What Feminism Means to Me (and Proposition 26)

I was in high school when the Equal Right Amendment was voted on. In my heart, my teenaged feminist heart, I believed it would pass. Who wouldn’t want equal rights for women and girls?

Turns out a lot of people didn’t. The amendment didn’t pass.

The devastation and grief I felt then – as a teenager who barely understood what had happened – has lingered in my heart since then.

Tomorrow I’m attending the Pennsylvania Conference for Women. One of my heroes, Gloria Steinem, is speaking and when I mentioned to a coworker that I hoped to meet her he said, “Who?”

That feeling of grief filled me again.

In the nearly thirty years since the ERA failed to pass, I’ve watched women’s rights be chipped away, particularly when it comes to controlling our bodies. It’s harder than ever to decide how, when, and if we’re going to have children; not only has funding for abortion itself been slashed to nothing but so has education for girls about birth control, access to women’s healthcare for girls, access to family planning and more.

It’s so easy to feel hopeless.

But I can’t. Because when I look Tori in the eyes I have to be willing to believe that she will, really and truly, get to grow up and be whatever the hell she wants to be. Because if not, we will have all worked so hard for nothing.

Feminism has given me untold gifts.

Courage in the face of fear and hatred.

Willingness to pursue my dreams.

Freedom to make the right choices for my life and my family.

Faith in the greater good of humanity, even when it seems hope is lost.

Relationships with the women in my life that are unmatched.

Encouragement to do what’s right.

Without feminism, I would have married at 18. I was young and in love, and I believed my long-term boyfriend of the time was THE one. I would have had children as early at 15 because I wouldn’t have had access to birth control. I would have never attended college, or stopped attending when it clearly wasn’t working for me. I would have never left Michigan to follow my mother to her first full-time tenure track position with her brand new PhD. I would likely have never ended up in Michigan in the first place since my mother would not have pursued a PhD. We would have been stuck in poverty in Albuquerque.

Luckily, my mother was an early feminist pioneer, like so many of her peers in the late 60s and early 70s. She blazed a path for me, and I hope I’m blazing one for Tori.

My heart is heavy of late, thinking about my sons who – if they’d become young men – would have known who Gloria Steinem is. But sadly they aren’t here. I miss them every day, worse at this time of the year.

But I’m here, and Tori’s here, and it’s because of the work of feminists that have fought so hard to keep the procedure that saved my life legal. However, in the seven years since my life was saved, those that oppose women having control over their bodies have fought long and hard; today, the procedure I had is illegal except when the woman’s life is threatened. This doesn’t sound like a big deal until you see the hoops doctors need to jump through to be able to perform the procedure, hoops that take time – lots of time – that I didn’t have. It’s likely that the damage done to my mind and body would have been permanent if my doctor had been unable to move quickly.

Far, far worse are attempts to stop women from having ANY choices – birth control, abortion, and more – such as Proposition 26 in Mississippi. This will be on the ballot in November, and declares that “human life begins at the moment of conception.” This is a horrifying law, one that will have such far reaching consequences that will hurt women. Do not underestimate how incredibly dangerous this law is.

If you live in Mississippi, educate yourself. And vote. Because this law will roll back so many of the strides that women have made in the last fifty years. It cannot stand.

Tagged as: abortion rights, feminism, intact dilation and extraction, late term abortion, proposition 26 in Mississippi