Gordon S. Jones from Draper wrote in the Readers' Forum on July 30 that Matheson recently voted for a "pregnant woman's right to a dead baby" when he voted against a bill which would ban partial-birth abortions entirely.
It saddens me to say this could not be further from the truth. What Matheson voted for was the right of a woman to live. Partial-birth abortions are rare, and the vast majority of women who decide to have them do so only as a last resort when their life is in jeopardy.
Now if protecting a woman's right to life is a "hard-core leftist" view, according to Jones, then so be it, but Matheson's vote was also in accordance with the views of "hard-core right wing states' rightists." As put forth by the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court in 1973, it is a state's right — not Congress' — to decide whether or not to ban partial-birth abortions in the second or third trimester.
It stands to reason that Republicans may not agree with this "hard-core leftist" view of allowing a woman to survive fatal complications in a pregnancy, but that is beside the point, the issue here is that Matheson voted for the right of states to decide, which incidentally happens to be the only Constitutional way to vote on this issue.
Andrew Christensen
Salt Lake City