CT NOW on 40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade

For immediate release                                     Contact: Jacqueline Kozin and Laura Bachman

January 22, 2013                                              Email:president@now-ct.org

CT NOW: CELEBRATING BUT CONCERNED

AS ROE V. WADE TURNS 40, THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE IS CHALLENGED

HARTFORD, CT – Roe v. Wade has reached its 40th year, a historical moment for a historical case.  While this is a cause for celebration, recent challenges to Roe v. Wade’s legality and legitimacy also create a cause for concern for the Connecticut Chapter of the National Organization for Women (CT NOW).

“The right to choose affords more than just access to safe, legal abortions—it also provides opportunity,” remarked Laura Bachman, co-president of CT NOW. “As abortion opponents tighten restrictions around abortion access, economically disadvantaged women in particular face the consequences. Many are forced to delay their abortions due to limited access or misinformation. The later the termination, the more expensive it will be, not only because of the cost for the service, but also that of lost wages, child care and other expenses.”

The Guttmacher Institute reports that six in ten women who have abortions already have at least one child and 69 percent of women seeking abortions are economically disadvantaged. Roe v. Wade allowed these women to make the decision that enabled them to make their own choices about their bodies and subsequently, their lives. CT NOW believes that as our own individuals, we should have the right to making decisions about our own bodies.

“Unfortunately, not everyone believes in the right to bodily autonomy,” noted Jacqueline Kozin, co-president of CT NOW. “The “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,”passed the House of Representatives in 2011, and would prevent women who could not prove “forcible rape” from receiving federal funding for abortions. From forcing mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds in Virginia to creating unreasonable expectations for the operation and maintenance of abortion clinics in Kansas, Michigan, and many more states, anti-abortion advocates are pushing a dangerous agenda that could whittle down the foundation of Roe v. Wade even as the law still stands in effect.

State by state, anti-abortion advocates are working to weaken Roe v. Wade. As supporters of choice, CT NOW stands firm in their support and believes that as the country moves forward, CT NOW will remain dedicated to preserving and protecting this important right.

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We Need You: Nominate a Hero

image from socialistrevolution.org

Nominations Requested!

While a new year brings new opportunities, new hopes, and new dreams, it also builds on the foundation of yesterday. As we look forward in anticipation, we also should look back in recognition.

 For that reason, we ask for nominations for women activists who have passed away in 2012: women who have a history and a legacy of working towards advancing women’s rights and equality for our January Activist(s) of the Month. 

While they are gone, they must not be forgotten. We are reaching out for nominations because we feel that this is the way to best ensure depth and breadth in potential awardees.

 Please send your nomination to President@now-ct.org and include the following details:

- The nominee’s full name

- 2-3 sentences on why they deserve this recognition

- Your contact info (in case we have questions)

All nominations need to be submitted by Friday, January 25, 2013

Bravery

I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn’t
By SOHAILA ABDULALI, Op-Ed Contributor, NY Times

Published: January 7, 2013

THIRTY-THREE years ago, when I was 17 and living in Bombay, I was gang raped and nearly killed. Three years later, outraged at the silence and misconceptions around rape, I wrote a fiery essay under my own name describing my experience for an Indian women’s magazine. It created a stir in the women’s movement — and in my family — and then it quietly disappeared. Then, last week, I looked at my e-mail and there it was. As part of the outpouring of public rage after a young woman’s rape and death in Delhi, somebody posted the article online and it went viral. Since then, I have received a deluge of messages from people expressing their support.

It’s not exactly pleasant to be a symbol of rape. I’m not an expert, nor do I represent all victims of rape. All I can offer is that — unlike the young woman who died in December two weeks after being brutally gang raped, and so many others — my story didn’t end, and I can continue to tell it.

When I fought to live that night, I hardly knew what I was fighting for. A male friend and I had gone for a walk up a mountain near my home. Four armed men caught us and made us climb to a secluded spot, where they raped me for several hours, and beat both of us. They argued among themselves about whether or not to kill us, and finally let us go.

At 17, I was just a child. Life rewarded me richly for surviving. I stumbled home, wounded and traumatized, to a fabulous family. With them on my side, so much came my way. I found true love. I wrote books. I saw a kangaroo in the wild. I caught buses and missed trains. I had a shining child. The century changed. My first gray hair appeared.

Too many others will never experience that. They will not see that it gets better, that the day comes when one incident is no longer the central focus of your life. One day you find you are no longer looking behind you, expecting every group of men to attack. One day you wind a scarf around your throat without having a flashback to being choked. One day you are not frightened anymore.

Rape is horrible. But it is not horrible for all the reasons that have been drilled into the heads of Indian women. It is horrible because you are violated, you are scared, someone else takes control of your body and hurts you in the most intimate way. It is not horrible because you lose your “virtue.” It is not horrible because your father and your brother are dishonored. I reject the notion that my virtue is located in my vagina, just as I reject the notion that men’s brains are in their genitals.

If we take honor out of the equation, rape will still be horrible, but it will be a personal, and not a societal, horror. We will be able to give women who have been assaulted what they truly need: not a load of rubbish about how they should feel guilty or ashamed, but empathy for going through a terrible trauma.

The week after I was attacked, I heard the story of a woman who was raped in a nearby suburb. She came home, went into the kitchen, set herself on fire and died. The person who told me the story was full of admiration for her selflessness in preserving her husband’s honor. Thanks to my parents, I never did understand this.

The law has to provide real penalties for rapists and protection for victims, but only families and communities can provide this empathy and support. How will a teenager participate in the prosecution of her rapist if her family isn’t behind her? How will a wife charge her assailant if her husband thinks the attack was more of an affront to him than a violation of her?

At 17, I thought the scariest thing that could happen in my life was being hurt and humiliated in such a painful way. At 49, I know I was wrong: the scariest thing is imagining my 11-year-old child being hurt and humiliated. Not because of my family’s honor, but because she trusts the world and it is infinitely painful to think of her losing that trust. When I look back, it is not the 17-year-old me I want to comfort, but my parents. They had the job of picking up the pieces.

This is where our work lies, with those of us who are raising the next generation. It lies in teaching our sons and daughters to become liberated, respectful adults who know that men who hurt women are making a choice, and will be punished.

When I was 17, I could not have imagined thousands of people marching against rape in India, as we have seen these past few weeks. And yet there is still work to be done. We have spent generations constructing elaborate systems of patriarchy, caste and social and sexual inequality that allow abuse to flourish. But rape is not inevitable, like the weather. We need to shelve all the gibberish about honor and virtue and did-she-lead-him-on and could-he-help-himself. We need to put responsibility where it lies: on men who violate women, and on all of us who let them get away with it while we point accusing fingers at their victims.



Sohaila Abdulali is the author of the novel “Year of the Tiger.”



A version of this op-ed appeared in print on January 8, 2013, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn’t..

Do Women always Need to Prove Their Competence?

“There are lots of opportunities for women to pitch in, prove their competence and learn a lot about governing and the political process,” Ms. Hassan said in an interview. “We’ve had a very deep bench of women.”

--I just find something so patronizing about the above quote ... And the article as a whole.  It could be having to return to work after the holidays, feeling fired up about the new year and a cold that arrived with an eye infection that has me feeling that this article portrays these fighters not as feisty and on the gentle side. I'm sure they had to be warriors in some way to get to where they are or maybe they didn't?  Does it always have to be a fight? Maybe society has changed so it's not?

Thoughts??

From Congress to Halls of State, in New Hampshire, Women Rule

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
NY Times

Published: January 1, 2013

Most states are red or blue. A few are purple. After the November election, New Hampshire turned pink.

Women won the state’s two Congressional seats. Women already held the state’s two Senate seats. When they are all sworn into office on Thursday, New Hampshire will become the first state in the nation’s history to send an all-female delegation to Washington.

And the matriarchy does not end there. New Hampshire’s new governor is a woman. So are the speaker of the State House and the chief justice of the State Supreme Court.

“Pink is the new power color in New Hampshire,” declared Ann McLane Kuster, one of the newly elected representatives, at a recent forum at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College in Manchester, where the women’s historic milestone was celebrated.

These women did not rise to the top together overnight. Nor was there an orchestrated movement to elect them. Each toiled in the political vineyards, climbed the ladder in her own time and campaigned hard for her job. But they have caught the state’s collective imagination, inspiring forums and media interest and prompting Jay B. Childs, a New Hampshire filmmaker, to make a documentary about them.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, 65, a Democrat and dean of the delegation, was the state’s first elected female governor and the first woman in United States history to be elected both governor and senator.

Senator Kelly Ayotte, 44, a Republican, was the state’s former attorney general.

Carol Shea-Porter, 60, a Democrat and former member of the House, lost her seat in 2010 and won it back in November.

Ms. Kuster, 56, a Democrat, is a lawyer and lobbyist who has not held office before but has long been active in the state and comes from a political family.

Maggie Hassan, 54, a Democrat and the new governor, was majority leader of the State Senate.

Women will make up 20 percent of the new Senate and 17.9 percent of the new House. These are records in Washington, but they fall far short of matching the 50.8 percent of the general population that is female.

While New Hampshire is doing more than its share of bolstering the number of women on Capitol Hill, six states — Alaska, Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota and Vermont — have never elected a woman to the House. And four of those — Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi and Vermont — have never sent a woman to the Senate.

The state after New Hampshire, with the next highest proportion of women in its Congressional delegation, is Hawaii, where both House members and one senator are women.

In only three other states, Maine, Missouri and Washington, do women make up at least half of the delegations. Sixteen states, including New Jersey, have no women in Congress.

Although the women in New Hampshire are serving all at once by happenstance, women have long held prominent positions in New Hampshire government.

One reason is the size of the State House, a typical pipeline for aspiring politicians. It has 400 members, making it the largest of the states and the fourth-largest governing body in the English-speaking world (after the United States Congress, the British Parliament and the Indian Parliament). With so many seats available, women have a better chance of being elected in New Hampshire than they have in many other states.

New Hampshire also has a long history of volunteerism, and serving in the General Court, as the legislature is known, amounts to an act of volunteerism because it pays just $100 a year, plus mileage. Every year since 1975, more than 100 women have served.

“There are lots of opportunities for women to pitch in, prove their competence and learn a lot about governing and the political process,” Ms. Hassan said in an interview. “We’ve had a very deep bench of women.”

Even if the legislature in New Hampshire is big, the state itself is small. That makes it easier for everyone to know everyone else, and most of the women in the Congressional delegation have intricate ties to one another.

Continue reading, here.