Some More Thoughts on the March for Women's Lives

On assorted boards in us.imdb.com, some of the anti-choice folks have decided to decry any actor or actress who dares to be publicly pro-choice. I got a little tired of this, so I posted the following:

I think both Mel Gibson and Jim Caveziel have gone way overboard on The Passion. It's not a movie I will ever see (well, at least it's a movie I will ever pay to see). But will I broadly condemn every action the two do? Of course not.

Vanessa Redgrave walked way over the line with her unwavering support of the Palestinians (there's plenty of blame for the ongoing mess in the Middle East, and all sides are parts of the problem). But I know she's a talented actress. While I don't agree with her politics, I respect her enormously as an actress.

I respect Julianne and Whoopi and Ashley and the 800,000 other people who were with me in DC last weekend. The 200-300 anti-abortion folks who counter-demonstrated our march are entitled to their opinion. I'm entitled to ignore them. This is still a "free" country.

There was a great political cartoon in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about this very issue (unfortunately, it's not online yet). In one panel, George Bush is pointing at a member of Al Queda and says "The Problem with You Is You Hate Freedom." In the second panel, he's pointing at a Pro-Choice Marcher, and he says "The Problem With You Is You Love Freedom."

I avoid telling people what to believe. In fact, my daughter identifies herself as a pro-life person. However, we both very strongly believe in sex education and birth control. The current administration is taking the hard line against sharing birth control and abortion information. Due to its refusal, hundreds of thousands of women, mostly in Africa, are dying. But, the pro-life people don't seem to give a damn about the people dying from AIDS, childbirth complications and botched abortions.

The March for Women's Lives wasn't just about abortion. If you listened to the speakers, it was about promoting sex education. Of all kinds.

In an ideal world, we wouldn't need abortion clinics. We'd have birth control that worked all the time. No woman would ever be raped. Women who became dangerously ill during their pregnancies could have abortions to save their lives without being made to feel a criminal. But this isn't an ideal world.

A Death in the Family and a Weekend With Almost a Million

I was out of town over the weekend, and came home to find out that my Uncle Winslow had died. It was not completely unexpected - he'd had cancer for a number of years, and had been having good months and bad months. We shared an interest in genealogy. I'll miss him.



Winslow, Bill and George Trask, Spring 1992 -- At my father's (Bill's) retirement party



Winslow, Bill and George Trask, October 2003 -- At my brother Terry's wedding

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I spent the weekend in DC, partially to visit my brother Jeff and his fiance Rachel, and partially to attend the March for Women's Lives. This was the fifth time since 1978 that I'd been to a protest on the Mall in Washington, and it was substantially larger than any previous protest I'd been to. We probably had somewhere near 800,000 people there, meaning it was the biggest national rally ever in DC (yup, even bigger than "The Million Man March").



April 26 March: Posters Including - If You Aren't Outraged, You Aren't Paying Attention

I have been paying attention. And while I was one of the liberals who counseled "patience" at the beginning of the Bush administration, I am more outraged about the tactics of the administration every day. Just today, representatives from NASA were forbidden from making any comment to the media on an upcoming science fiction movie (The Day After Tomorrow) on global warning. Is there anything they aren't going to gag?

At the March, I was working with Jeanne Clark, who was the lead PR person for the March and one of its organizers. I ran errands and moved people around, and was also put in charge of getting the lead banners assembled:



April 26 March: Laurie Mann, Bannerer

The mall was unbelievably crowded, particularly before and after the March:



April 26 March: Post March Rally

Reclaiming Another "F" Word...

During the '80s, a word many of us used proudly in the '70s practically became practically a swear in the mouths of right-wing extremists. So non-right wing extremists often stopped using the word. Or some people apologized for using it.

No, Peter Jackson, that "f" word isn't "fantasy" -- it's the word "feminist."

I've been an ardent feminist since before I even knew there was such a word. In the early '60s, when I was just in kindergarten, I just felt that girls and boys were treated differently. It probably didn't help that I was hardly a typical '60s little girl - I was pretty argumentative, got low marks on "following directions," had dreadful printing and liked to read. Despite these "impediments," I generally got along pretty well with my teachers because they saw I was bright and liked to learn.

Feminists, to a point, have been pushed back into various closets over the last 15 years or so. The first closet was to stop using the word as a positive self-identifier. The second closet was to pretend that feminism isn't important. The 2000 election and its aftermath should demonstrate that feminism is very important.

Under "pro-life" people like George Bush, tens of thousands of poor women around the world have died or been maimed by back alley abortions or bad birth control since family "planning" agencies are restricted about talking about these issues if they received money from the US government. Hundreds of thousands of poor women have died from childbirth (more than did previously) because our government thinks appeasing the "religious right" is more important than passing out condoms.

I'm a feminist, and I'm going to be one of several hundred thousand feminists to rally in favor of family planning, both in the US and around the world in Washington on April 25. The global gag order has got to stop. The only way it's going to stop is to elect John Kerry.