Good morning. I'm Al Weed and I'm running for Congress in the 5th District.

I am here to show my support for the April 25th March For Women's Rights. I am looking forward to the trip to and from Washington with many from this area, and to the march with hundreds of thousands on that Sunday.

This is a vital project to protect the fundamental right of a woman to control what happens to her own body.

Thinking of the statues of our founding fathers located by City Hall where we were originally to meet, I wonder what they would have said today? It's a game we all play: to try to interpret the issues of our day through the works of 18th Century landed gentry. We would be better off looking at what they actually did regarding the role of government and following the spirit of those actions.

Jefferson and the others, religious Christians for the most part, fully understood the temptation to take a particular interpretation of the bible and force public policy to conform. They were also well aware that history of the religious wars in England -- not so far in their distant past -- too often turned on exactly whose interpretation was to prevail.

Wisely, they rejected the notion that any sectarian interpretation of religious texts be used as a basis for public policy. This is a lesson I wish were more broadly understood today.

The Founding Fathers, conservatives by today's standards, also knew that the right of the individual to be free from government regulation in his home and family was reason enough to mount a revolution.

Note that I said "his". I have tried to think of any government regulation or intrusion into the functioning of the male body that would be equivalent to the efforts of some to have government define reproductive rights for women. Of course, I can think of none.

What was worth a revolution for men over 200 years ago is surely today worth a trip to our nation's capitol today. More importantly, a nation that would allow these fundamental rights of women to control their own bodies to be limited by governmental regulation based on religious views, is entering into a dangerous, dark era.

I pray that the action of millions a few weeks from today will be a light of reason and hope so that America will wake up. These are not just the rights of child bearing women, but the right of all of us to have public policy be made on the basis of ration and the common good.

Al Weed, April 14, 2004