A really smart person surprised me by asking about my last posting. Why do I care what people say about my rights? After all, this is America. It’s 2012!
I care because I’m a student of history. Ninety-two years ago, women in the United States were still fighting for the right to vote. We didn’t achieve that until ratification by three-fourths of the states of the Nineteenth Amendment, August 18, 1920, when women finally gained the right to vote in a federal election.
Mississippi did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1984.
Mississippi did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1984.
Not until 1965 (Griswold v. Connecticut) was it legal in every U.S. state for a married couple to use birth control.
Most people know that extremist factions in Afghanistan prohibited women from attending school, working, driving, going out in public without a male relative, or even appearing in public without being covered, head-to-toe. But it wasn’t always like that.
“Before 1996… nearly half the doctors, university students and teachers in Kabul were women.” (see citations 1 and 2, below*)
Did you know that? Extremism can happen. Even in America. After all, a lawmaker in our country recently had this to say:
NPR article – “Girl Scouts destroying ‘American Family Values’.”
I have no printable words to sufficiently express my thoughts on his comments, except: are you #&@! kidding me?!?** This person was elected to make laws in our country.
*1: Read more: Time on Women in Afghanistan
*2: PBS on Women in Afghanistan
** Standard disclaimer: Swearing like…? I am, literally, a sailor. 😀
** Standard disclaimer: Swearing like…? I am, literally, a sailor. 😀