To the editor:

As an 82 year old, retired Registered Nurse, let me tell you why I am voting “No” to the Amendment on the August Second Ballot. 

Growing up in a small town in southeast Oklahoma in the 1950s, I remember hearing of women injuring themselves and even dying from “back-street” abortions. Wire coat hangers, knitting needles, and other items were introduced into the uterus to terminate a pregnancy. Some women resorted to using lye as douches or drinking it to end a pregnancy. 

In 1966 the Washington Post ran a four-part article on illegal abortions, it estimated one million abortions were performed that year, and all were illegal. A couple of quotes from that article: “Humiliation, agony, and the risk of sterility or death do not deter American women from ending an average of one out of every five pregnancies by abortion,” and, “Otherwise, desperate women, facing the financial burdens and social stigma of unintended pregnancy and believing they have no other option, will continue to risk their lives by undergoing unsafe abortions.”   

In my 45-plus years of nursing, I have helped save the lives of at least three women who were in immediate danger of dying from pregnancies that had occurred outside of the uterus in the fallopian tubes. When the tube ruptures from the growing fetus it is a life-and-death situation for the mother and the fetus. Without surgical intervention, both will die. If the proposed Amendment passes, the physician will be performing an illegal abortion. 

Please vote NO. 

Teddy Williamson

Hoisington