Trust Women

 The Catholic school just down the street from me puts up this display every election cycle.  I pulled over just long enough to get this picture.  It is meant to be a memorial.  The sign reads that all of those white crosses represent the unborn fetuses lost to abortion. 

I am not questioning anybody’s deeply held beliefs. 

Let me say that again:  I am NOT questioning or condemning anyone’s belief systems.

But every time I go past this I feel compelled to point out to whoever might be listening that all of those white crosses could also represent a woman who died in childbirth after carrying a high risk pregnancy. 

Every one of those crosses could represent a single mom stuck in poverty and needing public assistance for years to come.

Every one of those crosses could represent a woman now tied indefinitely in some way or another to the abusive jerk she had been trying to get away from.    

And, yes, one of those crosses just may represent a woman who died or injured herself permanently trying to do a home abortion.

I am not questioning anybody’s faith or beliefs.  I am just pointing out that the abortion debate is a lot more complicated than our political leaders make it out to be.

The decade long study of a thousand women seeking abortion care outlined in Diana Greene Foster’s book The Turnaway Study fleshes out some of those nuances and dispels many of the “abortion myths” that are prevalent in our society still.

The end conclusion, though, was one I had intuited myself many years ago:  When a woman says she just can’t cope with a pregnancy right then – Believer her.

Protect Roe.

Trust women.

100 Years

 

“Remember the ladies.”  Abigail Adams famously wrote to her husband.

Well.  Gonna burst some bubbles here, but the men-folk that were working hard writing a new constitution when she wrote that had no intention of “remembering the ladies.”

And so the work began.

With more defeats then victories is seems like, the 19^th Amendment extending the voting power to women was not passed until June 4, 1919.  Then there was more hard work with seemingly more setbacks then victories to get it fully ratified. 

That did not happen until August 18, 1920.

That was (nearly) a hundred years ago.  That is 1,200 months.  Not factoring in leap years, that is 36,500 days.

To put things more in perspective, the women that started the suffrage movement did not live to see the conclusion.  Those that did live to see the conclusion had not been born yet when it started.  “We were not ‘given’ anything” any of them would likely snap.  “We went out and TOOK it.”

 

36,500 days.  1,200 months.  One hundred years later and we’re still not getting paid fairly.  We’re still fighting to have autonomy over our own bodies.  Women of all color and creeds are still facing harassment, domestic abuse and poverty with little resources.  Even more disgustingly, we’re Still getting blamed in some way when we’re attacked.

One hundred years…and the battle still rages.  It is no wonder that some are exhausted and at the end of their energy.  Which is why, for today at least, I am taking some time to quietly reflect on these stock photos.  These women, many never named, are not just why I can vote.  I can now also own property.  I can sign contracts and open my own bank accounts without a male co-signer.  For all their flawed and cringe worthy racist views, they are why I, a century later, can live the life that I have.

go raibh maith agat, ladies.

 

Thank you.

 

The battle will resume tomorrow.

 

"Celebrate Youth!"

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvJ1g-gImaQ

This month I am including the link to a music video.  If I was a video producer (and had the right permissions, of course) I would find it interesting to overlap this song from the 80’s with images of the youth of today.

March for our Lives was done by high schoolers.  Climate activist Greta Thornburg is not yet 18. The camps at Standing Rock were heavily youth organized.  The Black Lives Matter movement has a high element of young people. 

This is what we should be celebrating: youth caring enough about the world around them to get involved. We should be encouraging that engagement –even enabling.  Not accusing them of just trying to get out of school for a day.  Or online lessons as the current state of affairs may dictate.  (Dang virus)

Full disclosure, of course: I am not a parent and feel I would not make a very good one…but isn’t what we work our collective butts off for?  So our kids can have it easier than we did?

So, “Celebrate Youth!”

And “Teach them right.”

(for lyrics to song, go here:   https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=lyrics+to+celebrate+youth+rick+springfield)