancy to a poor woman, married or single.

I do not want our daughters and granddaughters to have to go back to a time when women had no choice. Politicians who espouse “less government interference in our lives” and want to “take back our freedoms” have no right to be advocating taking away the freedom of women to choose when they (along with their husbands and God) decide to conceive a child.