Dear Governor Cox and Republican leadership in the state of Utah, I’m an extremely concerned native-born Utah woman of pioneer heritage that has traveled the world in service of our country to retire and come home to my native Ogden. After reporting on human rights infractions in Eastern Europe and the Western hemisphere I am at odds coming home to my state just to see the stripping of women’s and LGBTQ rights. The most recent abortion and gender affirming care for youth bans are heartbreaking. For a party that claims to want smaller government, it seems that current politicians only care about what goes on in people’s private lives. If the tables were flipped, and Viagra and Sono Bello treatments were banned under the auspices that ‘God must want you to stop having erections,’ men would be outraged. It is the same pious sexist and backward thinking that is making life much more difficult for women and transgender youth.

I yearn for the day that Utah government officials draft policy to save our natural resources, focus on our economy and education, and allow for personal freedoms, not only to own weapons, but to form our lives, celebrate our differences, and create families as we choose. I hope the dominant church leadership and their involvement in the state government, through membership, realize that we all have free agency. That just as they fought against oppressive religious restrictions, modern society must be allowed to evolve.

Christina Hernandez

Ogden

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