A Clarion Call to Action

 

Do you know about the doomsday clock? It lets us know how close the world is to a global catastrophe caused by nuclear weapons, climate change, advances in the life sciences, disruptive technologies, and the widespread corruption of the world’s information ecosystem. As of today, it's set at 90 seconds before midnight.

I chose this image because it's a fitting reflection about how close women in the US are to losing everything we've gained in the past 50 years.

 

Before Business Savvy...Agency

You know me, my message to women is that Business Savvy is the single most important thing you need to succeed. In my webinar, blog, pod and posts I make a compelling case for why
 
BUT what I realized over the weekend is that there’s an antecedent to that. This antecedent is seriously under threat in the US.
 

In 2005, the Federal reserve Bank of Boston put out an official report that documented what I knew through lived experience. One of its findings was that the spike in college-educated women seeking careers began a little over 35 years prior. Reproductive rights - and notably access to the birth control pill - played a significant role in enabling women to postpone marriage, plan child-bearing (or not) and to plan and actualize careers in organizations. 

 
So the antecedent that I’m talking about Is our ability to determine the choice to be a mother and if so, the timing of that. We need complete agency.
 

Why I'm Talking About This

 
We already know that the repressive, regressive, repulsive, plutocrat-funded red-hatted, American Taliban, have come after healthcare for women, including abortion services.
 
Over the weekend I learned that Alabama Supreme Court has granted a fertilized egg personhood. This has basically made fertility treatments impossible, and that this one success will likely be replicated or attempt to be replicated in other states.
 
 
These stories are not making it into the mainstream, which is why I have violated my no political commentary rules here. (It's worth noting that this wouldn’t be political if it weren’t for the fact that one single party being funded by billionaire regressives is behind all of these efforts.)
 

What's a Woman to Do?

 
To women, who take for granted the ability to plan if and when to have a family, I say pay attention.
 
For women who are career ambitious,  I say pay attention.
 
For men who appreciate the right to plan if and when they have a family pay attention. 
 
Get active. Let your voice be heard.
 
  • Run for something.
  • Canvas for pro-women candidates
  • Amplify the news that's being sidelined
  • Alert other women to the dangers
 
They are taking us back to the 1940s and 50s.

 

One election will not make us safe.

The forces and money behind the new American Taliban's war on women are formidable, organized and practiced. They plotted for 50 years and got Roe overturned.

Jessica Valenti writes, "

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a bill like this one out of Oklahoma, though—which so perfectly captures the anti-abortion movement’s goals for the entire country. Oklahoma House Bill 3216 epitomizes so much of what I’ve warned about since launching Abortion, Every Day: It would ban emergency contraception and IUDs, create a state database of women who have had an abortions, potentially force doctors to perform c-sections instead of providing life-saving abortions, and redefine life-saving abortions as “pre-viability separation procedures.”

They will keep coming.

(If you're on Twitter you will learn more about this assault on women through the posts of Jenny Cohn and Jessica Valenti - who also has a newsletter)

Jessica Valenti 
@JessicaValenti
 
I write about abortion every day. Read my newsletter & find me other places here: linktr.ee/jessicavalenti
Brooklyn, NYjessica.substack.com 

 

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