I travel the world giving talks. The more I travel, the more I love Maine! We are a peace-loving people, and all my books and lectures are about love and peace.

During a period of 11 years, I became friends with the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner: Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She taught us to care for the weakest and poorest. We don’t need to kill those who are unwanted and unloved.

“Works of love are works of peace.” Destroying innocent life isn’t love. Even if we could forget the unborn, we should see that abortion hurts women – it doesn’t solve their problems – it only creates new ones.

Peace-loving people shouldn’t have to pay for the direct killing of innocent life. It goes against every fiber of my being. It goes against natural beauty and peace. LD 1309 should be rejected.

Mother Teresa had love greater than fear. She’d enter into war zones to rescue the helpless. With all the suffering her eyes had seen, she said: “the greatest destroyer of peace in the world today is abortion. If a mother can kill her own child, what is left to kill but each other?” She said it’s a sad thing when a child must die so that we can live as we want.

Instead of working for destructive purposes, let’s work for peace. Let’s have love greater than fear.

Let’s use our tax dollars for saving lives – in ways that help others and do not hurt any life at all in the process.

Susan Conroy

South Portland