— from Cindy Wolf —

The horse is gone and, barring a miracle or several, this ol’ barn door is creaking in the wind. If Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed, someone just as antediluvian will be confirmed next year. There would have to be both a sudden change of heart on the part of a few Republican and Senators plus a Blue AND solidly pro-choice shift in the Senate in the coming midterm election to avoid this fate. Nevertheless, persist. Please don’t give up. Lean in. Focus on controlling local government. State level reproductive rights will likely be all that American women have during the fertile decades of your daughter’s generation. That means pay attention, vet for a pro-choice stance and vote in EVERY election from school board on up. Local politicians and activists become state politicians and party leaders.

It is tragic that women’s right to choose was considered a secondary issue or somehow magically protected legal precedent in the last Presidential election cycle by so many otherwise progressive people. I look at my daughter and think of the 10 year old girls headed for lives of early motherhood, poverty, ignorance, and disenfranchisement. We didn’t have the luxury to put anything else ahead of their self-determination.

It galls me deeply to hear people say they didn’t vote because they were not motivated or inspired. There, after all, is the root of the problem. Somehow the fate of the nation’s daughters wasn’t inspiring enough.

The fact that there are women as well as men who still say this to me speaks to how deeply entrenched misogyny and self-effacement run in our culture. Who told you that addressing human rights, economic injustice, and bodily sanctity were of utmost importance only if they helped men? Are women not more than half of humanity?

If you are a woman reading this letter, please hear me loud and clear. No one will prioritize your health and wellbeing if you don’t. This is as true in politics as it is in personal life. Your young friends and relatives need you to model how this is done. Take steps to build on the right to vote and go to school and the small gains made in political representation and anti-harassment laws, rather than lose what our mothers and grandmothers won for us. Register to vote. Vote at every opportunity. NEVER support a candidate who thinks your bodily functions are negotiable political currency. There are men who will support you and men who won’t, but none of them will ever know your panic following the suspected failure of birth control or the feeling of the future crashing in and crushing down that an unwanted pregnancy can bring to a young woman with no choice in the matter of whether to give birth.

You and your daughter and your nieces and sisters are human beings deserving of rights and freedoms. On this one, it is okay to put yourselves first.

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