I grew learning in church school. I was raised on Bible stories. God and Heaven were sometimes in question. But, religion guided by the Ten Commandments was always a good thing and the United States Constitution guaranteed the separation of church and state.

I remember in the late 1950s when the seemingly innocuous words ‘under God’ were added to the nation’s Pledge of Allegiance. ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.’

‘One nation under God, indivisible…’ is now a nation divided by religious violence, hatred and extremism.

We are asked to believe that human life begins immediately at conception — rendering the time of gestation and its part in motherhood as being totally unnecessary to that life. Yet, I believe that I owe my life to my birth mother, even though I was placed into early adoption.

One can only wonder in amazement at the United States Supreme Court’s political action in purposefully dividing our nation and in taking away women’s rights in overturning Roe v. Wade.

LANCE A. HEITZ,

Presque Isle