Free, non-stop bus rides from Amherst and Northampton to Springfield are available for people who want to attend a February 11 rally to defend access to contraception and safe abortions. The Republican-controlled federal government is trying to limit access. The rally starts at 1 p.m. at 36 Court Street. Organizers have a web site at:

www.OurBodiesOurJustice.wordpress.com.

As of February 9, about 250 people had RSVP'd on the event Facebook page. Rally organizer Lindsay Sabadosa can be reached via that web site or by phone at (413) 570-0549. She told the Valley Post the event is sponsored by the local chapters of the AFL-CIO and Planned Parenthood, and by other groups.

Marches and rallies played a decisive role in the movements that outlawed slavery, won the right to vote for women, created the middle class, and overthrew apartheid in South Africa. That's according to the books “A People's History of the United States” by Howard Zinn, “There is Power in a Union” by Philip Dray, "A Woman's Crusade" by Mary Walton, and "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela.

President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are trying to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides reproductive health care and education to millions of women, men, and young people worldwide.

Access to birth control relates to overpopulation and poverty. On average, around the world, the most educated people have the fewest children. Good schools cost money.

More than 3 million children under age five die every year because they didn't get enough good quality food to eat. The vast majority of these people lived in poor nations, like the central African nation of Chad, where the life expectancy is 50. In the USA, the life expectancy is 80; in Japan, it's 85. The statistics in this paragraph are from the United Nations.

One way to prevent people from starving to death is to raises taxes on billionaires and use the money to buy good quality food and give it to poor people. Another is to cut spending by the USA on its military. The USA, with 5 percent of the world's population, spends as much as the rest of the world combined on the military. Almost half (44 percent) of this year's entire federal budget of about $3 trillion is being spent on war.

Invasions by the USA, and policies enacted under the threat of such invasions, combined with assassinations by the CIA of democratically-elected leaders like Salvador Allende of Chile and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, are major causes of poverty around the world.