As I follow what is happening to women today, I recall one passionate high-school history lesson describing how hard women were forced to fight for the right to vote. It took decades of conflict before the 19th Amendment, prohibiting the federal and state governments from denying the right to vote on the basis of sex, became part of the Constitution. Sadly, it would take another 45 years for women of color to get that same right to vote.

Yet, when the states were given control over voting, they enacted numerous devices specifically designed to make it harder for “some groups” to vote. I remember thinking how backwards it was to try to stop legal citizens from casting their vote in local and federal elections. Sadly, this is not just a history lesson; it is a reality today.

In recent years, we have witnessed lethal blows to women’s rights and freedoms that continue to erode before our eyes. I did not understand placing limitations on women then, and I certainly don’t get it now.

It seems that too many of our elected and appointed leaders have been working overtime to set the clock back decades for women, portraying the ideal for women as “barefoot and pregnant” and trying to limit their options to get an education or a job.

Years ago, I remember discussing with my peers the enormous challenges women endured as they navigated hard choices about their own bodies, particularly when abortion was illegal. I believed then and do now that reproductive choices are highly personal and the freedom to choose is essential to every woman’s health and well-being. Why would we want our government to decide what should or should not happen in the privacy of our own lives?

Yet, that decision was taken from us when the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, 2022, delegating to the states the power to decide what a woman could or could not do. Today, we are witnessing the most restrictive and punitive measures against women seeking an abortion in some states – regardless of life and death consequences to the mother – even disregarding incest or rape as a........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)