Fight for your rights
Anti-choice activists have been lying for decades and in many ways, as the article by Judith Davidoff points out ("Pregnant? Scared?" 2/1/2013). Not only do they misrepresent their crisis pregnancy centers; not only do they lie about the procedure and its results; not only did they create a fake "diagnosis" called post-abortion syndrome; not only do they use intimidation, tactics of disrespect and disregard for anyone who is not Christian; but they are also opposed to birth control, as Ruth Conniff's article points out ("Back to the Stone Age," 2/1/2013).
It is upsetting that we need to keep putting out fires for rights that we supposedly have won. I hope the younger generations of women do not take these rights for granted; as both articles point out, we cannot afford to do so.
Myrna Solganick, Middleton
Highway robbery
The biggest problem with our state transportation system isn't how we fund it (i.e. gas tax vs. pay per mile), it's that we waste hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every biennium on a wish list for the highway lobby (Dave Cieslewicz's "Real Environmentalists Pay Per Mile," 1/25/2013). Let's start by cutting wasteful and extravagant spending on highways, and use the savings to repair local roads and bridges and improve transit.
For example, the current biennial budget committed $3.2 billion to highway projects, including the I-90/I-39 widening project south of Madison. WISPIRG (Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group) research found that the traffic count and crash data used to justify this project are both nearly 10 years old and don't support widening the highway as a mitigation measure. Additionally, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation has chosen the most expensive option for construction in every case on this project, projected to cost anywhere from $715 million to $1.5 billion. That's a lot of squandered road repair and transit money!
It's time to stand up to the highway lobbyists and their road-building allies, who had six of 10 seats on the Transportation Commission. Making sure state leaders get our transportation priorities straight will be a victory both for our transportation system and the taxpayers who support it.
Bruce Speight, Director, WISPIRG