In his July 22 column “If Roe falls, Democrats stand to benefit at polls’’ (Opinion), Jeff Jacoby writes, “Yet if Roe were to be overturned, would it really be the calamity that Democrats anticipate with such horror?’’ Yes, it would.

The right to choose has nothing to do with which party is in power, but it is all about providing a woman with the means to make decisions about her life and her health care. As a Democrat, I don’t feel that the demise of Roe would be “liberating,’’ freeing me to support what Jacoby calls “reasonable restrictions on abortion.’’ The current law already has reasonable restrictions (by the way, I don’t know one woman who has ever had an abortion because the fetus is the “wrong’’ sex).

Plus, to state that the “abortion debate has been so shrill for so long because the Supreme Court prevented Americans from working out the issues for themselves’’ is completely naive and doesn’t take into account that bipartisanship has certainly not been a hallmark of the current administration. Jacoby’s opinion piece just underlines the fact that the real needs and issues that affect women are dismissed as unimportant and that women are simply political footballs.

Lisa Kimball

Watertown