Time to Speak Out!

 
The Hyde amendment banned spending federal funds on abortion and I didn’t speak out because I didn’t use MediCaid.
 
They restricted access to abortion for residents of D.C., but I didn’t speak out because I didn’t live in D.C.
 
The House voted to take away Title X funding for birth control and Pap smears from poor women, to redefine rape to exclude a woman who was drunk, drugged or underage, and authorized hospitals to let a women die rather than perform an abortion, and I didn’t speak out because it couldn’t happen to me.
 
They shot Dr. Tiller, and tried in several states (SD, NE, IA) to legalize killing doctors as justifiable homicide and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a doctor. And I was scared.
 
They tried to strip abortion coverage out of all insurance plans during health care reform, and I didn’t speak up because I thought I might lose “more important things.”

They tried to take away collective bargaining, Medicare, Social Security, teaching science in schools, our ability to save the climate, financial regulation, and reproductive rights.  And I knew it was time to speak out! 

– Sophia Yen and Ellen Shaffer, based on Martin Niemoller

 
Compared with men, women are more likely to be raising children on our own, to be segregated into lower wage jobs and to earn less money for the same work, and to lack health insurance. While our life expectancy has increased since the 1960s, our lives are restricted by our race, ethnicity and class, as well as by gender, sexual orientation, and age. The global economic downturn has fallen most heavily on women’s jobs and incomes, and in the U.S. the problem is compounded by the increasingly uneven distribution of wealth. The rate of unintended pregnancies among teens rose during the turn to abstinence-only education from 2001-8, and has since declined. Women, children and families are the 99%. – Our Bodies Ourselves

Join the National Online March for Trust Women Week It takes less than a minute – your contact info will not be added to any other lists! We will deliver your messages to Congress, governors and state legislators in key battleground states we know will be addressing reproductive health, rights and justice in 2012. We will call on policy-makers who are concerned about our lives and our health to fix the economy, and stop the attacks on women’s health.