WHAT DOES THE ELECTION MEAN?

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A VOTE MAKES—BUT WILL IT?

So now President Bush wants to cooperate. Now he wants to reach across the aisle. Now he wants to work together with the Democrats, finally to show he can be that “uniter not divider” of his 2000 campaign promises. That perhaps he isn’t even the sole decider of everything after all. What? Why would any Democrat in his or her right mind give this man the time of day?

Bush puffed and preened and bared his teeth before the election. But once he "got thumped", as he put it, all that puffery deflated in a nanosecond just like you might see with any other bully. Rummy (who could do no wrong 24 hours previously) was shown the door the day after the elections, Congresswoman and probable next Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi--taunted throughout the election season as the very personification of liberal, liberal, liberal evil--was invited to lunch at the White House, and the president allowed as how he wants to work with the same Democrats he's been wringing out and hanging up to dry for the last 6 years. And all too often, they have been complicit in their humiliation.

This puts the Democrats into a catch 22 of their own making. After railing about the lack of bipartisan cooperation, and whining about what was wrong rather than setting forth an agenda they think is right, the Democrats have only two choices: to behave as the winning party usually does and run roughshod over the others for as long as they can get away with it, or to play the cooperation game.

If they use their political currency to play hardball while they have the momentum and the public weal behind them, they will be called partisan and arrogant. Notwithstanding that this is exactly what Bush has been doing for six years, despite losing the popular vote in his first "selection" and having the good fortune to draw John Kerry, who was perfectly capable of defeating himself, as his opponent in his second race. On the other hand, if the Democrats do genuinely try to cooperate they will most likely find themselves and their principles co-opted faster than you can say "appeaser".

Or maybe there is a third way, much as I hate that overused term.

Americans who campaigned on behalf of, wrote checks to, and cast votes for the winning Democrats need to remind the new Congressional majority that electing them wasn’t the goal. Getting then to do a better job of governing than the Republicans they ousted from power is the goal.

The Republican right brought a scorched earth philosophy to governing. To the extent the Democrats play the charade of cooperating with this president without extracting serious concessions from him beforehand, we will be back where we started all too soon, with a devastating war dragging on, increasing numbers of people lacking health insurance, a burgeoning deficit, and an economy that pleases no one. They will then most likely be swept out of office in 2008 as they were in 1994 on the heels of a similarly heady ascent to power in 1992. Only this time it will mean the loss of the White House yet again as well. That’s an enormous price to pay.

To the extent that the Democrats exhibit statespersonship and invite a respectable number of their adversaries to the policy table in a principled way while not caving in to the lowest common denominator or losing their moral center, they might just be able to reduce the cynicism that sours so many people on participating in the democratic process. Better yet, they might even be able to get a great deal of good done for the American people while solidifying their political base for winning the big prize in 2008.

© Gloria Feldt 2006

South Dakota Law New Chapter in Story of Childbearing Rights

The biggest news about the sweeping new South Dakota law that will ban all abortions except to save the woman's life—no exceptions to preserve her health or for rape or incest--is that it is not such big news, It is in fact a news story that has been repeated over and over for more than a generation. But this time the story might well be headed for a disastrously different ending.

The South Dakota abortion ban, which passed the state legislature Feb.22 and was signed by Governor Mike Rounds (R), will join over a dozen state bans already on the books. It’s a head-on challenge to Roe v Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

Most of the outright abortion bans predate Roe, or passed soon after it. None can be enforced now because Roe is federal precedent that applies to all states.

Roe galvanized those who oppose a woman's right to choose about childbearing, and their immediate post-Roe response was to seek sweeping abortion bans. But they lost most of those battles, some by ballot initiative, some by legislative action or inaction, most by court rulings. They learned from their defeats and began to seek incremental victories: eliminating Medicaid funding for abortions for poor women, requiring minors to get parental consent prior to obtaining an abortion, mandatory delays, and state-written “counseling” aimed at promoting childbirth over abortion.

Still, Roe’s central tenets of a right to privacy in making childbearing decisions--the same as those in Griswold v Connecticut in1965 that gave Americans the right to obtain birth control--and the primacy of protecting women’s health have stood the test of time--thus far.

According to Eve Gartner, senior litigator for Planned Parenthood Federation of America whose Minnesota/North Dakota/South Dakota affiliate is the only abortion provider in the state, the ban will be challenged even before it is slated to go into effect July 1. There is a strong likelihood of success in the lower federal court. So far, this is a familiar story.

Three distinct differences today: the Court, the role of Congress, and the right's agenda

What’s most different now is the Supreme Court.

Roe was decided 7-2. The most recent rulings on abortion have been 5-4, with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor casting the pivotal 5th vote and often the person who cobbled together that razor-slim majority within a sharply divided Court. In between came numerous rulings that so pushed back the protections of Roe that some believe Roe is already a fragile shell.

The Republican right’s endgame of capturing the Supreme Court was won when Samuel Alito took the seat vacated by O’Connor. Alito authored the incremental strategy of overturning Roe restriction by restriction when he was an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice during the Reagan administration.

Now Alito will be the pivotal vote on those very cases when they come before the Court. The South Dakota law could be the one that finally fells Roe after years of chipping away at it. Already, the Alito Court has agreed to hear a challenge to the federal abortion ban, giving it one more opportunity to roll back Roe and prepare the way for its demise. And an anonymous donor has offered to $1,000,000 to fund South Dakota’s legal challenge to Roe.

South Dakota is just one of the 30 states which “What if Roe Fell”, an analysis published in September, 2004, by the pro-choice Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) predicts would either reinstate their old laws banning abortion or move swiftly to pass new bans if Roe were overturned.

But state-by-state analysis might become moot. Another big difference from the pre-Roe era is that Congress is in the act now, passing federal laws restricting abortion in various ways but applying in all states. And Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) has already said he will move to make it a crime to cross state lines for an abortion if it is illegal in your state, in the event Roe is overturned.

Finally, with the FDA dragging its heels on approving over-the-counter sales of the morning after contraceptive called Plan B, half a billion dollars a year spent on abstinence-only sex education programs while family planning services are underfunded and gagged, and a growing number of pharmacists refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, it is increasingly clear that much more than abortion is at risk. Overturning Roe would pull the thread that unravels the entire fabric of reproductive justice that began even before the Griswold birth control decision. That includes the right to privacy, the right to make our own childbearing decisions—to bear or beget, to use birth control or not, to have access to medically accurate sexual health information and services that are informed by science and not ideology.

The saga continues

But even then the end of this story will not have been written. The new South Dakota law could become a wake-up call to that 66 % of Americans who consistently say Roe v Wade should remain the law of the land. Most agree with Planned Parenthood’s Gartner when she says, “It would be a devastating day for women if they are no longer able to make intimate, personal decisions on their own.”

If Roe is overturned, there could be a pro-choice backlash equal to the anti-choice backlash after Roe. The midterm elections in 2006 and the presidential election in 2008 bring could bring about yet another twist to the plot of this seemingly unending story.

©Gloria Feldt 2006 gloriafeldt04@aol.com 9177155107 www.gloriafeldt.com
Gloria Feldt is the author of The War on Choice: the right-wing attack on women’s rights and how to fight back, and was president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 2006-2005.

Originally Published on www.womensmediacenter.com

Bang Those Pots and Keep This Movement Moving

Today is March 8, International Women's Day 2006. But before getting into that, let's think back to September 1995.

Spin the globe and stop the world on China.
It's the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, where hugely ambitious and thrilling goals were set for improving the lives of women, and by extension their families and the world.

The official conference was in Beijing, but the much larger convocation of activists from nongovernmental organizations was literally stuck in the mud in Huairu, a suburb an hour's drive from the city.

Thousands of us had arrived early on the morning of Sept. 6, to stand packed together under a roof of brightly colored umbrellas, jockeying for the few hundred seats inside the auditorium where then first lady of the United States Hillary Clinton was slated to give a speech.

I was fortunate not only to get inside but to get a seat. The program was running late; Hillary was running even later and the crowd was getting restive. Just as it seemed a revolt might be brewing, Shirley May Springer Stanton, the cultural coordinator of the conference, walked onto the stage and began to sing a capella, ever so softly: "Gonna keep on moving forward. Never turning back, never turning back."

Then she asked the audience to join her. Pretty soon the house was rocking. By the time the first lady arrived and gave her brilliant "human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights" speech, it truly felt like the global movement for women's rights was unstoppable. It was, you might say, an ovular moment.

Other Countries Take the Lead

Here in the United States, that moment can seem long ago when we consider our administration's federal budget and see how it slashes funding for international family planning services that could reduce the millions of unsafe abortions and risky pregnancies that cause 500,000 unnecessary deaths each year globally.

But the U.S. women's movement can take inspiration from working in sisterhood with women from around the globe. While the United States fails to meet its commitments to the global public-health community, many developing countries are funding these essential women's health services beyond all expectations and the European nations step in to fill much of the void left by America's abdication of leadership.

Women's development projects are also fueling economic growth around the world while bringing greater equality to the women in their societies. Sex trafficking and other acts of violence against women, long merely routine facts of life for women, are becoming subjects of international media attention and human rights action. And female heads of state are being elected in Europe, Africa and Latin America this year.

No movement for social justice moves forward without struggle, nor does forward movement necessarily go in a straight line. Yet, the movement for women's liberation in the U.S. seems to be the only one about which it can be said with impunity, "Enough now, we must go backward."

In her 2004 book "The Boundaries of Her Body: The Troubling History of Women's Rights in America," author and lawyer Debran Rowland delineates in crushing detail "cycles of advances and digressions characterizing women's rights in America."

Throughout these cycles, the rhetoric of opposition to the women's movement has been consistently pejorative. "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote," President Grover Cleveland said, arguing against the suffrage movement prior to 1920.

Vilifying the Movement

Today, televangelist and political power broker Rev. Pat Robertson calls feminism a "socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

In the pressure cooker of such vilification and political retribution, U.S. women's rights activists sometimes succumb to squabbling about strategy. Instead of pushing ahead with passionate commitment, we debate the merits of retreat, reframing and retrenchment.

A prime example: John Kerry failed to articulate his own passionate commitment to women's rights during the 2004 presidential campaign. After his defeat, Sen. Hillary Clinton--the inspirational speaker at the Beijing meeting--chided New York reproductive health care providers, telling the very people who invented prevention--to change their agenda to prevention.

"The best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place."

(Well, yes, Hillary, that's why providers asked you to co-sponsor the Prevention First Act, which calls for increased funding for family planning services and access to emergency contraception that could prevent half of all abortions. You did and thanks for that, but now, how about giving the bill another big political push?)

Similarly, reproductive rights advocate Alex Sanger, in a Women's eNews article last month, charged feminists with having too narrow an agenda. To muster political clout in the next election, he said, we have to broaden our message to policies that affect entire families.

In truth the feminist movement--not the anti-feminists--has always advocated for the full panoply of just social policies from child care to pay equity and universal access to quality health care.

The Agenda is Not the Problem

The problem is not the feminist agenda. The problem is that all of us who support it need the political will, courage, commitment, stamina and a never-ending creation of inspiring initiatives that touch real people's lives. A movement, after all, has to move.

We who call ourselves feminists must remember, proudly, that we have changed the world, much for the better in terms of justice and equality. That's exactly what scares our adversaries so much.

A group of African women at the Beijing conference told a story about how they stamped out spousal abuse in their village. It bears repeating in this muffled era for women's rights activism.

The women said they banded together, took their cooking pots and took up positions outside of the homes of men who had committed violent acts against their wives. They banged on those pots so loudly that the whole neighborhood came out and took note of them and the men agreed to change their behavior.

Each country today has different reasons to bang their pots on this International Women's Day 2006. But the refrain for all of us who aspire to global justice for women is the same.

"Gonna raise our voices boldly, Never turning back. Gotta keep on moving forward, Never turning back, Never turning back."

So the Hammer Finally Nailed Himself

So the Hammer finally nailed himself.

I am so disappointed. It would have been much more fun to defeat Tom DeLay fair and square at the ballot box in November.

I was prepared to walk door-to-door in the district (my son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons who deserve better representation live there). A stunning election defeat for Tom DeLay would show other zealous right-wing politicians that the majority of Americans--when you can get their attention away from trying to make a living and taking care of their families--really are in favor of basic democratic principles and--dare I say--ethical government. They really do believe in liberty and justice for all, in freedom of religion and speech, and in respecting the fundamental rights of others. They want to live and let live, not by the hammer but by common decency and fairness. Many of them were outraged when he violated the medical privacy of Terry Schiavo’s family who were faced with heartrending decisions. Others were shocked by his probable brush with corruption in his dealings with lobbyists. Everyone should be furious about how his long arm reached from Congress into the state redistricting process and defeated those with whom he disagreed, not at the ballot box but in the backrooms.

DeLay fell prey to his own arrogant quest for power over others when he should have been focusing on how he could use his position of public trust to improve the lives of the people he supposedly served. You have to admire and learn from his vision and tenaciousness, while reviling his raw use of power in the service of avarice, personal aggrandizement, and fundamentalist screed.

So another corrupt politician bites the dust. But now, while we do have the voters' attention, let's all take all this little civics lesson to heart. Politics is only a crooked and cynical game when we let the crooks and cynics hold the keys to the halls of government.

Go to your next precinct meeting, people. Practice democracy 101. Get registered to vote if you're not already. Vote every time and take your friends and family with you. Go to town halls to meet candidates and elected officials in person. Scour politician's websites and ask them questions. Check their voting records. Organize voters who share your values to get a meeting with candidates prior to elections when they are most likely to spend the time with you and keep in touch after their elections so they know they are accountable. And yes, write a check now and then to candidates you support. It does take money and lots of it to run a campaign. In today’s media-saturated world, candidates have to be able to get their message out to voters. We want to make it possible for people who aren’t rich or simply power mad to run for office. And hold the media accountable too, for representing the candidates and the issues accurately.

When we as citizens fail to do these things, we're the ones who get hammered. That's just the way it is in a democracy, like it or not.

© Gloria Feldt 2006
www.gloriafeldt.com

Newsletter: April 6, 2006

“I was ahead in the slalom. But in the second run, everyone fell on a dangerous spot. I was beaten by a woman who got up faster than I did. I learned that people fall down, winners get up and Gold Medal winners just get up faster.” ~Bonnie St. John

(*see story below)

DANGLY EARRINGS

Thank all of you who have sent me dangly earring stories. Please keep sending them to Gloria@gloriafeldt.com. In case you missed the metaphor, I revealed in a previous newsletter that one of my declarations of independence a year ago was to get my ears pierced for the first time in my life so I can wear beautiful dangly earrings. Many readers responded with their own stories. I’m going to share some stories with you, starting with this one from David Nova:

I don't have any dangling earring stories for you, but I do have an excerpt from a speech I gave for AAUW regarding violence against women. The speech began with the following:
When I was a junior at Vassar College, a student was raped on the campus grounds. A few days later …(click for more)

No Temple in Temple

I am very excited about my next two speeches (see column on right) because I get to talk about something near and dear to my heart. I will tell my personal story of growing up, yes, in Temple TX, where there was no temple, and later farther west in the "Last Picture Show"-like town of Stamford TX.

My sometimes painful and sometimes funny experiences as one of a small minority and sometimes the only Jewish family in town, was the impetus for my commitment to social justice and led me to my life's work for civil rights, including women's reproductive rights.

My desire to be an all-American girl (just like everybody else I knew) coupled with a minimally observant family life led me away from Judaism at first. But when my children were told by neighbors that they had black hearts because they hadn't been saved, I studied world religions, decided to embrace my own Jewish religion, became active in the small synagogue serving a 100-mile radius in West Texas, and began to truly value the source of my passion for repairing the world, Tikkun Olam.

There’s a new blog in town. Check out www.ILFpost.org

Upcoming speeches

Special Conference Guest Speaker. “Civil Rights/Women’s Rights”

Hadassah Southern Region Spring Conference

April 23, Chattanooga TN

Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel (can you believe that?)

Keynote speaker: “There was No Temple in Temple: What Growing up Jewish in Small-Town Texas Taught Me About Leadership and Tikkun Olam”

Jewish Federation of Valley Alliance. Followed by book signing.

El Caballero Country Club

April 28, Tarzana CA

Bang Those Pots and Keep This Movement Moving
On International Women's Day, Gloria Feldt looks back to a recent high-tide of activism at the Beijing global conference on women just over 10 years ago. Now more than ever, she says, we need to tap that same spirit of conviction.

Click here to read my commentary on Women’s e-News

The Battle to Ban Birth Control
Click here to read a great

salon.com article exposing the attacks on birth control

*Bonnie St. John was the overall second fastest woman skier in the world on one leg in 1984 and the first African-American to win Olympic medals in skiing.

The quote at the top of this newsletter will be featured on Starbucks cups this fall. For more information click here.

Gloria on the O'Reilly Factor

Click to Play

8 minutes 20 seconds.

Newsletter: June 1, 2006

June 2006

"The simplest explanation of any phenomenon is nine times out of ten truer than a really fancy one."--Occam's Razor, or The Law of Parsimony


An occasional newsletter from Gloria Feldt, May 8, 2006 www.gloriafeldt.com, gloria@gloriafeldt.com

So this month, I'll keep it as simple as Occam's Razor because I'm really busy, but I want to tell you about some highlights.

My New Book (or how I'm going to spend my summer vacation)
I am very excited to tell you that Kathleen Turner and I are writing a book about her life lessons, to be published in September, 2007, by Springboard (Time Warner Book Group's imprint that targets baby boomers). The book is tentatively named Take the Lead, Lady! We love the title because it came from a moment when we were shuttling around town from publisher's office to publisher's office to pitch the book. At one point, Kathleen, my agent Karen Gantz Zahler, and I tumbled out of an elevator, clueless about which way to turn to find the office where out next appointment was to be. Kathleen boomed, in her most imperiously Kathleen voice, "Take the lead, Lady!". It's going to be a very fun, smart, interesting book with lots of dish. I can't wait to be able to tell you more. And if you want to find me this summer, I'll be glued to my computer.

Other book news
What an honor to be included among outstanding women in Willa Shalit's recently released book, Becoming Myself: Reflections on Growing Up Female. I'm page 77, between Susan Stamberg and Patti LaBelle. Proceeds from this book go to four wonderful organizations that work to better women's and girls' lives. It's a delightful, inspiring Mother's Day gift. Click here for more information.

And speaking of books, I recently attended a swishy party for Joe Klein and his new book....(Read on, my latest political commentary on the blog ILFPost.org. )


The "War on Contraception" is finally recognized by the New York Times!


O'Reilly has a thing about hardhats
To read a transcript of my recent interview on the O'Reilly Factor regarding an excellent ad campaign by Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, Click here.


Dangly Earring story of the month from Patricia Ireland, labor lawyer and past president of NOW:
Hi Gloria--
How great to know where you are and what you're doing!

To celebrate being sixty I got a beautiful new tattoo on my back. It's an absolutely gorgeous phoenix, and it joins a dragon that I got in my fifties. Having colorful tattoos on my back pleases me. They are my secret and my absolute claim to my own body. Together the dragon & phoenix are a male-female symbol in Chinese iconography.To me they represent an expression of my individuality, creativity, and a little touch of fantasy.

Hope you're enjoying your dangly earrings!

Best to you,


Patricia

EC for EW (Emergency Contraception for Every Woman Who Needs It When She Needs It)

Note: given the news about the FDA’s current proposal to allow plan B Emergency Contraception (EC) to be sold over the counter—BUT with requirements that women under age 18 must have a prescription and that pharmacists must keep all EC behind the counter thus making it more difficult for women of any age to access, I thought a brief reminder of what EC is and why it should be fully accessible to all who need it is in order.

Want to reduce abortions by half? Want to know who is keeping the means from American women?

The topic is emergency contraception—EC for short. You might have heard it called the morning after pill. It’s birth control—just basic birth control pills in a formulation that can prevent pregnancy from occurring if used within 120 hours after intercourse.

Research predicts that if it were readily accessible, well-advertised, and properly used, EC could prevent about half of all unintended pregnancies and abortions. Imagine!

The World Health Organization says it is completely safe for over-the-counter use, and 39 countries already make it available that way for women of all ages. It is supported by the American Medical Association, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Academy of Pediatrics, and a wide array of public health professionals. http://www.drkoop.com/ency/93/007014.html, http://www.arhp.org/healthcareproviders/resources/ecresources/ecotcfda.cfm

And no, making EC widely available doesn’t make women promiscuous. We actually have the brains to use it appropriately.

Nor do women use EC as a substitute for their regular methods of contraception. In fact, when they have EC in their medicine cabinets in advance of need, it seems to serve the same purpose as the proverbial string tied around your finger.

So if EC really could prevent many unintended pregnancies and abortions, what’s the debate? Why is there any debate? And why should we care?

The fact is, Emergency Contraception is a vital component to comprehensive health care for women—it is literally, a woman’s “plan B”—if the condom breaks, if a woman has been sexually assaulted, if she thinks her regular contraceptive didn’t work for whatever reason--and that should be personal.

But it has become a political fight in which the science and medicine are being trumped by the politics of an ideological battle. For a timeline of the long-running battle over EC, take a look at this: Over-the-Counter Insurgency.

Those opposed to EC are the same people who oppose both abortion and family planning in other venues based on narrow ideological and religious views they want to force upon all of us regardless of what the evidence shows. In Fact, FDA officials have testified that they were forced to place the politics over the known scientific facts and their own best judgment. http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=38921

An editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine called it “A sad day for science at the FDA”, when FDA management bowed to political pressure…and continued to ignore the recommendations of its own scientific committees.

I think “sad’ is way too timid a word. It is an outrage.

Because, after all, mistakes happen. Condoms break. And not always during regular business hours. And women who have suffered the trauma of rape should not have to endure the second trauma of worrying that they might become pregnant.

One courageous and ethical woman, Dr. Susan Wood, resigned from her FDA position as director of its Women's Health Division in protest over its disregard of science regarding EC. Like Susan Wood, I think women deserve health care based on science, not politics, and they shouldn’t have to fight their government to get it.

So do Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Patty Murray (D-WA), rightly held up the confirmation of Andrew von Eschenbach to the post of FDA commissioner. Their stance has caused the FDA to make its latest tepid proposal. I say, Senators, hold tight until the FDA decides to actually make the approval with its current restrictions removed and an affirmation that the scientific evidence will prevail.

Since unfettered access to EC could prevent half of all unintended pregnancies and abortions, let's celebrate this incremental step forward for women's health while we continue to work toward what 39 other countries have already done: make EC available without prescription to all women of all ages. There is no medical reason not to.

The Bush administration has played retail politics with women's health for many years. Now they have been bested at their own game. Senators Patti Murray (D-WA) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) held up confirmation of Dr, Andrew von Eschenbach's nomination to be FDA commissioner until he capitulated and replaced his shameful political-ideological policy with legitimate science.

It took politics to overcome politics and allow medical science to prevail on medical decisions. I hope the Democrats will grow some balls when they see that they really can play to win. And how about the fact that it took two women to demonstrate this fact?

© 2006 Gloria Feldt

Newsetter: February 24, 2006

“Well behaved women rarely make history”

~Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Honor Our Mothers by Celebrating Women’s History Month and

International Women’s Day on March 8.

Here’s a little background on Women’s History Month: In my youth and up until the 1970's, women's history was virtually nonexistent the public school curriculum or in public consciousness. The Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women first initiated a "Women's History Week" celebration in 1978. They chose the week of March 8 to make International Women's Day the focal point of the observance.

The response was so overwhelming across the country that by 1987, the entire month of March was designated as Women’s History Month by a bi-partisan Congressional resolution. That said, it is my observation that most history curricula still underreport women’s history and history made by women. Thus the annual celebrations are an opportunity to learn and to teach about this universally important topic.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court can be up to no good by agreeing to hear another abortion ban case, and South Dakota has passed a law making abortion illegal, it’s urgent to talk about the connection between women’s struggles for our most fundamental rights, including reproductive rights as an essential human right.

On February 22, I had the pleasure of delivering the keynote speech to the remarkable volunteers of the Peer Health Exchange at their annual volunteer conference. Peer Health

Exchange college students give generously of their time and talents to teach top notch comprehensive health education in public schools.

Click here to learn more about the Peer Health Exchange.

Here’s where I’ll be speaking this month -- Please Join Me.

­The Bradley University Public Lecture

“The Courts and Women Today: Special Interests or

Fundamental Human Rights?”

Wednesday, March 1, 2006, 7:30pm

Newmiller Lecture Hall, Bradley Hall, Bradley University

1501 West Bradley Avenue, Peoria, IL

Celebrate Women’s History Month at the Library

“Motherhood in Bondage / Motherhood in Freedom.”

Saturday, March 4, 2006, 2pm

Brooklyn Public Library, 2nd Floor Meeting Room, Central Library, 1 Grand Army Plaza, call 718-230-2100 for more information.

I’m especially excited to give this speech in Brooklyn, where the birth control movement began with the first clinic in 1916.

Click Here for more information.

NY Celebrates International Women’s Day with leading human rights advocates.

I am honored to be speaking with this distinguished panel: The Right Reverend Catherine S. Roskam, Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen, Charlotte Bunch, Noleen Heyzer, Bianca Jagger,

Dr. Speciosa Kazibwe, and Vivian Stromberg.

Wednesday, March 8, 7:30-9:30pm - St. Bart’s Church on Park Ave. at 50th

Click Here for more information.

Dangly Earrings

Of all the articles, photo, and words I have put into these newsletters over the past 6 months, my revelation that (finally at my tender age) I got my ears pierced so that I can wear beautiful dangly earrings has generated the most comments, from men as well as women.

This is not unrelated to the admonition about good behavior not making history. Any act that represents a break from the past creates energy, sometimes negative, more often positive. With this in mind, I want to ask you, dear readers, to share your equivalent of dangly earrings with me for a new column by that name. What have you done that is a meaningful departure from your past? Why did you do it? And what has been the result? I can’t wait to see your stories.

Newsletter: January 16, 2006

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Best wishes for the Brave New Year

New is good. What did you do new last year? I left a 30-year career of social movement

leadership to become a solo practitioner writing and speaking about my passions. I got my ears pierced so I can wear those beautiful dangly earrings.

What are you going to do new this year? I’m working on a fun new book about life lessons for women and have created a new speech to share leadership lessons I learned the hard way. I’m working out with a trainer who has made me physically stronger than ever. We’re going to need strength to counteract the rightward drift of the Supreme Court. (See commentary, right column).

As words of encouragement, I want to share with you sentiments that have been attributed to Abel Muzorewa, former prime minister of Zimbabwe, and that have guided me through many new years and challenges. Dr. King exemplified such inspiration:

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered

Love them anyway

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives

Do good anyway

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies

Succeed anyway

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow

Do good anyway

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable

Be honest and frank anyway

The biggest person with the biggest idea can be shot down by the smallest person with the smallest mind

Think big anyway

People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs

Fight for some underdogs anyway

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight

Build anyway

People need help, but may attack you if you help them

Help people anyway

Give the world the best you have and sometimes you’ll get kicked in the teeth

Give the world your best anyway

“Well behaved women rarely make history”

~Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

March is Women’s History Month. I’ll be speaking at Bradley University and the Brooklyn Public Library on the history and future of reproductive rights in a speech entitled “Motherhood in

Bondage / Motherhood in Freedom: The Choice is Yours.”

My Recent Commentary:

For Alito Hearing Theater, Get Your Playbill Here
Women's eNews - New York,NY,USA
Be careful about whose script you follow and offers a playbill for an interactive performance. …

High Court Case Takes Aim at Heart of Roe
Women's eNews - New York,NY,USA
Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood is nothing less than an attack at the heart of Roe v. Wade. ...

By the way, if you don’t already subscribe to Women’s e-News, you should. www.womensenews.org

Newsletter: November 15, 2005

“Life has taught me: we must put our convictions into action” ~Margaret Sanger

Is Public Health a House on Fire?

Click here to see a video of the speech I gave at the University of Alabama School of Public Health.

Spinning Justice

It appears to me that President Bush and the Republican Senate leadership are attempting to suppress opposition to the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court by convincing us that a) Alito respects precedent, Roe is the precedent, and thus he is not likely to vote to overturn Roe and b) Alito’s position in Roe (i.e. the right to privacy)is the central question. The central question actually is: Do you, Judge Alito, believe a woman has the fundamental human and civil right to make her own childbearing decisions? This is what the Senators must ask Alito and insist that he answer. If he says “no” or equivocates, then he should not be confirmed. Period.

The Women's Lawyers Association of Los Angeles presented me with their Courage Award on October 20th. Click here to read my speech.

Newsletter: October 17, 2005

Harriet Miers:

Is the Right Protesting Too Much?

The most virulent attacks on Miers are coming from George Bush’s base—the right-wing ideological groups like the Eagle Forum and their cronies in the Senate such as Sen. Sam Brownback. “Souter in a skirt” they have called Miers, revealing more than a whiff of sexist derision.

Click here to read more...

EC for EW

(Every Woman Who Needs it When She Needs it)

Want to reduce abortions by half? Want to know who is keeping the means from American women? Want to do something about it?

Click here to read more and find out how to take action.

The War on Choice has achieved cinematographic fame! If you look really closely at the table in the room where the 40 Year-old Virgin is awaiting his appointment for birth control information, you’ll see WOC, along with Tom Davis’s excellent book Sacred Work.

Also, WOC made the “Bitch List” in the latest Bitch magazine: “Tempting as it can be to focus tactics narrowly on abortion, such an approach serves neither women nor feminism well, and The War on Choice is an important recognition of that fact.”

Harriet Miers: Is the Right protesting too much?

Last week, I happened to see a lawyer who runs an association of women judges and has a long history of national leadership in the legal field. She basically knows everyone who is anyone in the legal profession. I asked her what she thought about Miers.

“Well”, she replied in all seriousness and after some thought, “she’s not a monster.”

This hit me like a ton of bricks--that in this era of hard-right conservative grip on our nation’s political institutions, “not being a monster” could be a qualification for the highest court in the land—the United States Supreme Court, the final arbiter of the Constitution, the nine men and women who decide how laws can intrude upon or enhance our lives, our liberties, our fundamental civil rights.

Now the interesting thing is that the strongest concerns being voiced about and even outright opposition to Miers are coming not just from Democrats and organizations on the progressive side of the ledger. In fact, the pithiest language progressives seem to be able to muster is that they are “troubled” by the nomination. Makes me want to pour buckets of starch into their backbones—but that’s a subject for another day.

The most virulent attacks on Miers are coming from George Bush’s base—the right-wing ideological groups like the Eagle Forum and their cronies in the Senate such as Sen. Sam Brownback.

“Souter in a skirt” they have called Miers, revealing more than a whiff of sexist derision.

You do have to wonder what Bush is thinking:
But then there is this Administration’s recent record—appointing a male veterinarian to run the women’s health division of the FDA—a former horse association director to run FEMA—the Texas Lottery commissioner to USSC-- do we see a pattern? Cronyism rather than qualifications perhaps?

In the absence of information, people tend to make up their own, so it’s no surprise that both sides have big questions about Harriet Miers.

Perhaps this nomination is arrogance as usual from the Bush White House, once again thumbing its nose at anyone who dares to question them. “You want to judge my nominees by their past decisions? Well, I’ll show you—I’ll give you a nominee who has written NO decisions.”

Or--is this a sign that the right is losing its power, in the wake of Schiavo and Katrina and DeLay and Rove and Frist and voter anger about the war in Iraq? Should the Democrats simply declare victory and go home, since Bush didn’t nominate a monster?

The only way for the public to find out is for the Senate Judiciary committee—R’s and D’s alike--to insist (at a minimum) upon the release of Miers’ legal memos during her tenure as White House Counsel and Deputy Counsel. These are the only documentation of her legal thinking on the great issues facing our nation.

And Miers must—MUST-- answer questions on her judicial philosophy and Constitutional perspectives on those issues.

‘Strict scrutiny” of Harriet Miers is absolutely necessary in the interest of the integrity of the Court and the esteem in which we should all hold it and its opinions.

There is a fragile centrist balance on the current USSC today. It divides 5-4 on many criitcal issues like reproductive and other civil rights, and separation of religion and government. This appointment to fill the seat vacated by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will either hold that center or tip the scales toward the Scalia and Thomas side of the Court.

Miers tried to get the American Bar Association to rescind its pro-Roe position. Generally speaking, that’s a pretty reliable code for the probability that Miers will sit on the rightward end of the Court’s liberal to conservative continuum.

And I think the braying you hear from the political right is just a cover, that they desperately want Miers to be confirmed because they have been assured by the White House that she is one of their own.

Copyright 2005, Gloria Feldt

Harry, Sam, and the Incredible Vanishing Woman

Here's what I've been thinking lately. What are your thoughts about the Supreme Court nominations?

The cartoon got me thinking. The one with President Bush looking at a free-falling Harriet Miers and saying something like “Somebody had to take the fall, Harriet”, and Miers in mid-air smiling and saying something like “You’re still the very best president that ever was!”

Except for her legal career and the fact she never married, Miers is the very archetype of the 1950’s ideal woman: deferential to men yet cheerfully ready to do their bidding, self-effacing, focused on the minutiae rather than the big problems of the world, a little dowdy in her dress as appropriate for her age, churchgoing. She’s the perfect back-to-the future woman precisely because it can be said that she is professionally accomplished but still has those traditional hierarchical family values that the right-wing loves so much.

So then, why didn’t the right love Harriet Miers? Why was her nomination killed by her own while the Democrats played ‘let’s you and her fight” and watched, smiling, from the sidelines as she went down in flames and bobbed right back up ready to help with the nomination of the next nominee?

Was she just a stalking horse from the beginning, a set up for failure so she could be superseded by Bush’s appointment of a more reliably far(ther) right justice, such as Samuel Alito seems to be? Was she an example of the worst kind of affirmative action—in which a member of a disadvantaged group is appointed to a position for which he or she is eminently unqualified so that when the inevitable failure occurs those in power can say “See, I told you so.”, and proceed to appoint someone else of their own advantaged group? Or was it something even more difficult to define because it is more insidious—the story of the incredible disappearing woman? The story that has repeated itself over and over in history every time women have ascended in power and influence? Is the covert message in the right’s opposition to Miers rooted in the deep-seated misogyny that underpins the vicious backlash that has hamstrung the feminist movement?

Newletter: September 28, 2005

Robert’s Court Will Show Women Who’s Boss

Let me resist the impulse to start lambasting the Senate Democrats for once again dividing and conquering themselves, starting with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid opposing and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, supporting John Roberts' confirmation as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Let me stay on the issue at hand: the specter of a Roberts court.

It will change the country in numerous and profound ways.

Read more at Women’s e-News...

Commander in Chief

A White House Project screening of the first episode of the new television series “Commander in Chief” left me and most of the audience alternately cheering and tearing. Genna Davis admirably plays the first woman vice-president who becomes president after the president dies (and after being counseled to resign since obviously a woman could not be taken seriously on national defense issues, would not be acceptable to Muslim heads of state, does not have sufficient power needs to do the job, etc.). It’s a premise whose time has come, and by the time the 2008 elections come along, perhaps its time will have gone and no one will think necessary for the first woman president to inherit the presidency rather than winning it fair and square at the ballot box.

Surrounded by history-Looking toward the future

I believe that every generation has to speak in its own language about the important issues of the day. So it is with the struggle for women to achieve an equal place at life’s table. We won reproductive rights from the top down with Roe. Now we are going to have to win them again, from the bottom up, vote by vote, state by state, and heart by heart, mind by mind.

Newsletter: Day 1 of Roberts Hearings November 12, 2006

Hearings Day 1:

Should Progressives Oppose John Roberts?

The argument goes something like this: things aren’t as bad as they could be, so don’t exert the energy to fight for what you believe. Anyway, if and when the Court does roll back, say, reproductive rights or religious freedoms, that will “only” have consequences where legislative bodies pass laws against them...there will be future, even worse, nominees to the Court; save your resources till things get worse. Read More

Roberts and Roe

Am I saying then that John Roberts supports or condones violence? Of course not. But I am saying that when he had a chance to weigh in and explicitly oppose the rising tide of violence that continued to escalate over the ensuing years, he did not. That is a serious question of character. Read More

On August 15th, I appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor” to discuss NARAL’s decision to pull their ad on John Roberts and raised my own questions about the nominee.

Click here to watch the interview and read the transcript.
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What’s she doing now?

This is the question I most frequently hear since I left the presidency of Planned Parenthood Federation of America earlier this year. After a wonderful few months of travel and family fun (the summer of my content, I call it), I’m writing a new book, taking speaking engagements, and doing media commentary about my passions. It’s liberating to speak in my own voice, which might just be a tad edgy these days.