I am writing to urge American women not to be apathetic in the face of threatened erosion of their reproductive rights, especially in light of the June 30 Supreme Court ruling on a case brought against Hobby Lobby.

Please let me introduce myself: I am not an activist or even politically well informed. But I am a daughter, a mother, and a grandmother.

Furthermore, I am the child of a woman who, because of the rigidity of laws in the 1920s and 1930s, had no access to birth control and consequently gave birth many times beyond her capacity to love and nurture or to provide them with the resources to go out into the world independently.

Now, women are threatened with being thrust back into the same rigid regime.

People might wonder why I care.

I am not writing for myself. I am writing on behalf of my first great-granddaughter, who will be joining us in November. I want her to have the rights and choices that her grandmother was denied.

Pearl Tibbetts Sawyer, Auburn

Editor’s note: On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, that closely held for-profit corporations with  religious owners may opt out of mandated birth control coverage under the Affordable Care Act.