Roe vs. Wade as a Global Imperative

The right for a woman to choose whether or not to give birth and to have access to safe, legal abortion services is not only a human right but a global imperative.  As reported in the Stanford [University] News recently, Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich maintain that global civilization is moving toward a collapse.

The key drivers of collapse, they maintain, are worldwide overpopulation and overconsumption, putting an incredible strain on the planet's natural systems, and threatening to negatively impact all future generations.
A critical first step of the Ehrlichs’ roadmap for avoiding society's total collapse emphasizes equal rights for women worldwide.  "This will allow us to include more of their brainpower to help solve these problems," Professor Paul Ehrlich said. "And studies have shown that when women are given full rights, they have fewer children, which will help slow birth rates."  (The Ehrlichs gathered research from over 150 published papers to support this thesis.)

A woman’s right to choose is a powerful and positive weapon in the need to create population sanity.  It is a big part of the discussion.  

Said Professor Ehrlich, “The U.S. just had a presidential election in which the crucial issues facing society were not debated. Instead the focus was on financial problems easily solved by negotiation among people. You can't negotiate with nature."

Agreed, nature is at stake here.  As pointed out in Independence Ring: Rock the Female Revolution, it is natural for women to express their innate power.  This power should naturally be expressed in leadership including social, political, media, economic, educational and scientific arenas.  It is natural for women to choose the timing, frequency and occurrence (if at all) of child-bearing. 

There was a time, not that long ago, when child-bearing was a requirement in order to pass on a family lineage, to work a farm, to run a business.  Women might bear ten children and only three would survive to adulthood.  Safe, simple abortions were impossible to come by.  That time is over, and we live in another time – a ticking clock towards planetary destruction unless women sit at the table with their wisdom, intuition, leadership, articulate communication skills and complete control over their own bodies.   To regulate the biological functions of a woman and tell her what she can and cannot do with her own body is not only absurd but unsafe for the world we live in.

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Liz Lewinson is an author, speaker, teacher and technologists.  Her recent book is Independence Ring: Rock the Female Revolution.

The Female Definition of Power

Recently, an article posted on CNN ran with the headline, "Female Senators Say They'd Already Have the Fiscal Cliff Solved."

There was near unanimity among the female Senators today that they’d be able to broker a deal faster themselves.  “What I find is with all due deference to our male colleagues,is that women’s styles tend to be more collaborative,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said.

The group of 20 women, the largest group of women in office in the Senate at the same time in history, is redefining power.  I would also say they are representing power the way it is supposed to be expressed.

Power is not the slow, cloddish, clashing of solid objects that thud together and get very little done or changed.  Power is fluid, rapid transmutation.  Look at nature if you don't believe me.  In nature, "the power of nature" manifests when the elements are volatile, rapidly changing.  Think of water rushing through a dam, wind turning the blades of a windmill, the rapid combustion of various forms of fuel to generate power.

When Senator Collins observes that women are more collaborative, she is referring to the innate ability of women to deal with and exemplify power.  In the case of a fiscal cliff, and one would imagine if pushing for legislation on gun control, women working together will find the fastest and most efficient path to completion, which by definition involves collaboration, fluidity, thinking out of the box of one's own rigidly held belief systems.  

A woman's definition of power is not control, domination, clashing.  It is sharing, democratizing and seeking new solutions.

Women in power will usher in a new era in our government.