To the editor:
I wish we had a two-party system in Northern Virginia so our elected representatives could not go off the deep end. U.S. Rep. Don Beyer’s latest constituent communication evidences the degree to which one-party governance has caused our representatives to lose perspective. I am sure there are Republican places where the same thing in reverse has happened such as with Texas’ draconian abortion law, from which Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin has distanced himself.
In Beyer’s paragraph on the COVID-19 pandemic, the last entry tells his constituents how we can access a copy of our vaccination certificates. This is important constituent-services information of interest regardless of party and should have been the first thing in the paragraph, instead of what was actually the first thing: draconian initiatives to force people to be vaccinated.
What is particularly worrisome is that Beyer and all but a handful of his colleague Democrats would be the first ones to champion a woman’s right to control her body and make her own healthcare decisions, but when it comes to COVID-19 vaccinations, they want the government to play the same sort of role that many Republicans would have it play regarding abortion.
Nearly half a century after “Roe v. Wade,” it suddenly occurred to congressional liberals that they should codify abortion rights. Will their vehicle for doing so, the Women’s Health Protection Act, provide appropriate protection for viable, third trimester fetuses, which “Roe v. Wade” allowed, and place other boundaries within “Roe v Wade’s” parameters so that we no longer are side-by-side with China and North Korea among the few countries condoning carteblanche abortion?
Beyer’s constituent communication mentions the divisive, Democrats-only $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill before it mentions the bipartisan Senate-passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. If restoring comity and bipartisanship to governance is important, shouldn’t this $1.5 trillion initiative, tucked in at the end almost as an afterthought even though it contains funds to help Alexandria deal with flooding, which helps everyone regardless of party, be mentioned first?
-Dino Drudi, Alexandria
