So it has finally happened. According to a leaked draft of the Supreme Court, conservative judges appointed to the bench by radical Republicans, appear poised to strike down Roe.

While the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan was a party about individual responsibility, the modern Republican Party has shown its desire to deny us the ability to make choices about our own lives.

For the first time in my lifetime, individual liberty has been constricted and not enlarged. If this does happen, all of us will be less free, and our mothers, sisters, daughters and wives will be forced to submit to a religious morality that is not their own.

If Roe is struck down, we will be the generation that stepped back into the shadows.

There is conservatism and there is radicalism. A conservative believes in liberty and equality and the power of individual choice. A conservative is rankled by a government that tells them what they can do and what they should believe.

This is a Maine conservative, proud and defiant. What we are seeing in today’s Republican Party is radicalism, the attempt to force beliefs on others, to snatch away the liberties of people who don’t think or pray the way we do, to enter into the most private choices of our lives and to dominate us. This is not New England conservatism.

I hope all of us remember what the Republican Party has become when it comes time to vote in November. I know that I will.

Ben Bedard, Auburn

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