I told this story here two years ago, but I want to repeat it tonight, as the reality of women’s lives is being erased in favor of an image of women as mothers….
You are a magnificent voice. I am a 75 year old woman, a mother and stepmother....As a jununior in college at USC...I walked through Watts in Los Angeles registering voters during Robert Kennedys campaign..my heart was broken when he was assasinated in the next room from our celebrating. You are the first voice that has made me believe again.....I have been active; but you are the first voice of hope. Thank you from my heart.
Beautifully said Penelope, I suspect we all feel that way about HCR. It calms me to read and understand what is going on and the implications. I thank her each day for writing this newsletter.
Penelope and Carol, we lived through John, Martin and Bobby (lost a great president, a peaceful voice for change and a hope for another great president). I remember the day of each murder. Difficult time to live through. I, too, am grateful for HCR voice and pray that the nation wakes up and gets angry enough to let our voices be heard instructing the public and promoting civil liberty rights all the way through to the election. (Living in a deeply red state our options are limited! Ugh.)
I'm sharing a poem I wrote several years ago, but revised recently, because as we have found out, War Never Ends. At least so far, but women, especially, working together, are the future to change that fact. In tandem with photographs of women protesting the War in 2004 in an exhibit: A COURAGE OF WORDS You, readers would add your own names to the list, as it, too is endless—Irene Lipshin 2004, 2007, 2021
WE the People stand up for peace.
In the House Jeannette Rankin votes nay
for both World Wars; after 9/11, Barbara Lee
presses the lone red button against retaliation.
We raise our voices—
ballot box, rally, street corner, lunch room,
buttons , bumper stickers. Flags
Martin Luther King, Jr. marches the long road
to the Hill. We march with John Lewis singing
Give Peace a Chance, If I Had a Hammer,
We Shall Overcome.
We Climb the Hill with Amanda Gorman. The list is endless as Poetry Explains makes clear the world
Jimmy Santiago Baca, Langston Hughes, Etheridge Knight, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Philip Levine, Amiri Baraka Carolyn Forché, James Baldwin, Yusef Komunyakaa, Rita Dove, Lucille Clifton, shine light on shadows of injustice.
Hi Judith. I’m not sure if you’re commenting to Kathleen or me, Irenie. If about my poem, “Courage of Word” thank you for asking. And of course I’m honored. As long as I know where and who. Happy Mother’s Day. It’s always good to credit written work with authors name, especially if it can be shared.
Pretty sure Judith was responding to your poem, Irenie ... I appreciate your contributions to thIs blog - your recent comment about education and class access left my eyeballs rolling around on the floor - took awhile to find them - I copied and pasted to my notepad (for occasional access and review) ... hope that is ok by you - many thanks!!
There are so often thoughtful and thought-provoking comments here that at times I feel a need to share them, crediting "a commenter" on Letters From An American. So many of you are so skilled at marshaling and expressing your thoughts and sharing your knowledge that I can't help wanting to enable an even wider group to appreciate & learn from them.
Likewise, Judith - I can't even keep up with all the informative links people share (slow reader) not to mention the comments people make ... someone suggested that an archive could be available for future reference - lots of unpublished history is written in these pages!!
Hi Kathleen and Judith, I’m definitely a fan of you both and the amazing writers and thinkers on LFAA. Thank you for your awesome note! I appreciate your reply. Comments are different from poems or essays or art work or photography, etc. If I publish/post a poem by another poet or my own, with name on it, then that is part of the poem. I think it’s awesome that years, centuries later, artists, poets, writers, historians, are named when their work is still shared. And lucky for us there’s so much of historical poetry and writing. Irene Lipshin
Happy Mothers' Day to you, Penelope, to you, dear Heather, to all the beloved women who follow you on LFAA and beyond, and to mothers of all genders who teach us the humanity of motherhood.
May I join this voice to yours in gratitude for the work Professor Richardson does each day to bring light where there is darkness, hope that vanquishes despair.
I’m right with you in searching for the right pizza dough.
I bake on a stone and look for crispy edges with a moist crust.
Curing the dough for 24 hours, lightly coated with olive oil and sealed in an airtight tub, has made more difference than almost any other factor. But I’m not there yet.
A companion seeking the ‘holy grail’ of pizza making. I am fortunate to live near a bread baker who mills organic wheat into flour in the local shop. I use to ancient grains in the mix, 20% of the flour total, to provide for an interesting dough flavor. Rest! I use 2 twenty minute rests between needing sessions! Finally, I let the dough for a thick crust pie rise in the pan for 2 hours before baking. These are changes that I have made during the past year seeking the elusive perfect pizza crust! Thanks for commenting!
I did not know this history. It outweighs a thousand bouquets or cards. For this Mothers’ Day I will just ask my sons to read this letter. Thank you Professor Richardson, I am grateful for all that you share with us.
"'Arise, women! ... Say firmly: 'We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.'"
Thank you, Heather CR. I feel comfortable w your repeating this history as it did not attach as clearly last year. I so appreciate your gentle reminders that we women have continuing work to be done ‘to take control of politics from ..men who ..permitted such carnage.’ We are continuously seeing the carnage in Ukraine… Today…
PLEASE ALL WOMEN & MEN read this letter aloud at your meals tomorrow. And stop and talk w your family & friends about how you can participate in stopping the lies, politics, carnage from spreading any further…become creative w your efforts !
We are still fighting for equality, in our workplaces, in our government, and in our homes. This latest attack on our ability to make our own decisions over OUR bodies just shows that we are still in the fight for our lives. We thought we had won at least this fight 50 years ago. Perhaps we became complacent and thought the "war" was over. But those battles for our reproductive decisions were just skirmishes. The ones who want to keep us "in our place" have been patiently scheming ever since. Whose rights will they attack next?
The know no limits, they smell unlimited power and it portends evil which will erase “womanhood” as I have come to embrace it. Amy Barrett is the means by which Mitch made it happen. Of course there are exceptions, Amy Barrett being one of them, Ginni Thomas, and Elaine Chao two other traitors to their womanhood. May they suffer from what they and their ilk have wrought. of course they won’t, they will be useful tools for all their lives…
I understand The women who are most vocal about banning abortion are the ones who have had one? Their argument is they are saving the rest of us from making the mistake they did?
I don't care a hoot about this nonsensical, condescending argument. My body, my choice.
Maybe we can get the ERA passed this time around as icing on the cake.
The women that I know who’ve had an abortion are in favor of letting others make their own decision and say that, faced with the same circumstances, they’d do it again. Of course, there are always people who regret past actions, regardless of their merit. The antiabortion leaders shamelessly use these women, ignoring the pain of their telling their stories again and again, reliving the trauma and being told how horrible they were.
Most of the women who have aborted a pregnancy feel relief and know they made the right choice in their individual circumstances. They may feel regret, too, of course, and wonder what might have been, as women do when they miscarry. They don’t usually feel they have the right to tell other women what to do.
As a male, I do not feel I have any right to speak for women, but with their permission, I would like to speak with them. One of the more odious strategies of the Pro-Life campaign has been to spread misinformation that many women regret and suffer for their decision to have terminated a pregnancy. The facts, however, as demonstrated in the Turnaway Study, are starkly different: Abortion does not increase a woman’s risk of having suicidal thoughts, or the chance of developing PTSD, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, or lower life satisfaction. Abortion does not increase a woman’s use of alcohol, tobacco or drugs. Conversely, being denied an abortion reduces women and children’s financial security and safety, and existing children of women denied abortions were more than 3 times more likely to live in households below the federal poverty level and they were less likely to achieve developmental milestones than the existing children of women who received abortions.
The regret is not having successfully prevented pregnancy to start with, noting there is no pregnancy without a sperm, normally produced by an autonomous male with very little if any accountability.
Excellent observation...useful tools. And no, they won't suffer and neither will the women in the families of any of the people making these decisions. They are all wealthy enough to fly off and get an abortion. It will be the rest of the women who will suffer as abortion becomes another privilege of the rich. My hope is that this leak will light a fire and get anyone not under the sway of R nonsense to vote in large numbers. I see that death star made an appearance at the Kentucky Derby.
It most certainly isn't about babies because if it were, babies and mothers would have much better support. But some of these people are not interested in control either; their minds are addled by their religious beliefs because it's God's plan. True believers are zealots and think they are carrying out God's will.
I have cousins who are evangelical Christians and believe abortion is murder and women who abort are baby killers. It's their "truth" and they aren't bright enough or interested enough to question it.
I had always thought Mother's Day was invented as a marketing scheme to sell more greeting cards. Mothers' Day is so much more powerful. It does seem like war means men go off to fight and women take care of the home front and doing men's jobs vacated when men go off to war. But then the men come home and women are told they are taking jobs away from the men coming home and to go back home and be mothers. Now it takes two breadwinners in the family to make hopefully a decent living. What happens now if a lot of men and women go to war? Where are the people that can run the manufacturing plants .. and, she says cynically, keep turning out the weapons of war? Yes, the idea that there is an alternative to war based on how women would manage the world as harmonizers, not competitors is very tantalizing. I do not believe that competition is the way to make everything from capitalism to sports teams work. Sports may look like competition but the winners are the teams who learn know how to work together toward their common goal. Yes, one of my favorite themes is that we need to go from the OR world bifurcating everything and breeding hate and greed to the AND world where we have each others backs and work toward the well-being of the community and each individual in it. For me community encompasses anywhere you can get in a day -- roughing 22 miles if you're riding a horse, now almost anyplace in the world. We are now a global community and I hope it is the AND model that prevails. We, the People, all of us this time.
We are all in this together. There is enough to go around.
For all women today on this Mothers’ Day…..Salud! We are fabulous. Julia Ward Howe certainly thought so.
(I’ve always put the apostrophe at the end…did not know until today why and how that is as it is. Guess it was mothers’ intuition. Thank you for the reason as always, Heather!)
Speaking with a smile at myself for having enough good humor in this world to even do that-this old English teacher has to point. out that another reason we put the apostrophe after the 's' is GRAMMAR. It's a day for all mothers, yes?? I'm sure if we women were in charge we'd still be teaching our children to diagram sentences. I'm still cheerful this morning because my 7-year-old grandson was here overnight.
Our grandsons (I have two) and our granddaughters are our hope. The children are our hope. Why one group of Americans wants to “save” the unborn and not truly care about its future life shows a lack of understanding of the needs of humans to grow and thrive. It’s beyond my understanding. A religious fervor is chilling and hard to counter. We return to the power of mythology. The lies we must unlearn.
Hi Cathy! Yup, we live in a BOTH/AND world, not an EITHER/OR one. Humans are the only eusocial large animal that I know of. 99% of what we do is cooperative - the amount of cooperation that goes into making a complex thing such as an automobile is astounding. That is the most remarkable thing about us.
I think most illness (spiritual, emotional, physical) arises when we deny that fact. Mothering, unarguably the most important job on the planet, is where most of us learn to be human, to be strong interdependent beings. Mothers give us a strong, secure place to grow from. Thank-you to all mothers, mothers-to-be, and potential mothers, for making humans humane (mostly).
Lordy yes, my former best friends’s family was competitive in every aspect of their lives. They were and are high achievers, but the emotional cost has been high. I saw first hand that cooperation can have benefits only dreamed of by competitors…
Good morning, Jeri. Yes, we have lost that belief that what is good for us all is good for me. That passionate need to grab the larger share is something I find very frightening. Thanks for pointing this out.
I was telling a friend yesterday that I fantasize about alien invasions, just because it might make us human beings realize that in the end, we are all in it together. Climate change and Covid haven't brought us to that point, maybe aliens would.
Thank you for sharing this great piece of history Heather. And so important given our current reality. It truly is amazing that we women still have to fight for our rights. And the reality is that we do. So let’s make our collective voices heard, and don’t let a few right wing religious fanatics take control of our healthcare choices.
I thought the veil lifted from my eyes in the Trump years, but this Supreme Court vote yet again made all the lessons I learned of feminism real for the first time, despite all the sexism I’ve lived through, the stories of my mother, grandmother and even great grandmother fighting bitterly for their rights. This post hit me hard. I feel i am hearing the clarion call of urgency of feminism, really, for the first time. I am legitimately scared for poor women in our country.
My contrarian, progressive elder son, who also loves the glamour of weaponry and knows the details off every civil war battle, half-jokes he wants to join the military rather than fill out his college applications. My gift this Mother’s Day will be a demand that both my teenaged sons to read your post.
I'm male and I so agree with you, Rachel, but unfortunately, despite the excellent intentions of mothers throughout history, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink". (it's a sad commentary on male psyche, I admit it) .
It's enlightening — and encouraging — to know this history, and I've shared with my wife and 16-year-old son. Julia Ward Howe sounds like a force of nature who could help save the nation now.
"...she threw herself into the struggle for women’s suffrage, understanding that in order to create a more just and peaceful society, women must take up their rightful place as equal participants in American politics."
While that was lofty then, today is sounds quaint compared to what's coming. Women won't be silent, much less stopped. They know they have power and leverage. And corporate America, largely silent for now, will soon realize that hiring, already very difficult, will become even more so unless companies speak out in support of women and abortion rights.
Alito and his like-minded justices, for all their pseudo judicial high-mindedness, have awakened a force that they couldn't have imagined.
Corporate America MUST help rid us of this draconian nightmare, if not their silence will be their own downfall. This is about labor and being able to maintain and recruit your workforce. CEOs, wake up!
Gratitude to you for this beautiful and tragic reminder, Dear Heather. As wars upon wars re-occur, there’s necessary information to inform us of our shared history and our shared future. Fractured and at proverbial faultlines, we struggle to make sense of what our world means. Gratitude to you for informing us, enlightening us. Dark as this time may seem, a foot forward is most helpful.
Thank you for your so perfect words of gratitude to Heather. I am borrowing them, thank you very much, to add to my FB post, attributing them to a gentle ("fellow"?) reader of HCR.
That's why this "arrogant male" never completed the verses, the last line doesn't work -- sounds too much like cutting off the poor bird's other wing...
And in any case, my view of peace is a lively one, there's room for clashes, room for discord. So we can really value and enjoy harmony!
I'm sure we all agree when it comes to ridding ourselves of arrogance, aggression, brutality, ignorance and all the other garbage with which we poison the world, but no gender has a monopoly of vice or of virtue...
The problem is a colossal imbalance favoring the masculine mind at its most sterile and destructive, and the bias is so strong that some feminists fall into the trap of trying to conquer a share of male idiocies... Survival and happiness call for both men and women to establish balanced interdependence, both within, between and among themselves.
Thank you for this observation. I have long thought this and i agree that our survival depends on this. Too many women especially since death star gave carte blanche to the worst of human traits, have fallen into behaving badly. I am thinking here of a couple of our favs in this mode....Gunslinger Barbie and Gangrene. Just as bad, of course, are the Handmaiden and corrupt people like the Elaine Chao and Betsy Dingbat.
We must not go back to the bad old days, when you could become a mother because of rape or incest or failed birth control. All mothers must control their own bodies. Autonomy is essential for freedom. I did not have sons and grandsons for cannon fodder. American mothers support our fellow Ukrainian mothers.
I had not seen the earlier story, but I appreciated the thought this triggers about the care needed to separate valuing people as people from the valuing of the roles people play in their lifetimes. A fine way to end the night! Thank you.
Thank you for this powerful and most timely piece of history. It’s a much needed nudge which reminds us, that once again we are being challenged and must stand up and flex our muscles against the evil and threatening forces. Never forget, the sisterhood is powerful!
Today, er, yesterday was my 71st Birthday, but thank you for making Mother's Day relevant. Your historical insights help us to deal with the craziness and I'm forwarding today's message to my wonderful girls. Thank you!.
By age 11, I was well aware of how hard my mother worked (for my parent's business) and took care of 5 kids, house, meals...and, as a teen felt this"one day a year" wasn't enough, and I assumed it'd been created by Hallmark, as a way to boost sales and profit. Heather Cox Richardson just made Mother's Day deeply relevant for me.
You are a magnificent voice. I am a 75 year old woman, a mother and stepmother....As a jununior in college at USC...I walked through Watts in Los Angeles registering voters during Robert Kennedys campaign..my heart was broken when he was assasinated in the next room from our celebrating. You are the first voice that has made me believe again.....I have been active; but you are the first voice of hope. Thank you from my heart.
Beautifully said Penelope, I suspect we all feel that way about HCR. It calms me to read and understand what is going on and the implications. I thank her each day for writing this newsletter.
I certainly agree with you. You have made a huge difference in my 80 yr. Old life. Prof Richardson, you are a breath of fresh air 😍
Penelope, my heart to was broken when Senator Kennedy was assassinated. I wanted him to be our president. We need another Bobby Kennedy today.
Penelope and Carol, we lived through John, Martin and Bobby (lost a great president, a peaceful voice for change and a hope for another great president). I remember the day of each murder. Difficult time to live through. I, too, am grateful for HCR voice and pray that the nation wakes up and gets angry enough to let our voices be heard instructing the public and promoting civil liberty rights all the way through to the election. (Living in a deeply red state our options are limited! Ugh.)
I'm sharing a poem I wrote several years ago, but revised recently, because as we have found out, War Never Ends. At least so far, but women, especially, working together, are the future to change that fact. In tandem with photographs of women protesting the War in 2004 in an exhibit: A COURAGE OF WORDS You, readers would add your own names to the list, as it, too is endless—Irene Lipshin 2004, 2007, 2021
WE the People stand up for peace.
In the House Jeannette Rankin votes nay
for both World Wars; after 9/11, Barbara Lee
presses the lone red button against retaliation.
We raise our voices—
ballot box, rally, street corner, lunch room,
buttons , bumper stickers. Flags
Martin Luther King, Jr. marches the long road
to the Hill. We march with John Lewis singing
Give Peace a Chance, If I Had a Hammer,
We Shall Overcome.
We Climb the Hill with Amanda Gorman. The list is endless as Poetry Explains makes clear the world
Jimmy Santiago Baca, Langston Hughes, Etheridge Knight, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Philip Levine, Amiri Baraka Carolyn Forché, James Baldwin, Yusef Komunyakaa, Rita Dove, Lucille Clifton, shine light on shadows of injustice.
Our speeches, signs, letters,
petitions and poems float across
the land on airwaves,
wires and paper,
a courage of words
powerful enough to withstand
fire stone blade bullet time
Poet, Irene Lipshin, 2004, 2007, 2021
'til such a time
. . . i/we who wander
caught within
days passed
face saving
out of phase
must find
some incentive
even sense
to persevere
'til such a time
within closed minds
as tempests die
we lose our lies
and life's unholy whirlwinds
unwind . . . .
https://tahomahome.weebly.com/til-such-a-time.html
Poetry of Peace and Justice is everlasting:
Motto
In the dark times, will there be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.
-Bertolt Brecht
Love this - too true!!
Brava!
I hope you don't mind that I've copied this & pasted to my FB feed, crediting it to a commenter on LFAA.
Hi Judith. I’m not sure if you’re commenting to Kathleen or me, Irenie. If about my poem, “Courage of Word” thank you for asking. And of course I’m honored. As long as I know where and who. Happy Mother’s Day. It’s always good to credit written work with authors name, especially if it can be shared.
Pretty sure Judith was responding to your poem, Irenie ... I appreciate your contributions to thIs blog - your recent comment about education and class access left my eyeballs rolling around on the floor - took awhile to find them - I copied and pasted to my notepad (for occasional access and review) ... hope that is ok by you - many thanks!!
There are so often thoughtful and thought-provoking comments here that at times I feel a need to share them, crediting "a commenter" on Letters From An American. So many of you are so skilled at marshaling and expressing your thoughts and sharing your knowledge that I can't help wanting to enable an even wider group to appreciate & learn from them.
Likewise, Judith - I can't even keep up with all the informative links people share (slow reader) not to mention the comments people make ... someone suggested that an archive could be available for future reference - lots of unpublished history is written in these pages!!
Hi Kathleen and Judith, I’m definitely a fan of you both and the amazing writers and thinkers on LFAA. Thank you for your awesome note! I appreciate your reply. Comments are different from poems or essays or art work or photography, etc. If I publish/post a poem by another poet or my own, with name on it, then that is part of the poem. I think it’s awesome that years, centuries later, artists, poets, writers, historians, are named when their work is still shared. And lucky for us there’s so much of historical poetry and writing. Irene Lipshin
Onward!
Happy Mothers' Day to you, Penelope, to you, dear Heather, to all the beloved women who follow you on LFAA and beyond, and to mothers of all genders who teach us the humanity of motherhood.
May I join this voice to yours in gratitude for the work Professor Richardson does each day to bring light where there is darkness, hope that vanquishes despair.
Beautifully said!
This succinct comment reminds of the Prayer to St Francis which contains ‘...where there is darkness let there be light....’
Thank you, Louis.
I’m right with you in searching for the right pizza dough.
I bake on a stone and look for crispy edges with a moist crust.
Curing the dough for 24 hours, lightly coated with olive oil and sealed in an airtight tub, has made more difference than almost any other factor. But I’m not there yet.
Buon appetito!
A companion seeking the ‘holy grail’ of pizza making. I am fortunate to live near a bread baker who mills organic wheat into flour in the local shop. I use to ancient grains in the mix, 20% of the flour total, to provide for an interesting dough flavor. Rest! I use 2 twenty minute rests between needing sessions! Finally, I let the dough for a thick crust pie rise in the pan for 2 hours before baking. These are changes that I have made during the past year seeking the elusive perfect pizza crust! Thanks for commenting!
Perfectly said, thank you Penelope and Heather.
I did not know this history. It outweighs a thousand bouquets or cards. For this Mothers’ Day I will just ask my sons to read this letter. Thank you Professor Richardson, I am grateful for all that you share with us.
And at one with Julia Ward Howe, I say:
"'Arise, women! ... Say firmly: 'We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.'"
This is the one amazing "take-away" from HCR's extraordinary letter today!
I agree. I also did not know this history. I forwarded it to my two daughters, one of whom has two young sons.
I forwarded the link and all three report that they have read it and shared it with their partners.
Thank you, Heather CR. I feel comfortable w your repeating this history as it did not attach as clearly last year. I so appreciate your gentle reminders that we women have continuing work to be done ‘to take control of politics from ..men who ..permitted such carnage.’ We are continuously seeing the carnage in Ukraine… Today…
PLEASE ALL WOMEN & MEN read this letter aloud at your meals tomorrow. And stop and talk w your family & friends about how you can participate in stopping the lies, politics, carnage from spreading any further…become creative w your efforts !
I would love to but know from past experience that I will be asked to leave the table and the room...
That will not make this knowledge any less important to me 🌿
sometimes we need to work under the table, quietly. Sometimes we can choose to fight the battle elsewhere to create progress.
Under the table resonates with me, Libby!
When I read this, I thought of a way to share this without speaking a word: print it as a placemat and put it under every plate at the table!
AMEN Carol!
Well said Carol O!
Great idea… I’ll send it to my siblings (I got 6😊)…. and will discuss! Thanks 👍🐾
We are still fighting for equality, in our workplaces, in our government, and in our homes. This latest attack on our ability to make our own decisions over OUR bodies just shows that we are still in the fight for our lives. We thought we had won at least this fight 50 years ago. Perhaps we became complacent and thought the "war" was over. But those battles for our reproductive decisions were just skirmishes. The ones who want to keep us "in our place" have been patiently scheming ever since. Whose rights will they attack next?
The know no limits, they smell unlimited power and it portends evil which will erase “womanhood” as I have come to embrace it. Amy Barrett is the means by which Mitch made it happen. Of course there are exceptions, Amy Barrett being one of them, Ginni Thomas, and Elaine Chao two other traitors to their womanhood. May they suffer from what they and their ilk have wrought. of course they won’t, they will be useful tools for all their lives…
I understand The women who are most vocal about banning abortion are the ones who have had one? Their argument is they are saving the rest of us from making the mistake they did?
I don't care a hoot about this nonsensical, condescending argument. My body, my choice.
Maybe we can get the ERA passed this time around as icing on the cake.
The women that I know who’ve had an abortion are in favor of letting others make their own decision and say that, faced with the same circumstances, they’d do it again. Of course, there are always people who regret past actions, regardless of their merit. The antiabortion leaders shamelessly use these women, ignoring the pain of their telling their stories again and again, reliving the trauma and being told how horrible they were.
Yup. Shameful Victim shaming. imho of course!
Most of the women who have aborted a pregnancy feel relief and know they made the right choice in their individual circumstances. They may feel regret, too, of course, and wonder what might have been, as women do when they miscarry. They don’t usually feel they have the right to tell other women what to do.
As a male, I do not feel I have any right to speak for women, but with their permission, I would like to speak with them. One of the more odious strategies of the Pro-Life campaign has been to spread misinformation that many women regret and suffer for their decision to have terminated a pregnancy. The facts, however, as demonstrated in the Turnaway Study, are starkly different: Abortion does not increase a woman’s risk of having suicidal thoughts, or the chance of developing PTSD, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, or lower life satisfaction. Abortion does not increase a woman’s use of alcohol, tobacco or drugs. Conversely, being denied an abortion reduces women and children’s financial security and safety, and existing children of women denied abortions were more than 3 times more likely to live in households below the federal poverty level and they were less likely to achieve developmental milestones than the existing children of women who received abortions.
https://www.ansirh.org/sites/default/files/publications/files/turnaway_study_brief_web.pdf
Thank you Frank!
The regret is not having successfully prevented pregnancy to start with, noting there is no pregnancy without a sperm, normally produced by an autonomous male with very little if any accountability.
This, my friend, is truth.
Women are not pregnant in the absence of sperm.
I know many women who have not had an abortion themselves who are very vocal about wanting the right to choose.
Excellent observation...useful tools. And no, they won't suffer and neither will the women in the families of any of the people making these decisions. They are all wealthy enough to fly off and get an abortion. It will be the rest of the women who will suffer as abortion becomes another privilege of the rich. My hope is that this leak will light a fire and get anyone not under the sway of R nonsense to vote in large numbers. I see that death star made an appearance at the Kentucky Derby.
The abortion foes just want a servant class. It’s not about babies. It’s about control.
It most certainly isn't about babies because if it were, babies and mothers would have much better support. But some of these people are not interested in control either; their minds are addled by their religious beliefs because it's God's plan. True believers are zealots and think they are carrying out God's will.
I have cousins who are evangelical Christians and believe abortion is murder and women who abort are baby killers. It's their "truth" and they aren't bright enough or interested enough to question it.
Yes, and there is nothing in the NT about abortion. The OT says a child is human when it takes the first breath, so their theology is remiss too.
I'll drink to that Jeri. They are leeches.
Well put, Jeri!
I had always thought Mother's Day was invented as a marketing scheme to sell more greeting cards. Mothers' Day is so much more powerful. It does seem like war means men go off to fight and women take care of the home front and doing men's jobs vacated when men go off to war. But then the men come home and women are told they are taking jobs away from the men coming home and to go back home and be mothers. Now it takes two breadwinners in the family to make hopefully a decent living. What happens now if a lot of men and women go to war? Where are the people that can run the manufacturing plants .. and, she says cynically, keep turning out the weapons of war? Yes, the idea that there is an alternative to war based on how women would manage the world as harmonizers, not competitors is very tantalizing. I do not believe that competition is the way to make everything from capitalism to sports teams work. Sports may look like competition but the winners are the teams who learn know how to work together toward their common goal. Yes, one of my favorite themes is that we need to go from the OR world bifurcating everything and breeding hate and greed to the AND world where we have each others backs and work toward the well-being of the community and each individual in it. For me community encompasses anywhere you can get in a day -- roughing 22 miles if you're riding a horse, now almost anyplace in the world. We are now a global community and I hope it is the AND model that prevails. We, the People, all of us this time.
Yes, Cathy!
We are all in this together. There is enough to go around.
For all women today on this Mothers’ Day…..Salud! We are fabulous. Julia Ward Howe certainly thought so.
(I’ve always put the apostrophe at the end…did not know until today why and how that is as it is. Guess it was mothers’ intuition. Thank you for the reason as always, Heather!)
Speaking with a smile at myself for having enough good humor in this world to even do that-this old English teacher has to point. out that another reason we put the apostrophe after the 's' is GRAMMAR. It's a day for all mothers, yes?? I'm sure if we women were in charge we'd still be teaching our children to diagram sentences. I'm still cheerful this morning because my 7-year-old grandson was here overnight.
My 10-year-old grandson, whom I adore, wrote in my card he would always be there for me if I’m hurt of sad …
This child, my only one, unexpected, miraculous, has taught me the meaning of the word 'joy.'
Our grandsons (I have two) and our granddaughters are our hope. The children are our hope. Why one group of Americans wants to “save” the unborn and not truly care about its future life shows a lack of understanding of the needs of humans to grow and thrive. It’s beyond my understanding. A religious fervor is chilling and hard to counter. We return to the power of mythology. The lies we must unlearn.
Hi Cathy! Yup, we live in a BOTH/AND world, not an EITHER/OR one. Humans are the only eusocial large animal that I know of. 99% of what we do is cooperative - the amount of cooperation that goes into making a complex thing such as an automobile is astounding. That is the most remarkable thing about us.
I think most illness (spiritual, emotional, physical) arises when we deny that fact. Mothering, unarguably the most important job on the planet, is where most of us learn to be human, to be strong interdependent beings. Mothers give us a strong, secure place to grow from. Thank-you to all mothers, mothers-to-be, and potential mothers, for making humans humane (mostly).
All embracing, Steve. Speaks to everyday and especially today. Happy Mother's Day.
Well said, Steve!
Lordy yes, my former best friends’s family was competitive in every aspect of their lives. They were and are high achievers, but the emotional cost has been high. I saw first hand that cooperation can have benefits only dreamed of by competitors…
Good morning, Jeri. Yes, we have lost that belief that what is good for us all is good for me. That passionate need to grab the larger share is something I find very frightening. Thanks for pointing this out.
Yes but we also need a sense of what our roots mean and gave to us regardless of where we ended up.
I was telling a friend yesterday that I fantasize about alien invasions, just because it might make us human beings realize that in the end, we are all in it together. Climate change and Covid haven't brought us to that point, maybe aliens would.
My thoughts as well. See the President’s speech in the original Independence Day movie. “Mankind…that sure has a different meaning today, doesn’t it?”
Good to see you, Ally. Warm embrace to you, your wife and family.
Thank you. It is hard.
Brava, Cathy!
Look up today's Writers Almanac by Garrison Keillor for more about Anna Jarvis
Well said, Cathy. Thank you.
Well done Cathy.
Thank you for sharing this great piece of history Heather. And so important given our current reality. It truly is amazing that we women still have to fight for our rights. And the reality is that we do. So let’s make our collective voices heard, and don’t let a few right wing religious fanatics take control of our healthcare choices.
I thought the veil lifted from my eyes in the Trump years, but this Supreme Court vote yet again made all the lessons I learned of feminism real for the first time, despite all the sexism I’ve lived through, the stories of my mother, grandmother and even great grandmother fighting bitterly for their rights. This post hit me hard. I feel i am hearing the clarion call of urgency of feminism, really, for the first time. I am legitimately scared for poor women in our country.
My contrarian, progressive elder son, who also loves the glamour of weaponry and knows the details off every civil war battle, half-jokes he wants to join the military rather than fill out his college applications. My gift this Mother’s Day will be a demand that both my teenaged sons to read your post.
Please also make certain that those teenage sons become RESPONSIBLE sexual partners.
I'm male and I so agree with you, Rachel, but unfortunately, despite the excellent intentions of mothers throughout history, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink". (it's a sad commentary on male psyche, I admit it) .
It's enlightening — and encouraging — to know this history, and I've shared with my wife and 16-year-old son. Julia Ward Howe sounds like a force of nature who could help save the nation now.
"...she threw herself into the struggle for women’s suffrage, understanding that in order to create a more just and peaceful society, women must take up their rightful place as equal participants in American politics."
While that was lofty then, today is sounds quaint compared to what's coming. Women won't be silent, much less stopped. They know they have power and leverage. And corporate America, largely silent for now, will soon realize that hiring, already very difficult, will become even more so unless companies speak out in support of women and abortion rights.
Alito and his like-minded justices, for all their pseudo judicial high-mindedness, have awakened a force that they couldn't have imagined.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/business/abortion-corporate-america-silence.html
I hope you're right
May it be so
Corporate America MUST help rid us of this draconian nightmare, if not their silence will be their own downfall. This is about labor and being able to maintain and recruit your workforce. CEOs, wake up!
This "Saturday Night Live" clip eviscerates the Alito opinion. Humor sometimes cuts the deepest. https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/roe-v-wade-cold-open/534917840
I can't see SNL any more - blocked in Australia.
Gratitude to you for this beautiful and tragic reminder, Dear Heather. As wars upon wars re-occur, there’s necessary information to inform us of our shared history and our shared future. Fractured and at proverbial faultlines, we struggle to make sense of what our world means. Gratitude to you for informing us, enlightening us. Dark as this time may seem, a foot forward is most helpful.
And may one foot forward become millions.
Salud, kim 💫🌈🌎👶🏽👧🏻👱🏽♀️👵🏾
From your mouth...
Thank you for your so perfect words of gratitude to Heather. I am borrowing them, thank you very much, to add to my FB post, attributing them to a gentle ("fellow"?) reader of HCR.
Years ago, I tried to put the same message into some kind of doggerel, but never succeeded.
Being an arrogant male, it's the arrogance that troubles me, rather than the maleness...
Nevertheless...
*
Mothers, you women who bore us,
Were we then born for this?
Why do you all stay silent, will none stand up for us?
Forward, and face down the soldiers!
Forward, let each take her place!
Gnomes and hobgoblins and sorcerers
Shall not blight the human race.
*
Those who count but don’t care are a handful,
You are countless and you shall prevail!
When the drones lose their thrones we’ll be thankful –
And farewell to the arrogant male.
To be clear, we woman don’t want to get ride of “the male.” Just the arrogance, brutality, self-satisfaction, war mongering, etc.
That's why this "arrogant male" never completed the verses, the last line doesn't work -- sounds too much like cutting off the poor bird's other wing...
And in any case, my view of peace is a lively one, there's room for clashes, room for discord. So we can really value and enjoy harmony!
Personally, I love the “farewell to the arrogant male.” My interpretation is ridding societies of the arrogance OF men, not removal of all men.
I'm sure we all agree when it comes to ridding ourselves of arrogance, aggression, brutality, ignorance and all the other garbage with which we poison the world, but no gender has a monopoly of vice or of virtue...
The problem is a colossal imbalance favoring the masculine mind at its most sterile and destructive, and the bias is so strong that some feminists fall into the trap of trying to conquer a share of male idiocies... Survival and happiness call for both men and women to establish balanced interdependence, both within, between and among themselves.
Thank you for this observation. I have long thought this and i agree that our survival depends on this. Too many women especially since death star gave carte blanche to the worst of human traits, have fallen into behaving badly. I am thinking here of a couple of our favs in this mode....Gunslinger Barbie and Gangrene. Just as bad, of course, are the Handmaiden and corrupt people like the Elaine Chao and Betsy Dingbat.
Seems like a reasonable set of goal outcomes to me.
:-)
We must not go back to the bad old days, when you could become a mother because of rape or incest or failed birth control. All mothers must control their own bodies. Autonomy is essential for freedom. I did not have sons and grandsons for cannon fodder. American mothers support our fellow Ukrainian mothers.
If women ever gain equality! Or what if they never do? It’s less than 80 years to the next century. Will women born this decade see equality?
Or men, for that matter? They might even like it.
True story
I had not seen the earlier story, but I appreciated the thought this triggers about the care needed to separate valuing people as people from the valuing of the roles people play in their lifetimes. A fine way to end the night! Thank you.
Thank you for this powerful and most timely piece of history. It’s a much needed nudge which reminds us, that once again we are being challenged and must stand up and flex our muscles against the evil and threatening forces. Never forget, the sisterhood is powerful!
Today, er, yesterday was my 71st Birthday, but thank you for making Mother's Day relevant. Your historical insights help us to deal with the craziness and I'm forwarding today's message to my wonderful girls. Thank you!.
Happy Birthday - and what lucky daughters to have you forwarding this.
By age 11, I was well aware of how hard my mother worked (for my parent's business) and took care of 5 kids, house, meals...and, as a teen felt this"one day a year" wasn't enough, and I assumed it'd been created by Hallmark, as a way to boost sales and profit. Heather Cox Richardson just made Mother's Day deeply relevant for me.
Once again you inform. Once again you shine the light on history and us. Once again I thank you.