We wish you were right, Leela

THE EDITOR: It’s not often that I find myself wishing Ms Leela Ramdeen were right, but this is one of those occasions. I really wish her claim that ASPIRE was receiving US$ 20,000 per month was indeed true (Newsday July 25).  For, as a popular advertisement once said “we need the money!” To the best of our knowledge there is not a single NGO working in reproductive health in the Caribbean that does not get funds from the US.  What’s her problem, anyway? Of course, US$ 20,000 a month is not the figure that should engage Ms Ramdeen or any other TT citizen.  The monthly figure we should be looking at is the approximately TT$ 1 million our government spends month after month treating women with complications of botched abortions. 

That affects every taxpayer. As soon as there are no more women entering our public hospitals as a result of unsafe abortions, ASPIRE will have no justification for its campaign. Funding did not create this problem.  We have lived with this ugliness for decades. Funding has merely enabled us to develop a campaign for justice. ASPIRE is as pro-life as our Prime Minister. Her other naughty claims — that we rely on others to draft our letters, and that we intended to bamboozle the public with the proposed legislation we drafted — are hardly worthy of a response.  They not only show her contempt for us, but also her contempt for the public. They also expose a peculiar disposition to cast the worst possible motives at persons with whom she disagrees. What a shame!

LYNETTE SEEBARAN-SUITE
ASPIRE