We need a New Rule and a New Theory

Sometimes there are just SOOOOOO many questions, and almost never enough answers. Here are a few of the things that have puzzled me recently.

I have lost a large chunk of weight in the last year or so, and now am needing to buy some new bras. I know I am not, and never have been a great shopper, and I don't particularly enjoy shopping. This may be leftover from my long years as a fat chick, but store mirrors never, ever make anyone look good in anything. Not being a recreational shopper may be part of the problem with my not understanding the true cost of anything. But last week I was checking a mid-price catalog for bras, and they cost anywhere from $35 to $78 dollars!!!!!!! Okay-two breast shaped cups with some thin straps cost nearly $100? Can someone make sense of that for me?

I've been hearing many, many people talking lately about pennies not being cost effective anymore, suggesting getting rid of them. Canada just decided to do exactly that. My question is this: if it doesn't make cost sense to make pennies anymore, stop making them. Aren't there enough around to make change with so that the cost of everything doesn't go up to the next nickel? It might make people stop hording them in coin jars thinking they will someday add up to something. Just a suggestion.

I love the moon. I have had a moon phase app on every smart phone I've owned, in case I haven't seen it for awhile. But I usually see the moon every evening, and almost always know what phase it is in, though I'm not exactly sure what "waxing gibbous" means. Moon phases, especially the full moon, have been blamed for many things through history, and emergency room workers still insist they see more patients when the moon is full, and that there is more violence at that time. We know that our tidal changes are related to the gravitational pull of full and new moons. I have become convinced that weird behavior and excess stupidity are related to the gravity between those two in which the pull of the tide going out-low tide. In other words, my new theory is that it isn't the full or new moon, but the other phases, that pull tides back into the oceans that pull all the common sense and decent behaviors out into the depths of the sea with them.

I also hate rules. So many of them seem so silly and arbitrary, and don't really benefit anyone that I can think of. So I'm going to propose only one change. Being from the south, most of the ladies I know repeat every spring, whether they believe and/or follow it or not, the antiquated rule about "No white shoes after Labor Day or before Easter." There may have been some days before global warming in which those periods of time represented the advent of fall and spring. . We can look at the last twenty-five years and see that those seasonal movements have no meaning anymore. It is rare in North Central Texas NOT to have some days near 80 f in January. The sun shines most of the time. There is no need for silly rules regarding apparel. I've seen people wear jeans to the opera who would never wear white shoes after Labor Day. How silly is that? If we have to make rules about when we can pull out the white shoes and put away the boots, let's make it Mardi Gras?

I'm not a doctor. Of any kind. Nor do I play one on TV. But I've read a lot of stuff about psychological disorders, and I can hold a reasonable conversation with my sister in law, who DOES hold a doctorate in psychology, and even with some guys who used to be my shrinks. So, just as the DSM V is about to be released, I would like to introduce another disorder. There is a physical problem called "male pattern baldness." And a friend of mine has recently gone through a very hard relationship with a man who is not single (has a girlfriend) but sees no problem whatsoever with having a physical relationship with my friend. He has been confronted several times about this, and says outright that he sees nothing "wrong" with it. This has been very painful for someone I care about, and I'm guessing that if his girlfriend figured it out, she too would be extremely hurt. This guy is not the first I've known who held this delusion. I'm not calling "rule violation!" here. I think something is wrong when, A) One thinks it should be hidden. If you don't want it to be known, then it is wrong in some way. B) If any person involved is hurt, then it is bad and wrong. It's the old saw that it's okay if no one gets hurt. That aside, I would like to assign this disorder "Male Pattern Dissociative Disorder," because to hold this inhumane view of another person's feelings must mean that one is dissociating his/her behavior from the realities of the human heart. It is not okay, and perhaps there is treatment available. Diagnose yourself if you have ever engaged in this sort of behavior, and either stop it, or seek help.

Another state, North Dakota, is trying to make it next to impossible for a woman to end a pregnancy. This is happening all over the so-called "Red States," even though every single red state politician claims that their goal is more freedom for people. I've always said that they only really mean more freedom for white males, and I can back it up, but that's not why I bring this up today. As I listened to this story on the NPR it took me back to a conversation a few years ago with a former friend who is a proud fundamentalist tea-party republican. She was upset about a baby being left at a safe baby site, and I tried to diplomatically point out that this was a child that was not aborted. It is possible that this mother, in a very, very red state, would have ended her pregnancy before this child was a baby with a need for bonding and care, but the government in her state had already gone about making that nearly impossible. The conversation with my friend didn't say if the baby was white, if the mother was poor, or anything else about the situation. It is possible that these details are unknowable, but they don't really matter. If a person is fiercely anti-abortion, that person cannot be angry when a baby is left somewhere that it will have someone who will see to it that the baby is found a safe place to be raised. If people of the right continue to be rabidly anti-poor, they cannot continue to say that these families can have neither medical care for their children, aid to feed their children, or jobs that provide a living wage and child care that allows working to be viable, nor have the choice not to bring a child into that world. I am pro-choice, people of the red state, and it's time for you to make a smart one. Denying reproductive choice and services for the poor is not a smart choice.

Speaking, of the poor leads me to a question of immigration and unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment. The long term unemployed are a huge problem in this country right now. These people are least likely to be hired by anyone. In fact, there have been stories about employers saying out loud and advertising that they are not interested in hiring anyone who has been unemployed for a long period of time. Some of these people are so disheartened that they give up looking for jobs, and they actually fall off the unemployment radar. There have also been stories about how the jobs shortage has lead to a decrease in illegal immigration. I've heard some farmers tell reporters that they have fruit rotting because the immigrants who normally pick it have stopped coming. I see a cupid fix up possibility here. Someone who has been unemployed for so long that his/her degree no longer counts for anything cannot whine that they can't find work, and claim they are willing to "do anything" if they have not approached a farmer and applied to harvest his crops. It might be low pay, it might be temporary. But it is dignified, honest work. If these unemployed people DO this work, since it is low in pay and has no benefits, the government cannot deny these people aid, but it must allow them the dignity of doing real work that benefits everyone in this country. If food is rotting on the vine, prices go up for all of us. So this is a win/win/win/win. Surely I'm not the only one who has thought of it? Mr. President? You are also the president for the farm states, including Illinois and Hawaii.

Lastly, when one gets to be the age that I am, fifty-five (and a half) we can almost all say that cancer has touched our lives in some way. I've had family members who died, and more who survived cancer. I've had friends who have been stricken by cancer. Some of my friends seem to be cancer's punching bag, they keep getting hit. This happened recently to a friend who was diagnosed for her second time. Her husband has also fought a battle with cancer, and she has lost family members to cancer. This is not a question about cancer. This question is about prayer. This friend is a religious person, and when she got her most recent diagnosis, she asked for prayers. When she began her chemotherapy treatment, she mentioned that the drug they were using for her treatment really made her sick. One of her friends posted, "We'll pray harder." It is an open fact that I do not believe in God, but there are times that I think that there is a real energy expended in "prayer" that can be helpful to people. But for someone who is religious, who claims that God loves us all and responds to prayer to suggest that "praying harder" will help just hit me the wrong way, indeed! If God responds to the prayers of his followers, if prayer has any effect at all, this woman would not have been stricken with cancer a second time to begin with. It is still beyond me why Christians (the religion I'm most familiar with) still find this to be "okay."  If there is no love, no healing, no tangible benefit to these prayers, then what will "praying harder" do? What exactly does "praying harder" entail? Fasting? Snake handling? I'm pretty sure that my friend's genetic makeup can explain why her family is particularly disposed to cancer. And she will survive this bout because of the medical advances to which she has access. But praying harder? I'm just not seeing it. 

I've Been Proven Right

My blog posts frequently try to use humor to make some points, and I often use lists of things that amuse, bemuse or befuddle me. There have been lots of those things since my lasts posts, but they all seem so shallow compared to the absolutely disgusting nature of the battle for the republican party nomination this year. I mean, what does it matter, in the big picture, that I was saddened to realize that I have a GPS that I never need? I go so few places that I seldom go anywhere that I don't know how to get to.

I was planning to ask why we in the United States need all those British chefs coming over here and cursing at us in order to make our restaurants successful? We are a nation of cookie cutter chain restaurants-we don't, as a rule, give a shit what food tastes like-we just want it to be cheap and plentiful. Are the "Brits Behaving Badly" in our restaurants simply getting us back for winning the revolution and overthrowing their monarchy here?

I was also taken aback when I noticed on the wrapper of a Hershey bar that I bought-it was made in Mexico! What about Hershey, Pennsylvania-the city of chocolate streets and chocolate sauna treatments? I couldn't finish the bar once I saw that. Is there no job in this country that is too sacred to outsource to another country?

But all that has come crashing down as I've watched the republicans desperately claw for a party nomination that will not matter to them one whit come November 6 or January 20 of 2013. President Obama gets mixed marks from me, but all-in-all, I think he's done a good job, especially considering what he's been up against.

What frightens me is that there are about ten or twelve million people who will vote for one of these three men, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney. I have never in my life seen such a rag-tag collection of liars and scoundrels-but they are exactly what the right has been asking for. Not in the sense of, "Please sir, I want some more," but in the sense of "Aright, you, you asked for it, now you're gonna get it!" In 2009 and 2010, I watched many stories about tea party gatherings across the country. My mother participated in some where she lives.They were mostly women, bad spellers, upper middle-aged, fat and white. I said "mostly," not all, so please don't say that I'm painting them all with a broad brush and saying that all tea party activists are one way or another. I'm a firm believer that an engaged, informed electorate is crucial to having a country governed by people who are worthy of their titles. But these folks were not informed; they watch only Fox News, which does not inform as much as it inflames. Fox is known for telling its viewers not to watch any other channels because "they won't tell you the truth like we do." Which is a crock-dictated by Fox's fear that their viewers will become informed and abandon them for their lack of truth or balance. No one channel tells the whole truth, and one MUST get one's news from more than one source, then sift through the blather to find the truth for ones self. This is why Fox viewers consistently demonstrate in studies that they are dramatically more uninformed about the real news of the world than viewers of any other news service.

All that aside, and what may appear to be an ADD rabbit chase, I have said for years, even when I was a practicing, though doubting Christian, that the bible (and pretty much all other holy books) were written by men in an effort to keep women in "our places." Ever since the republican victories in 2010, I have been proven right. Homosexuals are also among those whom religion has been meant to keep under control, and I've written about gay rights before; this is about a war on women. Since 2010, an election that was purportedly about the economy and what a bad job President Obama has done in restoring jobs to this country, all these newly empowered republicans have done is intensify its war on women and gays. Utterly dishonest attacks on Planned Parenthood, designed to offer low cost health services to low income women, has been under increasing attack,and is being portrayed in the media as a giant abortion machine, though abortion is only about 3% of Planned Parenthood's activities, and it gets very little funding from the federal government. Publicly funded media is also under attack and threat of defunding, though the truth, once again, is that NPR and other such organizations get very little money from the federal government. It is being attacked because it is "liberal." I know this because my mother says so-though I have personally invited her to watch any program or news show on PBS and point out anything they say that is "liberal." She refuses-back to the Fox dictum not to watch any other channels because they don't tell the truth as Fox does.

Now we have a big argument going on about whether or not insurance companies, not churches, should provide coverage for contraception to women who work for, again, not churches, but institutions owned by churches, such as universities and hospitals. I would venture to say that not every secretary at Notre Dame University is Catholic, and insurance companies should not be denying health care of any kind to women of any kind. This is not a First Amendment argument, though it is being promoted as such by the white men who wish to force their beliefs on every woman. Whatever happened to your god being a personal god who wants a personal relationship with believers? Whatever happened to human free will to choose to follow the dictates of your faith or not? Whatever happened to the belief that morality can't be legislated at all, particularly to unbelievers. Child birth is a health care decision, the United States in 2010 ranked fortieth in the world in maternal death rates (women who die within 42 days after giving birth.) So deciding to have a baby can be a life and death decision. We also have an economy in which having two parents working is no longer a "choice," it has now become a necessity in many cases to have two incomes. Birth control is a health care choice, and not simply a narcissistic way for a woman to have time to "find herself," through a career. It has been nearly fifty years since the advent of the pill, and people have used some kind of prophylactic or another for hundreds of years. But suddenly, in this war on women, birth control, and forty years after Roe vs. Wade, a woman's right to choose are in the forefront again. AGAIN!!! Get used to it, conservatives, this has already been decided-women can choose to prevent pregnancy, and if she chooses to, can end a pregnancy.

I would like to note that the very definition of conservative means keeping things as they have always been, and this is a highly unrealistic way of looking at the world. A conservative friend of mine once said to me, with great angst, the Obama wanted to "change America!!!" I'm fairly sure I know what this fundamentalist, tea party, deep South conservative really meant, and the advance of the rights of women is included in my assumption. I remember another conversation with her in which she vehemently criticized a woman who had dropped off her baby at a "Safe Baby" site. She said, "If you can't take care of a child, you shouldn't bring a child into the world." Really? This was a child that was not aborted. Parents were probably not using birth control, which now social conservatives are saying is a bad thing. So when the child is born in these cases, who takes care of it? There was, as is so often the case with these conservative positions, no logic to the argument whatsoever. But the greater point is that there is nothing in the world that doesn't change. I must add, that I was in a conversation with a conservative friend who is a woman last night, and she said that she disagrees with her party on these issues, so, again, I can't paint all conservative women with a broad brush. There was also the news story of the wife of a conservative legislator in Virginia, where a law was passed through their legislature and then pulled, forcing any woman who wanted an abortion to undergo a vaginal probe, who denied her husband sex because of his involvement in this legislation. Go Lysistrata!**

Women, I must add, have become quite angry in the last couple of weeks, about just how far these overwhelmingly white, middle aged males are willing to go to put the proverbial thumbscrews to women's rights. Even conservative women, by and large, have benefited from the advances produced by the women's movement from the 1960's and 70's. And over, and over and over again, studies prove that when women can plan the timing of their pregnancies and the size of their families, the children they have, the women, and the whole world benefits from it. Education and birth control have made, at least in part, the world a better place. But for at least one of the men currently running for president, that is the problem. He calls our president a "snob," because he wants every American to have the opportunity to go to college, and when people go to college they come out liberal. There is no way to type how funny I find that whole line of thought, especially when this man has three degrees, including an MBA and a law degree. So I guess higher education doesn't always turn one liberal. Or even smart.

The last point I'd like to make here is that the very use of social issues, whether it is gay rights or women's rights, or the liberality of Hollywood-whichever old red-herring  is used to stir up the social conservative base, this is always an act of desperation from the right. It has worked for them in the past, but maybe the anger among conservative women will break that cycle this time. I don't care to hear one more word about what Mitt Romney thinks about the federal bailout of the auto industry in 2008. I would like to know what he thinks of the bailout of Chrysler in 1980, under a republican president. The result is the same-Chrysler came through its crisis, became profitable again (for a time) and paid back the money to the government, with interest. But why doesn't anyone ask Romney about this? There seems to be no one who is willing to call them on this hypocrisy. But the desperation in the move away from talking about the economy and focusing on the "culture wars" is obvious: they can't get Obama on national security issues-he has won that battle, often using the same methods that liberals hated in President Bush. The economy is getting better, in part because of decisions made by Obama, and in part because these cycles occur naturally and economies routinely move up and down. The right has nothing on which to win against Obama, and so they convince the base that he is a foreign born Muslim socialist, who will force all white people to abort their babies, and will take all the surviving children and send them to re-education camps to turn them into gay socialist Muslim terrorists.

***Lysistrata is an ancient Greek play, written by Aristophanes, in which the women of Athens deny sex to their husbands until they cease fighting a war.  This same tactic was recently used by women in Liberia successfully. 

Mixed Nuts

The last two weeks have been emotionally tiring for me. I always get this way during presidential elections, but it has started really early this cycle, mostly because I can honestly not believe that anyone could vote for anyone on the republican side. Well-maybe Jon Huntsman, who is the only candidate that actually made me nervous for Obama when he announced. But it seems fairly clear that he is too libertarian for the republican base.

That out of the way, I have a few observations. I love nuts. I've also recently read that women who eat some nuts every day weigh less than those who eat other things. So I keep a jar of delicious mixed nuts in my desk at work for those days when I need a protein boost to get through the morning. But I became aware of doing something I found rather amusing-I pour some nuts into a dish so I don't just keep eating, which I could easily do. But I found myself eating them segregatedly. I eat cashews together, Brazil nuts, pecans, etc. I've even found myself eating the almonds with skin separately from those without. Is my mixed nut behavior a little nutty?

A language rant: THERE IS NO FREAKING SUCH WORK AS EKSETRA!!! That phrase comes from the Latin et (which means AND) cetera;. which means "other things." It is translated as meaning "and other things," or "so on." And while we are at it, it doesn't make anyone look smart and continental to say, "Wala." That is a mispronunciation of the French, "Voila," It starts with a V, and it means something like, "Well, there ya go!" And the latest word I'm getting tired of hearing thrown around over and over again-like "like," and "amazing," is "authentic." Do the people who use it for everything good these days know that it means "real?" That means it is very unlikely that it will ever apply to an American politician. The oft dropped journalistic phrase, "He doesn't come across as authentic," is rather oxymoronic, don't you think?

I'm a very fidgety person. I fidget constantly; I have a hard time sometimes even getting myself situated in the very same desk I worked all day on yesterday. When I talk with my hands, I use both hands. This made me think one day as I walked with my dog, and we passed one of those young men who wears his pants super-baggy and around his thighs, what a great sacrifice these people make for their fashion statements. Every guy I see dressed that way, whether at WalMart, the bus stop, or just walking down the street, must walk around with one hand on his crotch at all times in order to keep his pants from falling down all together. Sigh. None of those guys could ever describe the size of a fish he'd caught, let alone talk with his hands in a regular conversation. I've been waiting almost 20 years for this silly fashion to pass. A few years ago, when an older man auditioned for "American Idol" with the song, "Pants on the Ground," I really hoped the foolish appearance of it would be brought to the consciousness of that demographic, but I guess the age of the man singing the song should have been a dead giveaway that it wouldn't work.

I was walking in to my office the other day, and saw a squirrel with a bare tail. Some other people had seen it, and said that they had seen them before. Is that just an anomaly? The first thing I saw was the tail, and I thought it odd that such a large rat would be out in broad daylight, climbing a tree.

I was in a shop last week that has candy vending machines. The kind that give you a few M&M's or nuts for a nickel, and supposedly give the money to charity, and I couldn't help wondering if anyone gets candy from them anymore. With Americans so constantly freaked about "germs," I can't imagine anyone buying unwrapped food from one of those little machines nowadays.

There is a Christmas commercial getting regular rotation lately that gets my anti-Walmart heart pounding. There is a woman asking for a price guarantee on Christmas merchandise. She stands there long enough to makes several comments to the sales associate, and then sing part of a song. The first thing that struck me about it is that the actor playing the sales associate looks an awful lot like a young, brunette Goldie Hawn, but then I thought, who has ever seen a WalMart sales person spend anywhere near that much time with a customer? In fact, who shops at WalMart and can get any help at all when they need it?

I'M SO HAPPY!!!! Not really. I hate so-called "reality shows," and I've been seeing commercials recently  now for the return of one of the early ones-"Fear Factor." In the commercial they promise to be bigger and better than ever-including "bigger stunts." I guess they may be referring to the feats and humiliations that contestants are required to be subjected to in order to win, but in my classic movie mind, big stunts mean optical illusions of people appearing to do very dangerous things, or being killed or whatever. "OH, did you hear-Fear Factor? They did it with mirrors!"

"From 1999 to 2005, breast cancer incidence rates in the U.S. decreased by about 2% per year. The decrease was seen only in women aged 50 and older. One theory is that this decrease was partially due to the reduced use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) by women after the results of a large study called the Women’s Health Initiative were published in 2002. These results suggested a connection between HRT and increased breast cancer risk."  breastcancer.org
When I read, back in October, that the incidence of breast cancer is decreasing in this country, I got happy. Shortly after that the book "Our Bodies, Ourselves," published by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective was celebrating its fortieth birthday. It occurred to me that when women get involved, we get shit done. Before Our Bodies, Ourselves," there were very few books that dealt with women's health, and now that we have begun to be treated as different human beings from men, we are getting healthier. But then I also realized that every republican political candidate, the tea party candidates who were elected in 2010, and many right wing organizations are devoting themselves to taking back women's control over our health, and I got sad. If we can't control our own health choices, what will be taken next?  It seems that every time women begin to take any kind of power for our own lives, men get scared and try to take it away. Yes, I'm talking about choice, but I'm also talking about access to information about reproductive health, which may or may not include the choice to terminate a pregnancy. Rick Santorum says that he would outlaw all birth control. Now why would he do that? Well, he is one of those Christians who want to sublimate women, to be sure. And his holy book does say that women should submit to their husbands. Where that comes from has been addressed by me in a much earlier post. But it is also a fact that when women  have some control over the number of children they have, they tend to become something other than baby-making machines. They improve their educations, and their productivity in their societies. They thereby threaten the power of men. (Who, our current world situation should prove, have done such an AWESOME job with all their power.) How any smart woman can listen to these candidates and then go out and vote republican is utterly beyond me. I'm not saying there are no smart women who are republicans. I'm just saying that in order to cast a vote for someone like Santorum, or Romney, or Cain, McCain or Gingrich, the smart ones must really have to hold their noses in the voting booths, and I would love to know the fiercely compelling issue that forces them to do that. 


Meanwhile, I'd like for anyone who knows me well to sit down. Take a deep breath, and possibly keep your smelling salts handy. I agree with Herman Cain. Partly. Only on one issue...he was partially right when he said this week that candidates aren't supposed to know about foreign policy. Remember CANDIDATE Obama saying that he would close Guantanamo, end rendition, ET CETERA, ET CETERA? But what happens when a person becomes president, and gets up every morning for a national security briefing? He (and hopefully soon, she) see the world, and the threats against us in a different, less rhetorical way. I still believe that Guantanamo should be closed, and that rendition is wrong. We either believe in torture, or we don't. If we don't, then we should not render prisoners to other countries to do our torturing for us. I think we've been in Afghanistan way too long, and we never should have invaded Iraq. I'm deeply disappointed in President Obama for these, and some other reasons. But when he actually moved into the White House and the Oval Office, he saw a very different picture of the world than any candidate is allowed to see, and that has contributed to the breaking of some very important campaign promises. It's easy for John McCain, candidate, to sing "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran." President McCain would very likely have made quite different choices. While the level of ignorance that Herman Cain (or Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman or Rick Perry) show about the world we live in is disgusting for someone who aspires to be the most powerful politician on earth, Cain had a sliver of a point when he said that candidates aren't supposed to know about foreign policy. What I would recommend for candidates of every party is a little circumspection when asked about foreign policy decisions. It is easy to be bombastic and dramatic when there are no lives on the line...yet.

Yes-there will always be more questions!

1. Is it just me, or does anyone else think it's silly that in weight loss product commercials, the "before" photo is always wearing the same red bikini? If I lost that much weight by popping one of those pills or drinking one of those teas, I'd be wearing the red bikini in the after picture, but a one piece skirt before!

2. Speaking of commercials-does anyone really believe that if you don't call in the "next fifteen minutes," you won't get the great deal? Or why the "shipping and processing fee" is more than the product would be worth if one bought it retail?

3. Why is iced coffee so hard to make at home? Not that it can't be done, but it just doesn't come close to Thai Iced Coffee from a coffee shop.

4. When people consistently claim to wish political candidates would "focus on the issues," why do so many vote on anything but? It always seems that red-herrings, lies and high drama fuel elections.

5. Eric Rudolph, Fred Phelps, Ralph Ovadal, Ralph Reed, Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Darrell Issa, ...I know that there are women  involved in the anti-choice movement. But the ones who are most strident or who become violent are white men. The statistics that I read say that most Americans are pro choice, but anti abortion. I've been told that the two positions are mutually exclusive, but I disagree. It is possible to be against abortion, but to realize that the real choice belongs to individuals, not to the government. Is it possible (playing devil's advocate here) that this is the result of the women's movement, and white men not understanding their place in the new world? The old jokes had to do with keeping women in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. Now a woman can use birth control, and go to work and by her own shoes. Many have decided to be single parents, and DO include the child's father in the child's life. But some people just can't adjust to a changing world and changing roles. So they become frustrated, and eventually snap into violence-if a woman can have an abortion, he can't keep her "barefoot and pregnant." Reproductive choice is the minimum of a woman's right to determine her own destiny. This is why educated women in third world countries, who have access to birth control, have fewer children. Historically, women were forced into marriages for the economic strength of their parents, and if they didn't produce male children, they could be discarded by their husband. Women had no rights, and whom to marry and having children were among the major things proving the second class status of women. Yes, I know this is an emotionally charged issue, and there has been little movement in changing some minds since Roe v Wade. But the fact is, it has been law for over thirty years. Our current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court says he will not violate legal precedent. It is time that we all move on. Yes, there are still people who think the country screwed up when it was decided that schools should be integrated, but for the most part, we have moved on. It's time to do that here. It is almost a full generation that have had the right for a safe, medical abortion. Let the next generation wonder why the bombers and shooters who plot to murder physicians and medical providers were not classified as the domestic terrorists that they are. If we do hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are, indeed, created equal. Lets stop the several states that have decided to make it harder for a woman to make her own choice regarding this basic right from taking it out of the hands of women and their doctors and placing it in the hands of a bunch of middle-aged white guys who needs to acknowledge that women are people too.