Outraged about Obama's de facto implementation of the Stupak amendment? Well get this: They have also excluded birth control from the first iteration of the new health plan rules! It is incrediby naive to assume, as Dana Goldstein suggests in the Daily Beast, that these new rules will be amended to include birth control. That is unless very big and very smart campaign is mounted.

Women are 52% of the voters and up to 60% of voters who support Democrats. We have the power to rise up and hold Obama to his campaign promises. And now is the time to do it. No excuses and no fair complaining about the result if we fail to do so.

http://www.GloriaFeldt.com/heartfeldt-politics-blog

Coming Oct  5--preorder from Amazon now: No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power

My guest post today is about a very important topic I intended to write about--but my colleague Linda Tarr-Whelan has already said it all better in a post she wrote for the National Council for Rresearch on Women's "The Real Deal" blog. It's embarrassing as well as just plain wrong that the U.S. is one of just seven nations that never signed onto the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Want to know the six other nations? They are Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, and Tonga --overall not very good company!

This week has been declared a Week of Action by a coalition of U.S. organizations working to get our country to enter 21st century and sign CEDAW. So to the U.S. Congress: Sign already!

By Linda Tarr-Whelan*

NCRW asked leading research and policy expert Linda Tarr-Whelan to weigh in on the status of CEDAW. In addition to her responses, below is an excerpt from a previously published commentary from Linda featured on Women’s eNEws and The Huffington Post.

On Dec. 18, 1979, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, or CEDAW, making it a watershed day for women around the globe.

In those heady days, I was deputy assistant to President Jimmy Carter for women's concerns. We expected speedy action after he sent the treaty to the Senate.

That isn't what happened.

CEDAW--the only international instrument that comprehensively addresses women's rights within political, civil, cultural, economic and social life--is still unfinished business here in the United States, but not in the rest of the world.

To read the entire commentary, click here or here.

LINDA BASCH: Why is it imperative that the US ratify CEDAW? What advances in understanding the status of women would result from ratification?

LINDA TARR-WHELAN: It is time for the US Senate to stand up and be counted for women here and around the world by ratifying CEDAW. It would provide international benchmarks for a national dialogue andLInda Tarr-Whelan action to close persistent gaps in women’s equality. This country has made great progress and we must be international leaders for equality and justice for women and girls around the globe – and here at home. The numbers tell the story of persistent problems that remain – a major leadership gap of women at power tables in government and business, shocking figures in maternal health where we are 41st in the world (our infant mortality rates are also high), economic insecurity with women still averaging only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes with Hispanic and African-American women making considerably less, and violence against women by domestic partners impacting two million women a year with rape, sexual harassment and trafficking bringing violence to the doors of even more.

Under CEDAW no one mandates solutions. It is, however, an effective tool for an assessment of progress to put the spotlight on unsolved issues. Because virtually all of the rest of the countries in the world have ratified this treaty we know that models exist for tackling issues here as well. When CEDAW is ratified we affirm the principles of international human rights and equality for women and girls and have a practical blueprint to promote opportunity and protect rights in our own country. As Dorothy Height, the former head of the National Council of Negro Women and advisor to American Presidents said in her last public remarks, “Ratifying CEDAW remains among the unfinished business of the Civil Rights movement.” She was right.

CEDAW and other human rights treaties have always enjoyed bi-partisan support in the United States. Ratification requires 67 votes in the Senate – a sizeable challenge but one we can overcome in 2010. President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have made this a priority. Thirty years is a long enough track record for the US to see the many benefits of ratifying CEDAW. Women here and around the globe are waiting. Action is needed now.

LINDA BASCH: What specific steps can ordinary citizens take to facilitate CEDAW’s ratification?

LINDA TARR-WHELAN: There is a lot each citizen can do to help see that CEDAW is ratified. Here are some ideas for you:

• Sign up at www.cedaw2010.org to get all of the latest information.
• Write a letter to the editor of your local paper to say why you personally feel that it is imperative for the US to join the rest of the world on speaking up for the equality of women and girls. It is a shame to turn our backs on international cooperation and stand with the only other outliers – Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Nauru, Palau and Tonga – instead of being a global leader.
• Write your Senators to ask them to vote for women this year and ratify CEDAW. Be sure to add a personal story if you can about why this matters.
• Write President Obama and ask for quick action in 2010. Thirty years is long enough to wait for the United States to stand up and be counted.
• Check the list of organizations which are supporting CEDAW and if your group is not listed start the process of joining this comprehensive campaign. If your organization is there but you haven’t heard anything lately, contact your leadership and ask for action.
• If you are a student, schedule a program or event on campus and online to spread the word.

If each of us reaches out we can accomplish our goal of ratifying CEDAW in 2010. Women’s equality is critical to the well-being of families, communities and the economy. Working together as women and men who stand up for human rights will make the difference.

*Linda Tarr-Whelan is a former Ambassador to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, former Deputy Assistant for Women’s Concerns to President Carter and a Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow

http://www.GloriaFeldt.com/heartfeldt-politics-blog

Health issues change as we traverse the lifespan, and different age groups have unique health care needs. In this third post in the series of three looking at how the Affordable Healthcare Act affects you, Didi Thompson, who is in her 20's, takes a look at what's in the bill for her agemates. Didi is a senior analyst at a health care research and consulting firm in Washington, D.C., and will pursue a Master of Science in International Health Policy at the London School of Economics this fall. Check out her commentary--compare to parts one and two of this series-- and let us all know what you think.

Reform (Mostly) Promising for Twenty-Somethings

Young adults ages 19 to 29 make up less than 15 percent of the total US population, yet they comprise a staggering 30 percent of the 46 million uninsured and have the highest rate of uninsurance among any age group.  Therefore, it’s no surprise that the vast majority of this group—88 percent, according to a survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund —support health care reform. 

Obtaining health insurance in the current market is particularly difficult for young adults, as many health insurers drop dependents from their parents’ plans once they turn 19 or graduate from high school or college.  Add to this the fact that many twenty-somethings are beginning their careers in low-paying, entry-level jobs which do not provide health care benefits, and it’s easy to see why nearly one in three young adults is uninsured.  However, with the passage of the health reform bill, this statistic is set to change.  Though most reform provisions won’t take effect until 2014, beginning this September, young adults up to age 26 will be eligible to obtain coverage through their parents’ insurance plans.  This law has the potential to benefit over 8.8 million currently uninsured adults between the ages of 19 and 25.  Further, over 65 companies have already extended coverage to this group since the health reform bill passed. 

Although other pieces of the legislation do not directly focus on young adults, this population stands to benefit in numerous ways.  The bill’s tax credits to small businesses will encourage these firms to offer health coverage to employees, including the 36 percent of employed uninsured young adults who work for companies with fewer than 25 employees—according to an estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation.   Additionally, the expansion of Medicaid eligibility to 133 percent of the federal poverty line will extend coverage to over 50 percent of uninsured young adults.  Finally, health reform will not only increase the number of people with health insurance, it will also improve coverage benefits, particularly for women.  Preventive services, including pap smears and STI screenings, will be covered at full cost—making services more accessible to low-income women for whom co-pays can be prohibitive—and all basic insurance policies will be required to include maternity care. 

While the reform act will without a doubt improve health care for young men and women, it’s important to note what it won’t provide: comprehensive reproductive health coverage for all.  As a young woman, I’m thrilled that health reform will allow more of my peers access to important reproductive health services, including STI screening and contraceptive coverage.  However, I find it troubling that the new law continues to prohibit the use of federal funds for abortion services, particularly as this restriction hurts those most in need of family planning services: low income women.  The fact that women in this country still lack access to comprehensive reproductive health services and education—which contributes to the US ranking a dismal 39^th in maternal mortality while maintaining the highest teen birth rate of any industrialized nation—is a startling reminder that health reform is far from complete. 

Didi Thompson

http://www.GloriaFeldt.com/heatfeldt-politics-blog

This post is second in the series of three looking at what the Affordable Health Care Act means in tangible terms to each of us. The firts was Barbara O'Brien's optimistic "Health Care Reform Will Help Everybody." Today, in a post that originally appeared in the Women's Review of Books blog, I address women's health specifically in both a personal and political context.

Remember, that the Department of Health and Human Services launched a new website, HealthCare.gov, on July 1 to help consumers wade through the new law's provisions and how they will affect our access to health care. So do check that out, and as always, your comments and ideas are very welcome here.

Splitting the Health-Reform Baby: What Women Lost by Winning

Let me be clear: Had I been a member of Congress, I would have pressed the “yes” lever for the health-reform bill when it came down to the vote for final passage. It was incredibly important that we start somewhere to make health care accessible and affordable to all Americans. And we can celebrate, as Ms. magazine recounts in “What the Health Care Bill Means for Women,” that contraceptives will be covered, gender rating that discriminates against women has been eliminated, and preventive services such as pap smears will be covered without co-pay under the new plan.

But sometimes when you win you lose.

I am spitting mad about the way my values—and those of so many women and men, including the band of forty or so Congresswomen, led by pro-choice caucus chair Rep. Diana DeGette, who fought valiantly against the Stupak-Pitts amendment--were callously pitted one against another. Stupak-Pitts would have written into permanent law the current Hyde Amendment ban on coverage for abortions for women whose health care is paid for by the federal government. And it would have extended the ban to the rest of us if we purchased insurance with private funds through a federal insurance exchange

This Solomon-like decision represents not the proverbial win-win compromise that politicians are supposed to seek but a net loss for women. The loss of important health coverage hurts, but I predict the political loss will ultimately turn out to be even more devastating.

In the end, President Obama himself, who during his campaign supported getting rid of the Hyde amendment, issued an executive order that implements restrictions almost identical to Stupak-Pitts.

And candidate Obama, who in 2008 enthusiastically promised to pass the Freedom of Choice Act  to guarantee reproductive right including access to abortion, just a year later as president said FOCA wasn’t on his legislative agenda.

As RH Reality Check put it, insurance coverage for abortion is now an endangered species.

This show of weakness by the president, the congressional leadership, and the women’s movement for not holding politicians’ feet to the fire has serious political consequences. The women’s groups early on acceded to the so-called “compromise” Capps Amendment that would have maintained the status-quo Hyde restrictions: leaving poor women out in the uncovered cold but retaining coverage for women with private-pay insurance.

Once they had given in on that key principle, there wasn’t much women’s groups could say or do to establish their moral authority or political power to buck the administration’s appeasing ways. Appeasing is like throwing a hungry jackal a small piece of red meat—it just howls for more.

Predictably, a proliferation of state measures aimed at restricting abortions, punishing women who seek them, and serving as test cases to overturn Roe v. Wade, has been unleashed. In “A Spreading Peril for Women’s Privacy and Freedom,” Dorothy Samuels catalogued these new threats the New York Times.

“We have to use every opportunity to improve this badly flawed legislation,” Judy Norsigian, executive director of the Our Bodies, Ourselves women’s health collective recently told me. “We have to keep the anti-abortion folks from doing even more damage as they now try to push through state-level restrictions on abortion coverage in private health plans. And we have to work at the state level to keep educating the public about what single-payer health care is all about.”

Fights about abortion aren’t about abortion at all but about the nature and purpose of human sexuality and gender roles. So no surprise that abstinence-only sex education funding also stealthily made a return appearance in the health bill to the tune of $50 million, along with funding for more comprehensive education that includes abstinence but gives young people medically accurate information about sexuality, sexual health, and contraception.

A strategy that didn’t require women to choose which important health-care service to sacrifice would have taken us much closer to universal coverage and coverage for all reproductive health services. That includes abortion with no refusal clauses for institutions and individuals who oppose legitimate women’s health-care services (which often include refusing to provide emergency contraception, certain infertility treatments, and even birth control).

Had we done that, we might not have succeeded in eliminating the Hyde Amendment yet. But that sort of loss, rooted in principle and justice, would have constituted a win by elevating the issue and demonstrating that reproductive rights are indivisible—either everyone has them or no one has them.

It would have been a step toward taking us beyond Roe and toward reproductive justice for women.

It’s no small matter that a health-reform bill was passed. But we’re a very long way from finishing the job, especially when it comes to women’s health care. The question is whether we women will use our power to demand it in the next round.

Gloria Feldt is an activist and best-selling author. Her book No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power will be published by Seal Press in October, 2010. Former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she is a frequent speaker on women's rights, health, politics, and leadership. Visit http://www.gloriafeldt.com/ to learn more.



As Elena Kagan moves toward being confirmed to the Supreme Court, most people are barely taking note of a the dramatic social change in the fact the nation's highest court will for the first time be one-third female.

Similarly, now that the Affordable Health Care Act has become law, it barely made news that the Department of Health and Human Services launched a new website, HealthCare.gov, on July 1 to help consumers wade through the new law's provisions and how they will affect our access to health care in real life terms. But it's important that we pay attention even though the heat of political debate has diminished.

To take stock of the what the now-quiet health reform debate and resulting legislation will mean to each of us, this post by The MahaBlog's Barbara O'Brien is the first of series of three, each by a different writer with a different slant. I hope you will find the series useful and encourage your comments. Here's O'Brien's take:

Health Care Reform Will Help Everybody

Many Americans assume the new health care reform act will benefit mostly the poor and uninsured and hurt everyone else, according to polls. As Matt Yglesias wrote, “Basically, people see this as a bill that will take resources from people who have health insurance and give it to people who don’t have health insurance.” Those who still oppose the reform say that people ought to pay for their own health care.

We all believe in the virtues of hard work and self-reliance, but these days it’s a fantasy to think that anyone but the mega-wealthy will not, sooner or later, depend on help from others to pay medical bills. And that’s true no matter how hard you work, how much you love America, or how diligently you take care of yourself. The cost of medical care has so skyrocketed that breaking an arm or leg could cost as much as a new car. And if you get cancer or heart disease — which can happen even to people who live healthy lifestyles — forget about it. The disease will not only clean you out; it will leave a whopping debt for your survivors to pay.

And the truth is, we all pay for other peoples’ health care whether we know it or not. When people can’t pay their medical bills, the cost of their health care gets added to everyone else’s bills and insurance premiums. When poor people use emergency rooms as a doctor of last resort, their care is not “free.” You pay for it.

Another common fantasy about medical care is that the “free market” provides incentives for medical companies to develop innovative new drugs and treatments for disease without government subsidy. It’s true that private enterprise is very good at developing profitable health care products. But not all medical care can be made profitable.

For years, the U.S. government has been funding medical research that the big private companies don’t want to do because there is too much cost for the potential profit. This is especially true for diseases that are rare and expensive to treat. An example of a recent advance made possible by government grants include new guidelines for malignant pleural mesothelioma treatment developed by MD Anderson Cancer Center researchers. Another is a blood screening test for mesothelioma developed by thoracic surgeon Dr. David Sugarbaker. The health reform act provides for more dollars for such research, from which even many of the tea party protesters will benefit.

The biggest fantasy of all was that people who had insurance didn’t have to worry about health care costs. But the fact is that in recent years millions of Americans have been bankrupted by medical costs, and three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had health insurance. And yes, insurance companies even dumped hard-working, law-abiding patriots. But the health care reform act will put an end to that, and now America’s hard-working, law-abiding patriots are more financially secure, whether they like it or not.

Barbara O'Brien

Heartfeldt Politics

On day three of the confirmation hearings, in which Judiciary committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) plans to conclude the ritual grilling of the fourth woman ever nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, no one on either side of the aisle seems to imagine a scenario in which she won’t be confirmed.

The right did add creative new disparaging talking points, including a bobbleheaded attempt by Senators  John Cornyn (R-TX), Jon Kyl (R-TX), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and Charles Grassley (R-IA) to disparage the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, (for whom Kagan clerked). Evidently the faint hope that racism will rise again---not that it ever went away—is enough for some like to impugn the Court’s expansion of civil rights to Americans who don’t all look like these gentlemen.

For the Democrats, even the Brooklyn liberal Senator Chuck Schumer hewed to the Obama administration’s well-trod middle ground path, assuring one and all that Kagan is a mild-mannered, “modest” moderate who wouldn’t dream of pushing the Constitutional envelope.

Unfortunately, Schumer’s talking points appear to be way too close to the truth, and that’s not so good for the country.

Obama Opportunity Missed

While the progressive Netroots might have hoped President Obama would appoint truly liberal judges, or at least solid civil libertarians, they have been swiftly disappointed. One thing Obama has in common with George W. Bush is a wide streak of political luck. How many presidents get to appoint two Supreme Court justices at all, let alone during the first half of their first term? Even Bush's vaunted luck didn't carry him that far.

But whereas Bush used his initial years in office aggressively to reshape the entire Federal judiciary to his ultraconservative specifications going as far to the right as possible without falling off the end of the flat earth, (absent a Supreme Court opening until his second term began in 2005, Bush made hay moving to fill the 100+ lower court vacancies Bill Clinton gifted him), Obama blazed a timid trail even before his filibuster-proof Senate margin evaporated in a poof of Brown smoke. Bush, on the other hand, didn't give a fig who opposed him because he knew the president held the keys to power even during the years that he had fewer than Senate 60 Republicans.

And then of course, he appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito who have already pulled the court far to the right with such rulings as Gonzales v Cahart and Citizens United v Federal Election Commission giving corporations personhood rights while truncating those of women.

Court Desperately Needs Rebalancing

The court needs to be rebalanced by new liberal justices to bring it back to the center. Obama’s first pick, Justice Sonia Sotomayor meets the center-left test but leaves many questions about basic civil liberties unanswered because she has declared (and shown) herself to be such a stare decisis judge. And since today's stare decisis has been decided by a generation of increasingly conservative-activist judges, the balance that has kept our constitution functional through centuries of sweeping social, technological, and political change is tilting dangerously to the right.

In the New York Times Magazine article, “Imagining a Liberal Court Noah Feldman, Harvard Law School Professor and author of the forthcoming Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of F.D.R.’s Great Supreme Court Justices opined “After decades of stagnation, progressive constitutional thought is reaching a crisis point. And when it comes to issues of women, reproductive rights, diversity, affirmative action, and gender, Kagan has been dubbed “gender lite.”

Her record on and “modest” or perhaps more properly mealy-mouthed reply to Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) (see video) concerning reproductive rights jurisprudence certainly gave me no cause for celebration.

On Day Three of Kagan’s confirmation hearings, the Republicans will again pepper her with the kind of questions designed rhetorically to paint her as a justice who will pursue a liberal agenda.

We should be so lucky.



But it's never too late to give a big shout out to Bernice Sandler, the woman responsible for initiating the law that for almost four decades now--long enough to see significant benefits to girls and the women they become--from removing barriers to access to equity in school sports and educational opportunities that used to be denied to females based solely on gender.

How much has changed? Let me tell you this story: When my occasionally impolitic husband, Alex, asked a friend's soccer ace 8-year-old daughter Emily whether she was a tomboy, Emily replied without a trace of self-consciousness: “What’s that?”

            You can be sure women have made serious progress when even the language that would have defined an athletic girl as an aberration from her gender just a generation before has disappeared from the lexicon. Emily learned a bevy of leadership skills from the team sport, and has had the sort of experience that boys have been learning as a matter of course forever but only recently have been available to girls. Physical mastery, for starters. How to be competitive and collegial at the same time. Building a team and the power of teamwork. How to win gracefully, and that losing isn’t the same thing as defeat. Strategic thinking—just to name a few. That girls who play sports are somewhat more likely to get higher education and to work in high-skilled but previously male-dominated jobs suggests that these leadership competencies pay off over the long haul.

            Emily gets to play soccer in school thanks to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, later renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act to honor the late congresswoman who authored the law banning gender discrimination in federal funding of educational programs, including, for the first time, athletics. The impetus for this legislation came about when Bernice Sandler was turned down for a professor’s position. After a male faculty member told Sandler she hadn’t been hired because, “You come on too strong for a woman,” she realized she had no recourse against such discrimination unless new laws were written. Properly insulted, Sandler researched the laws and then located a supportive congresswoman to draft the remedy and champion it through to passage.

            Gaining the right to an equal opportunity to play soccer is one thing. Choosing to take the opportunity to play is another. The same is true of all other opportunities women have today as a result of the trailblaing and door-opening done by generations of women before us.

That's why it's important to celebrate milestones: to make sure that Emily and her peers not only have the luxury of never thinking that playing sports makes them "tomboys" or in any way an aberration from the norm, but also so that they may learn their responsibility to ensure that future generations of girls and women can do the same.

Gloria Feldt is an activist and best selling author. Her upcoming book No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power will be published October, 2010.

"The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer."

President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September, 1862, with an effective date of January 1, 1863. There are several versions of why the news traveled so slowly to Texas, a Confederate state, none of them particularly pretty, most having to do with foot dragging shenanigans and entrenched resistance to ending slavery, at least until another cotton picking season had finished. 

In any case, this is why Junteenth was first celebrated in Texas where it became an official state holiday in 1980.

During the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, Juneteenth grew from a historical marker primarily recognized in Texas to a day celebrated nationally and even internationally; it has continued to grow in prominence not just in the African American community but across a spectrum of progressive political and social organizations.

Juneteenth's resonant message can be interpreted many ways. There's the literal date on which the slaves in Texas were legally freed from their bondage. But for those engaged in social justice work, its meaning is bigger.

First, as Martin Luther King observed,  the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. We don't have to be patient, but we must take the long view, stay optimistic, and know that change can happen--will happen if we stick with it.

And second, the liberation of anyone is the liberation of everyone.

Juneteenth, with its distinctive and particular African American dialect serves as a reminder to us all that the human aspiration to freedom and justice is universal.

You see, after 35 years, I'm tired of arguing about what is the most persuasive language to bring the most people into what we have for some decades now been referring to as the pro-choice fold. And frankly, I have moved on--or outward, as I prefer to say--to the bigger canvas of women's equality and power, not just between the navel and the knees but also in politics, at work, and at home.

However, thanks to the perpetual obsession about women and sex by those who want to outlaw abortion, I find myself drawn in once more to the fray over the rhetoric of--well, whatever you want to call it. Historian Nancy L. Cohen started the latest public discussion of the terminology in her Los Angeles Times op ed proposing that we switch from "choice" to "freedom."

Seems to me a historian would have taken a longer view and realized that the language has morphed many times since the turn of the 20th century, from family limitation to birth control to family planning to reproductive health and rights to reproductive justice, with "pro-choice" becoming the short code word for a worldview predicated on the notion that women deserve to be able to make love without making babies: the right to choose whether, when, and with whom to have children.

Lynn Harris aka @lynncorrinne wrote this excellent, sassy piece in Salon expanding on the questions Cohen raised. Well, OK, she quoted me, so i will brazenly self-aggrandize by quoting her quoting me responding to Cohen's theory that "freedom" would be the silver bullet to end so-called abortion wars:

Ooh, good one? Right? "Freedom"? That's better than "choice," right? (As we've learned, it's also better than "French.") Speaking of which, it kind of sticks it to 'em, stealing "freedom" back from those who invoke and champion it with their fingers crossed behind their backs. (And who attach it to the prefix "hates.") Shades of Roosevelt, Bill of Rights; nice. Right?

Well, Gloria Feldt, for one, isn't quite ready to start rewriting our signs. "I like 'freedom' fine," says the activist, writer, former Planned Parenthood prez, and author of the forthcoming "No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power." "But I'm a realist from experience, both with using the rhetoric and studying public opinion polls. Freedom is a strong American value but it doesn't move the dial of public opinion because in the rhetorical wars, 'life' still trumps 'freedom.'" (Goddammit!) "Anti-choicers easily turn 'freedom' into 'license.' Especially when it pertains to women and sex. There are limits to freedom, legally and ethically," she continues. "Frankly, if choice weren't a good word, the anti-choice people wouldn't be co-opting it at every turn. I agree that it has become so diffuse as to lose its meaning. Still, in the end what is morality but choosing?"

Where does that leave us? "I think the only answer is to turn the tables and put the spotlight back on women," Feldt says. "Our right to life, our human rights." Well, OK. That doesn't give us a new catchword, but -- more importantly -- it reaffirms the moral core of our fight. (Perhaps especially as the forced-pregnancy establishment has shifted strategies from pretending they don't hate women to telling the truth.) Certain words are potent weapons, yes, but they're not the war itself. And, as the polls suggest, we can win the war without them. Perhaps we should choose other battles after all.

"Choosing other battles" is a good way to put it. Because the biggest challenge for what in the interest of brevity i will call the pro-choice movement isn't with those who oppose women's human right to decide about childbearing, it's with ourselves.

More than new language, we need a new surge of moral certitude about the rightness of our cause. That, much more than changing the rhetoric based on the latest poll, would solidify the amazing gains we have made for women during the last century and enable us to continue forging ahead to a more just and infinitely healthier future for women, men, and children.