What’s a Person to Do?

SOMETIMES IT SEEMS LIKE THE LOAD is too huge to bear. Sometimes I get washed off my feet by the weight of it all. At such times a list of concrete goals strikes me as handy. A random list of worthy causes I try to remember, in no special order, includes: OOPS–Sorry. I didn’t get beyond the first cause today: Women:

1870 — African-Americans may vote now, but women may not.

1918 — Doctors in New York are permitted to advise their married patients about birth control for health purposes. My mother was six years old.

August 18, 1920 – Women allowed to vote – Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. Only a smidge over a hundred years ago. Victory took decades of agitation and protest. I’ve experienced that fact like a fairy tale, not fully realizing that it occurred only fifteen years before I was born. My mother was eight years old when women were “given” the right to vote. (African Americans were granted that right in 1870.)

1936 — Judicial approval of medicinal use of birth control is established. I am one year old.

1964 — The Civil Rights Act passes, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex.

1965 — In Griswold v Connecticut, the Supreme Court overturns one of the last state laws prohibiting the prescription or use of contraceptives by married couples.

1971 — In Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corporation, the U.S. Supreme Court outlaws the practice of private employers refusing to hire women with pre-school children.

1972 — Title IX of the Education Amendments prohibits sex discrimination in all aspects of education programs that receive federal support.

1972 — In Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Supreme Court rules that the right to privacy encompasses an unmarried person’s right to use contraceptives.

1973 — With its Roe v. Wade decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declares that the Constitution protects women’s right to terminate an early pregnancy, thus making abortion legal in the U.S.

1994 — Congress adopts the Gender Equity in Education Act to train teachers in gender equity, promote math and science learning by girls, counsel pregnant teens, and prevent sexual harassment.

1994 — The Violence Against Women Act funds services for victims of rape and domestic violence, allows women to seek civil rights remedies for gender-related crimes, provides training to increase police and court officials’ sensitivity and a national 24-hour hotline for battered women.

2013 — Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The new bill extends coverage to women of Native American tribal lands who are attacked by non-tribal residents, as well as lesbians and immigrants.

2017 — A worldwide protest called The Women’s March happens the day following Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration. It was the largest single-day protest in U.S. history with an estimated 4 million participating in local marches across the nation. The organizers’ goal for the march was “send a bold message to our new administration on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights.”

2022 — The Supreme Court rules that the constitution does not confer any right to abortion, thus overruling both Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and setting off waves of protests across the U.S.

Dates selected partially from History of Women’s Rights in America (MARCH 16, 2017)