Time to choose: Letter to the editor, Brunswick Beacon

Brunswick Beacon, 09.04.25

William Styron’s novel “Sophie’s Choice” is the harrowing tale of a concentration camp prisoner and her two children. A Nazi doctor gave her an inhuman choice: pick one child to die, or both would be exterminated. A tormented Sophie made the unbearable choice. She sacrificed her daughter to save her son. Sophie was eventually freed from Auschwitz. She was never freed from guilt, which drove her to suicide.

Rachel Roth Aldhizer is a North Carolina mother and life-long Republican. Google her harrowing August 21 essay, “I’m a Conservative. My Disabled Son Needs Medicaid to Live.” She writes, “Children’s lives are quite literally on the line” because of Republican Medicaid cuts.

NC’s choices in recent elections sent Ted Budd to the Senate, 10 Republicans (including our representative David Rouzer) to Congress and Donald Trump to the White House. Republicans passed Trump’s Big Bad Boondoggle for Billionaires. The Congressional Budget Office says it will balloon the deficit by $3.4 trillion, eliminate healthcare for 10 million Americans, and make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Senator Tillis was the only NC Republican who didn’t vote for Trump’s Budget Busting Butcher’s Bill. Tillis warned that it would strip healthcare from 663,000 North Carolinians and cost NC $32 billion. Trump punished Tillis by encouraging a Republican primary challenge in 2026. Tillis chose not to seek reelection and accused Republicans of “the greatest form of hypocrisy in American politics. When people see independent thinking on the other side, they cheer. But when those very same people see independent thinking coming from their side, they scorn, ostracize and even censure them.”

While Sophie’s terrible choice saved a child’s life, NC’s terrible choices condemned children to death just to make rich Americans even richer. We can and must make better choices next year. We can choose Democrats who will restore Medicaid. We can choose Roy Cooper and send him to the Senate to save children’s lives.

Nancy Briganti

Carolina Shores