The book is Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch by Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Klugman, published in 1996. Rav Hirsch lived in Germany from 1808 until 1888. His best known legacy emerged from his time as the Rabbi of Frankfurt am Main.

Rav Hirsch was born on June 20, 1808, 24 Sivan 55682. He was his parents’ first child. He was known as Samson as a Shem Chol, secular name, used except for being called up to the Torah in the synagogue and similar times. Rav Hirsch’s father changed his name to Hirsch after his own grandfather, Rav Zvi Hirsch Frankfurter. Shamshon [the Hebrew version of his name] later followed a custom of the period and joined his father’s name Raphael, to his own.3

Rav Hirsch is best known for his strong response to the burning question of his time, when the emancipation of the Jews was new and unprecedented:

Can a way of life and a system of beliefs associated with the history of the Judengasse4, the ghetto, the forcibly insular world, can such a system thrive-is such a system necessary or compatible- with living in a world where Jews were allowed to live openly, mixed with non-Jews, were able to be employed in various professions, to be taken seriously by the non-Jewish world?

Can ancient rituals and the beliefs our ancestors died for rather than violate- can these same principles still serve the same function? Do they still have purpose in an open world, a world with Enlightenment values, where science makes life better and safer, where all of nature is on the cusp of being mapped and studied?

In Germany, the Reform Movement was established to answer this question in the negative. The Reform Movement saw Jewish Law and ritual as archaic and anachronistic at best, barbaric and shame-inducing at worst. Reform set out to fundamentally change the nature of Judaism in order to update Judaism to the times.

Rav Hirsch was not embarrassed of traditional Judaism’s ‘backwardness.’ He was proud of the enlightenment of the Torah5 way of life.

He made no apologies for supposedly outdated rituals. He imbued them with their original symbolic meaning.

He modernized Judaism by instituting forms of organization which were both less necessary and less available than before.

He authored his works in a polished High German, and not the Judeo-German idiom in Hebrew characters traditionally employed for religious works.6 He studied briefly at the University of Bonn7 where he met Abraham Geiger, a future Reformer, and studied Torah with him there. He used the language of modernity to prove, point by point, why traditional Judaism- Torah Judaism-in its original form-was the most enlightened way of life.

Rav Hirsch showed tremendous concern for Jews all over the world,8 especially Russia and Israel. He even corresponded with rabbis in the US.9

Rav Hirsch viewed non-Jews as part of G-d’s greater plan.

The Jew knows that the good and the righteous men among nations are working alongside him to build the Kingdom of G-d on earth.... He welcomes each new truth as a valuable contribution to the ever more penetrating revelation of G-d in nature and history.... The Jew will not be opposed to any science, any art form, any culture that is truly ethical, truly moral, truly contributing to the welfare and progress of man. He will measure everything by the eternal, inviolable yardstick of the teachings of his G-d. Nothing will exist for him that cannot stand up before the Divine Will... Never at any time will the Jew sacrifice one iota of his Judaism, at no time will he bring his Judaism in conformity with the times. But he will gladly accept all values that his time will have to offer, as long as they conform with the spirit of Judaism. In every age he will regard it as his task to evaluate the time and its conditions from the Jewish viewpoint....10

Rav Hirsch viewed beauty as an intentional aspect of Creation.

“Not for naught did G-d clothe the world with the garment of beauty, form the law of harmony into shapes and sounds, and open the eyes and ears of mankind to grasp these harmonies and to enjoy them intellectually and spiritually. Every perception of the loftiness as demonstrated by a star-studded sky, by the rays of the rising or setting sun, every joy experienced by the grace and beauty of a flower elevates man to the level of lofty concepts and ideals.”11

Rav Hirsch didn’t defend Judaism, he lauded it, without apology, in its own terms, with concrete and specific proofs and reasons, and with moral clarity. He was unafraid to speak his mind. “You may be able to destroy the man, but you can never destroy truth.” 12 '“Even if thousands will forsake the cause of life and light, if thousands will turn their back on the destiny and name of Yisrael — whose way they abandoned long ago — the cause of truth is not concerned with the number of its adherents. Even if only one remains — one single Jew holding the book of life in his hand, Yisrael’s teachings in his heart and Yisrael’s radiance in his spirit — that one Jew suffices, and the cause of Yisrael will not be lost.” 13

In modern terms, Rav Hirsch exuded the message: Be proud, not ashamed, of who you are, a people that prizes kindness, that shares a reverence for honesty and meticulousness, that implements the traditions of their forefathers with loyalty, that follows the word of G-d regardless of world opinion- a people, am seridei charev,14 that after repeated banishments and incidents of mass murder carries our holy books close to the bosom, a people that, am medushnei oneg,15 maximize the potential of the material world when history allows us the opportunity.16

It is deeply ironic that Jews in a moral fog idolized the behaviors and manners of future Nazis, assuming their culture to be more enlightened, more cerebral and more advanced than G-d’s word.

As Elli Benaiah wrote on Substack yesterday,

The Nazis were not interested in how successfully Jews had reconciled Jewish practice with German life. They did not care how German their language was, how long their families had lived in German towns, what they had contributed to German culture or how carefully they had negotiated the boundary between participation and difference.

Jewishness itself became grounds for persecution and exclusion.17

Torah Im Derech Eretz

Rav Hirsch’s core philosophy is called Torah Im Derech Eretz.

The Torah is the blueprint for Creation, the owner’s manual with complete and detailed instructions as to how man can create in this world a dwelling place for the Divine Presence. No aspect of life is outside of the Torah’s purview and there is no issue concerning which the Torah is not the final arbiter. As Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg aptly put it, the physical and social circumstances in which man finds himself is the matter — the Derech Eretz - upon which Torah imposes its form. And this is equally true in every historical epoch. “Torah Im Derech Eretz,” wrote Rabbi Hirsch, “means the realization of the Torah in harmonious unity with all the conditions under which its laws will have to be observed amidst the developments of changing times.”

It is the Jew’s task to demonstrate that the Torah contains the answer to every social and spiritual question confronting men as individuals and as social beings, to show that “that Judaism, this complete Judaism, Toras Hashem Temima, does not belong to an antiquated past but to the vigorous, pulsating life of the present.” In his every action, the Jew must bear the stamp of the Torah he received at Sinai and reflect the refining power of the Torah. 18

Rav Hirsch’s weltanschauung was innovative in its era, but also timeless. The book’s back cover shares the following:

“It is impossible to read his prescient words without amazement that they were not penned today. They have lost none of their force with the passage of time, a fact attested to by the new editions of his works that continue to appear a hundred years after his passing.”

This was true in 1996 when this book was published, and true in 2026 as well.

17

Beyond Babylon | Jewish Food Stories from Southeast Asia

Bird Food

This essay was triggered by a discussion in a family WhatsApp group…

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22 days ago · 11 likes · 6 comments · Elli Benaiah

(The Lubavitcher Rebbe convinced Rabbi Tokayer and his then fiancée to go to serve as a rabbi in Japan.1)

In 1968, Rabbi Tokayer moved with his family to Tokyo to become the Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Japan.

Mary Swartz was a member of the Tokyo Jewish community and a professional writer. She returned to America at the same time as Rabbi Tokayer and they collaborated on the book.

The book revolves around the stories of nine composite characters-fictionalized out of hundreds of anecdotes Rabbi Tokayer heard in his research of the time period. The dates and historical figures are accurate.

The book covers Japanese exposure to Jews via its proximity to Russia. The Fugu Plan was named after a “Japanese blowfish whose deadly poison must be removed before it can be eaten.” (52) It was Japan’s unlikely idea of treating Jews well to gain American Jewish support that they erroneously thought could affect American war aims. The Japanese feared the Jews because they believed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion that the Russian soldiers in Siberia shared with them in 1919. Yet, they had benefited significantly from the war loans made to them in the Russo-Japanese War by Jacob Schiff, a German Jew who wanted to pressure the Czar, in the age of pogroms, particularly the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, to stop mistreating the Jews under his authority.

The book goes through the story of the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania in 1940- Sempo Sugihara, who issued transit visas from Japan en route to the Dutch colonial island of Curaçao in the Caribbean Sea.

(I learned about Curaçao as a tax haven in my last class in law school-summer 2002- Transnational Litigation and Dispute Resolution.)

It then follows the path of the Jews lucky enough to get passage from Vilna, Lithuania, to Moscow via train and then on the Trans Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok station and then from the harbor to the Japanese freighter to the Japanese port of Tsuruga on to Kobe, Japan, and then later, onto Shanghai.

The book is light reading and the main themes are familiar to someone familiar with the main avenues of escape from the Holocaust.

It is an in-depth look into the amazing life-saving work of Sugihara, life in Japan for the Jews, and the hardships of being in Shanghai during the war.

I read it because of my current interest in Japan, Russia, and the Jews: the Russo- Japanese War, 1904-1905, as well as the role of Russia in the Japanese surrender in WWII. A friend told me about it.

I learned a lot from this book. One important fact I did not know is that Shanghai had a ghetto.

We had food for the meal, but we had a siyum-the celebration of completion of a part of the Torah, and my uncle’s kaddish, first.

It was too long for some of the members of the family to wait.

So, in the respectful silence, there was a lot of motioning of tiny children asking their mothers for hot dogs. The small children had gotten their own hot dogs surreptitiously, but the toddlers who needed help had to ask their mothers.

As the moms silently apologize (to the master griller, wink), our five-year-old is cutting up the hot dog he got himself into three inch rounds, and then peeling each round, leaving an unattractive mound of hot dog peelings on the still clean, as yet unserved on, table. (Also there, was our great nephew, my grandfather’s great-great-grandson, also five.)

And the most precious moment was our eight-year-old nephew, watching our son grossify a table set up for more than two dozen people, while the speech is still going, smiling knowingly, as if to say, “Kids, what are you going to do?”

And it was unbearably cute but also heartwarming because he is only eight, which if math isn’t your thing (It isn’t mine, but I do grill.) means that he was five, the age of our living Norman Rockwell painting, only three years ago. But he already gets it. This is not how we behave. This is childish behavior we indulge until the child knows better.

And it made me realize, in that moment, that the currency of faith is love.

We absorb faith through love, we profess faith through love, we pass down faith through love.

We learn how to love G-d because we ourselves were loved. Our nephew knew, sure as he was standing there, that when he used to not understand not to speak when we are supposed to be silent, not to eat before the food is served, he was loved, and that our son making an unappetizing mess was loved, and that he is loved now that he gets it and he is one of the big kids who understands decorum and waiting until food is served.

And a wave of warmth and recognition and love and tradition passed down through two turns of the century hit me.

This is how we teach the next generation.

When it comes to religion, the temptation for mockery is irresistible. So even obvious concepts become obscured.

Our first example, illustrated above with the income tax metaphor, addresses the point people make sometimes phrased as “x is prohibited, but y is okay. Yeah, that makes sense.” It’s a sarcastic point implying that x and y are actually identical, therefore any law prohibiting x but permitting y is stupid and therefore religious prohibitions are something to be mocked. In actuality, any system of law will prohibit and permit somewhat similar things. Yet staying on the legal side of the law is still quite important.

Our second example is a contempt for the idea of bright-line rules.

A bright-line rule is a clear and straightforward legal standard used to make decisions in ambiguous situations. It provides a specific criterion that eliminates uncertainty, allowing for predictable outcomes. Bright-line rules are often established by courts through legal precedents or by legislatures in laws. They are particularly useful in cases where subjective interpretation could lead to inconsistent results.1

Bright-line rules are what enable people to make good decisions in advance. Complex weighing systems might be more fair in absolute terms but they make predicting outcomes almost impossible.

For manmade rules, we say that certain behaviors under eighteen are prohibited, but over eighteen are permissible. Getting a driver’s permit or driver’s license is based on age. Is a person really that much more mature twenty-four hours later than they were twenty-four hours earlier? No, probably not. Are some twenty-one-year-olds less mature than some seventeen-year-olds? Yes. But as humans, bright-line rules are necessary so that we clearly and predictably know where the proverbial line is.

Outside of religion and possibly some other similar situations, all adults recognize this.

When it comes to religious rules, the unbearable temptation of mockery warps the perception of otherwise rational people.

Goals are best when specific. Rules are best when clearly delineated. Rules that are written down and enforceable are going to have instances that are counterintuitive.

This is the price of trying to live life in a rules-based environment.

Chessed at the Towers1

(It’s very long because it was a four hour saga.)

It was Friday, February 26th-the day the bomb in the World Trade Center exploded. The strength of the dynamite shook the very foundations of the twin towers- two very tall, and thought of as sturdy buildings. But I’m telling you this to tell you about an act of chessed that shook the very foundations of my soul.

On Fridays I take a long sequence of trains home to New Jersey in order to spend Shabbos with my family.2 After two trains-whose combined time was half an hour, I arrived at my stop- Cortland Street/World Trade Center. I walked through the turnstyle, down the corridor and up and down the steep steps. As I reached the door to the first floor I entered, I heard the policeman with a mask over her mouth scream “Get out! Get out of the building!” my stomach dived down a couple of feet. I realized that I had $1.25-just enough to pay for the PATH train and to call my mother once I reached NJ. I also had lost my scarf and gloves, neglected to bring a pair of socks to wear over my tights and a sweater.3 It was snowing outside and there was smoke filling up inside. No one had any idea of what was going on. I stood there, eagerly anticipating the smoke clearing so that I could proceed down the hall to my last train. If I had been listening to the news, I would have known that that was not going to happen. I stood waiting for a while. (I didn’t know how long because I forgot my watch also.) I was all alone in Manhattan.

Finally, I realized that I should call my mother collect. (Unfortunately the myriad of payphones were deep within the smoke and I had an idea that the policeman wouldn’t be too keen on my walking through it.) I walked out of the building into the puzzled, somewhat anxious crowd with snowflakes falling on them.

“Hey,” I thought to myself. “I’m in Manhattan!” I almost forgot my worries, awed by the beautiful sights of the tall architectural masterpieces. I saw the little shops and fancy hotels.

“Wait! There’s that news guy!4” I saw a man running with a Channel 7 microphone and a cameraman inside the WTC. “It must be something big,” I thought. “Nah, probably just for one of their little side stories or a traffic update (yeah, right).” Motivated by the utter coolness of the situation, I walked my frozen limbs from 1 WTC to 5 WTC to see if there were phones open there. People were inside and the Channel 2 newsman was outside, [standing] on top of a white van with his cameraman, but no phone.

I crossed the wide 8 lane street. It was closed off and completely empty except for people walking. I was tempted to walk into the black marble hotel5, but there was a man in a funny looking fur hat by the doors-service of some sort. I refrained, not thinking of my frozen feet but rather of my many pekalach6 I wouldn’t want to get thrown out.

“Oh, oh, What’s that line over there?” It was two pay phones. “Ugh, why does that guy have black on his mouth? Oh, you never know, it is Manhattan.” Now wait this is getting weird. She has black on her mouth and nose, and him too! And her and him…

“Yeah, I was on the 69th floor, we walked down 69 flights of stairs through smoke, But I’m ok. Ma. yeah, see you soon.”7

People on line were calling relatives to tell them that they were okay.

“Aha. So there was a fire.”

I waited on line and took my turn. When I reached my mother she asked if I was all right and I broke down into tears. Trying to calm my sobbing,I blurted out my problem. “But how do I get home?” I found out I was to get to the 33rd Street Station-because that was still working.

“Ok great. Now I know what to do. But hold it.”

“Ma, how do I get to 33rd street?”

“Ask a policeman.”

Well, that was okay. There were plenty of those around.

“Ew. I can’t ask him. He’s really weird looking. Okay, him. No look-there’s Century8-hey, why don’t I go in? Because I am trying to get home-right.”

“Excuse me, sir, How do I get to 33rd street?’

“Well, see, that’s all the way uptown.”

“Thanks for telling me that,” I thought.

“Well, you could take a bus or a taxi but there aren’t any here, so you’d have to go down a couple of blocks to hail one.”’

“Taxi, bus- I’m broke.” Now I really freaked. Black marble hotel or not-I might be stuck in the city that never sleeps for the rest of my life!

I tried to calm myself by thinking about the appropriate mode of action. As usual my creative imagination came up with an idea.

“If someone asked me for a dollar on the train and told me their story-if I had it I would give it to them.” So why don’t I just ask someone for it. All these people in expensive suits must have an extra dollar on them. I looked miserably at an old man and he shot back a look of utter sympathy.

“Ask him! Ask him!” “No, I can’t.” “Do you want to stay here forever?” “I’ll ask the next person.” A pretty young Asian lady wearing a nice wool coat walked down the steps- “Ask her! Ask her!” but I couldn’t. A few more Asian and WASPy young successful types walked in but I couldn’t ask any of them. I was waiting for someone who looked Jewish. Unfortunately in Manhattan,9 everyone wears those little caps and skirts thst cover or almost cover the knee. There weren’t any yarmulkas to be found. It must be 45 minutes already, I thought.

“Oh, look!!!!! He has a yarmulka!” It was a man about 50, silver grey hair and a turquoise and white knitted yarmulka. He looked Israeli.

“Excuse me sir but because of the explosion… I broke down into hysterical sobs the second time that day the humiliating exercise in futility was too much for me. “I don’t have money to go home… I-I-I need a dollar..”

He handed me a dollar and asked me-”Do you want any more?”

“No, no thank you so much” I thanked him through my tears. “I really appreciate it!”

I used my quarter that I saved to call my mother-because a token is $1.25.

As I paid for the token, tears streaming down my face, the teller asked me, “What’s wrong?”

I again attempted to stammer out my story through my tears. “Oh, I’ll give you the dollar.” (If only I had known that before.) She was a middle height, weight, and aged Latino lady wearing a white shirt with navy tie and skirt uniform.

“No, it’s ok, I have, but thank you!”

“No problem. Take the E train right over there to W4 St10 and there switch to the F-get off at 34th street and you can walk to 33rd.”

“OK,” I said, brightening up. “Thanks,” As I put the token in the slot I felt an immense almost incomprehensible joy and relief. I took out a tissue and took a seat on the train with a sigh and a smile so big that this man (wearing one of those caps) with a beard and crooked teeth, but otherwise skinny and business like gave me a look (What do you expect? It’s NY!?)

“Transfer to the F at W4 St-Do I have to pay again?” When I got lost on the way to the Bio regent I took the N train the wrong way and had to pay again (then I had money-to think I thought I was in trouble then-ha!) “You know that was probably Manhattan-not Queens I was lost in-well you know what they say, you learn a new thing everyday.

“Canal Street-no, Avenue of the Americas (Spring Street) this is so cool-I’m in Manhattan!”the exhilaration of the city, (as it’s called affectionately in NJ) was really getting to me.

“Uh. West 4th Washington Square.’

“Excuse me, sir, Is this W4 Street that transfers to the F?”

I heard it as the conductor announced it-but I was nervous and wanted to be careful.

“Yes. It is.” But it didn’t matter much because at that second the door slammed in my face. That was it.

As I sighed (I suppose rather loudly) Oh my GOSH!! The man with the crooked teeth looked at me again, but it didn’t matter because (a) to him, looks are cheap, he gives them all the time (b) I don’t even know him, and (c ) I’m freaking OUT of my mind right now and the thought in my mind is -What if I have to pay again? (another flashback to the bio regent incident) Ok if I have to pay again, I’ll just ask the lady in the cubicle and see what she says. (When I was lost in Queens/Manhattan the morning of the bio regent when I had to had to switch N’s the lady in the cubicle gave me a senior citizen pass, but this lady gave me a look so since I had the money, I paid.

I was partially calm. I got off at the next stop BH I did not have to pay again. I switched E’s and went back to W4 got onto the F took it into 34th street, there I passed a store that had a Hasid. Too late, I already had the dollar for the PATH (It was actually in the building) and guess who I saw?- actually don’t bother -you don’t know them but it was a couple of people who went to my school’s brother’s school and live in the town I live in. I paid. I had the money-yay! And I followed them to the right train and stood (there were no seats) for six stops or so. I got off at Journal Square and switched to my usual train, took it one stop and got to my usual stop- I was about to call my mother when I realized that I spent my $0.25 on the bus, so I borrowed a quarter from the person I met and it got lost. I borrowed another to tell my mother not to come- I was getting a ride. The ride came. There wasn’t enough room-another quarter-could you come and pick me up?-sure.

Out of the corner of my eye. I saw their car waiting. I stood in the cold-freezing finally losing feeling in my feet and fingers again (I forgot all my outerwear) Finally, after about half an hour, my father came (he came late because he works far away from the station/farther than we live) The car had been waiting the whole time, causing me guilt feelings in my stomach almost as severe as my hunger pangs. It was erev Shabbos.

My father arrived and when I got in the car the heat was on. I had been frozen and unfrozen so many times I felt like leftovers.

When I arrived home my little sisters had prepared hot cocoa and marshmallows for me. It was warm and secure.

Terror at the Towers-The Explosion at the WTC was constantly on the news. It was extremely annoying as I attempted to forget my past predicament.

My relatives had been overly anxiously worried as usual, but I was fine, feeling a little guilty cuz I worried them so much- I should have called, etc. but I was ok.11

A conservative worldview is grounded in the greatness of the human being, the individual.

First, the sanctity and the centrality of bringing new life into the world, family. A conservative worldview maintains that hope springs eternal and that the optimism required to bring children into the world is always present. Family structures are of utmost importance in supporting and enabling healthy living.

Second, the right to self-defense arises out of the foundational importance of human life. Human life is so precious that one must be ready to defend it. Armies must be ready. Young men willing to serve their countries must be respected. Abhorring violence can never include unwillingness to keep oneself and one’s family safe.

Third, personal responsibility is the natural fulfillment of the greatness of the individual and the sense of optimism that permeates right wing philosophy. We as individuals control our destinies. We look to ourselves for change and empowerment, not to systems. Making our beds in the morning and smiling at strangers is how we make the world a better place, not by entrusting central leadership with enough power to enforce what some perceive as fairness.

That’s what I think being right wing means. How about you? What do you think?

My goal here is to write 33 mini essays- coherent, logical, easy to understand and well-supported. Stand alone ideas, but also puzzle pieces in a larger pattern, arising out of the same narratives.

Feminism is the “belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.”1

Feminism gets translated as supporting women, but that is not always true. Feminism can be a rigid insistence that men are the same as women, or a cluster of progressive causes more than a movement that centers women.

In some cases, some strains of feminism advocate for one policy position, while another strain advocates for the opposite policy position. I attempt to note pushback when applicable, but I don’t always. Allowing these points of view under the rubric of feminism says something about the fundamental ideas that shaped second wave feminism as well as speaking to the integrity of a movement that allows groups with those views to call themselves feminists. It would be easy to find feminists to speak out against women who would call themselves pro-life feminists to explain that they are not feminists, and not welcome under the umbrella. I do not think that that holds true for abolition feminism. If there are sources I am missing, please share.

Here are thirty-three ways women are hurt by feminism, divided into four categories: health truths obscured, feminism only for some women, women’s physical safety compromised, and under the guise of abortion rights. The list of the thirty-three ways is in this footnote.2

This essay will be posted in three parts. I really conceive of it as one entity, but it is far too long not to split up.

Part One shared the eleven Health Truths Obscured.

Part Two is comprised of both Feminism Only For Some Women (three ways) and Women’s Physical Safety Compromised (eleven ways).

Part Three now concludes with the fourth and final section- Under the Guise of Abortion Rights (nine ways)-as well as my policy prescription for companion movements to feminism to better represent the interests of all women.

Here we go.

Part Three:

D. Under Guise of Abortion Rights (8)

Feminism jealously guards the rubric of abortion, and women’s well being comes in second if the two conflict.

26. Refusal to Craft Life of Mother Exceptions.

    “Lawmakers proposing abortion bans sometimes seek guidance from Ob/Gyns on potential lists of exceptions to incorporate into such bans.” 3

    “Despite our commitment to advocacy, when legislators asked us to provide lists of maternal or fetal health exceptions to incorporate into the law, we refused. We felt strongly that legitimizing exclusions was unethical, and we implored legislators to have compassion for people needing abortions after 12 weeks.

    Although 90% of abortions in the United States occur in the first trimester, bans based on gestational age disproportionately affect young people and low-income people, and the gestational-age limits used in such policies are often too early for many fetal genetic and anatomical diagnoses to be established.”4

    “Although not providing a list of possible exceptions risked a less medically informed bill,” [not doing the utmost to provide for women who need abortions to save their lives] “we found it ethically problematic to attempt to protect certain patients’ access to abortion care while compromising care for others.” [women who want elective and late term abortions might be less likely to have those legalized] “If clinicians engage in negotiations that lead to restrictions on abortion, we fail to uphold our duty of nonmaleficence, since patients who have conditions that aren’t deemed ‘exception-worthy’ are harmed.”5

    “Limiting access to abortion care by means of exclusionary lists exacerbates health injustices and disproportionately harms disenfranchised and marginalized patients, since more privileged patients are more likely to have timely access to care and to be able to travel for abortion care. Enacting exclusions also further stigmatizes abortion care and creates a false dichotomy between acceptable and unacceptable care.” 6

    Knowledge is power. If you find anything interesting, please share.

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27. Opposing Regulation of Abortion Clinics Without Opposing Similar Regulations on Freestanding Birth Centers

    The Guttmacher Institute says the following about safety regulations on abortion clinics:

“Abortion providers in the United States are subject to strict evidence-based regulations (such as state licensing requirements, federal workplace safety requirements, association requirements and medical ethics) to ensure patient safety. However, nearly half of states, 14 of which do not have a total abortion ban in place, have imposed additional regulations on abortion clinics. Most of these laws—referred to as targeted regulation of abortion providers, or TRAP laws—go beyond what is necessary to ensure patient safety. They vary widely in severity, though some are intended to be so burdensome that they shutter clinics that provide abortion care.”7

These laws are primarily facility structural requirements (room size, corridor width) and arrangements with local hospitals with admitting privileges that allow a provider to treat patients at a hospital and “transfer agreements that allow an abortion facility to transfer patients to a hospital in the event of complications.”8

First, why is the Guttmacher Institute so sure that the underlying safety concerns are unfounded, portrayed as harassment, called TRAP? How are they so sure that women’s lives are not at risk?

The case of 72-year-old Dr. Kermit Gosnell, accused of murdering one woman and seven infants was covered in the media in 2011.

“Philadelphia abortion provider Dr. Kermit Gosnell is accused of running a clinic straight out of the Saw horror franchise: standard practices allegedly included snipping the spines of live newborns with rusty equipment, storing feces in cat-food containers and fetus feet in jars, and overdosing patients, particularly those who were poor women of color. Make no mistake: if these charges are correct, Gosnell is a monster.”9

“This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.” 10

“The investigation of Dr. Gosnell’s government-approved clinic revealed filthy, unsafe conditions and evidence that unlicensed workers illegally treated patients,” said Amy Hill, communications director for the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference. “Basic standards of cleanliness and infection control were not met. The office had no access for a stretcher in the case of an emergency. Exit doors were padlocked shut or blocked, resulting in a delay in the ability to respond in previous emergencies.”11

“[O]ther freestanding ambulatory surgical facilities must comply with regulations designed to protect their patients.” “They are subject to unannounced annual inspections and sanctions or fines for not meeting the most basic health standards,” she said. “Clinics are required to have a registered nurse on site, follow infection control and equipment sterilization procedures, and must accommodate emergency equipment. Therefore, if a crisis occurs, the ambulance crew can get a stretcher into the clinic and quickly get the patient to a hospital.” 12

Which is still an ongoing problem in Pennsylvania as of 2025:

One would hope that these new requirements would prompt Pennsylvania’s abortion facilities to clean up their act in response to Gosnell’s horrors. But that’s not the case.

Since health and building safety inspections began being required in 2012, PA’s abortion facilities have received over 600 infractions—violations of state health and building safety laws and regulations—without any fines or penalties from state agencies.

These violations are cited within over 185 failed health and building safety inspections since 2012. 13

I followed the Gosnell trial in 2013 as it was covered in some detail on conservative talk radio. I had a newborn and I had to turn it off frequently because I couldn’t bear to hear the graphic details of the tiny babies, too similar to the one I held in my arms.

Legal abortion functions as a safe alternative to back alley abortions. But if safety standards are not adhered to, then legal abortion has lost its meaning.

Second, If TRAP isn’t about preventing the unsafe treatment and death of women like in the Gosnell legal abortion clinic case, and TRAP regulations are merely about harassment, why not advocate for stand alone birth centers- a facility important for the physical safety of women during childbirth as well as the ability to choose a philosophy of birthing- not to be subject to extremely similar standards?

Why not all of women’s health?

Why just abortion?

Freestanding birth centers appear to have even more onerous regulation that are not tied to relevant safety issues.

“The freestanding birth center is defined as a facility where birth is planned to take place away from the hospital and away from the person’s residence, where care is provided in the midwifery and wellness model, with birth center care integrated into the healthcare system.”14

“Although freestanding birth centers represent a promising breakthrough in reducing maternal mortality, regulatory barriers impede widespread access to them. In California, birth centers are closing due to onerous state regulations; at least 19 birth centers in California have shut down or reduced services in the last four years. Today, four main policies restrict access to birth centers: 1) certificate of need requirements, [CON were initially intended to avoid duplicative care facilities] 2) transfer agreements, 3) requirements for the center to have a medical director or physician on staff, and 4) requirements regarding building design. [like the size of rooms] While these requirements are applied with positive intentions, in practice, they obstruct access to birth centers, without evidence that their implementation supports better birth outcomes.”15

“Like any other health care facility, birth centers must meet construction, fire, health, and safety codes. However, issues arise when state law requires birth centers to follow the same standards as hospitals or other health facilities, which are not shown to improve safety. Birth centers do not have the same layout or equipment as hospitals, because they do not provide all of the same services. For example, requiring operating room lighting and sinks with elbow controls is unnecessary for low-intervention births and only increases costs for centers.” 16

“Some states require that birth centers have a medical director or supervising physician on staff at the birth center.” 17

“Transfer agreements are a unique restriction placed on reproductive health care providers, such as abortion clinics. Notably, transfer agreements are not required for other health care facilities. Instead of placing barriers in the way for people to access birth center care, hospitals should be expected to cooperate in planning the rare transfers of birthing people experiencing emergencies.”18

If abortion clinics are being targeted unfairly to prevent abortion, then women’s rights activists ought to also fight for freestanding birth clinics, which improve maternal health outcomes. If the restrictions are not attempting to sideline abortion clinics, and are either necessary to protect women’s health, or are just an unintended result of bureaucratic measures, then the approach should reflect that.

28. Transporting Minors Across State Lines for Abortion:

    Laws banning transporting a minor across state lines without parental (or equivalent) consent is described as a naked attempt at banning abortion.

    
    Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said, “This legislation…poses a real threat to the lives and health of young women. It would require a minor who is pregnant, possibly as a result of parental abuse, incest, to carry the parental notification laws of her home state on her back to another state and hold doctors, grandparents, clergy and anyone else who tries to help her a criminal…Not since the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 have we used the power of the federal government to enforce the laws of one state on the territory of another. 19

    
    That does not fit in context.

    
    First, look at this guide for non-custodial parents taking their own children out of state for vacation:

“Can I Travel to Another State with My Kids?”

After your divorce is finalized, you and your family will have to adjust to your new reality. Family vacations are one of the many things that will change. You and your former spouse likely have a co-parenting arrangement that involves some form of shared custody, and your custody agreement may have provisions for vacations and travel. In many circumstances, the other parent’s written consent is required before you can take your kids out of state. As you all learn to navigate these new circumstances, you and your ex will need to work together to keep communication lines open, especially when planning travel. [emphasis added]

There are no laws that generally restrict a parent from taking their child out of state on vacation. Whether you are visiting grandparents next door in Utah or taking your kids to Disneyworld, it is recommended that you consult your custody and visitation documents before purchasing plane tickets and making the trip. This will help ensure that you understand what was initially agreed upon during your divorce and can help you avoid misunderstandings.20

Second, look at 18 USC 2423.
18 U.S.C. § 2423 – Transportation of minors for illicit sexual conduct

§ 2423 makes it a federal crime to transport, travel, or arrange travel involving minors for illegal sexual activity—both inside and outside the United States.

Section 2423 is one of the federal government’s primary tools for prosecuting sex crimes involving minors. It covers not only transporting a minor, but also traveling yourself, arranging travel, or engaging in illegal sexual conduct abroad.

What the law prohibits.
A person violates this statute if they knowingly:

• Transport a minor across state lines or internationally with intent that the minor engage in prostitution or any criminal sexual activity.

• Travel across state lines or into the United States with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor.

• Engage in illicit sexual conduct abroad as a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, even if the conduct occurs entirely outside the United States.

• Use an organization or business that affects interstate or foreign commerce to further illicit sexual conduct.

• Arrange, induce, procure, or facilitate travel for another person to engage in illicit sexual conduct, especially for financial gain.

• Attempt or conspire to commit any of the above acts.

What counts as “illicit sexual conduct.”
The statute defines illicit sexual conduct to include:

• Sexual acts with a person under 18 that would be illegal under federal law,

• Commercial sex acts involving a minor, or

• The production of child pornography.

Key point.
For many charges under this statute, the crime is complete based on intent and travel alone. Actual sexual contact does not always need to occur for charges to be filed.

Penalties.
Violations of § 2423 carry severe federal penalties, including:

• Mandatory minimums for transporting minors,

• Up to 30 years in federal prison for many offenses, and

• Possible life imprisonment in the most serious cases21

These above laws may be onerous, but they are clearly crafted to protect children.

"The CIANA would prohibit any person from taking a minor across state lines for an abortion, thereby circumventing her home state’s parental notification or consent law. The penalty for violating the law would be up to one year imprisonment, a $100,000 fine, or both. The penalties would not apply in cases in which the minor was transported due to a life-threatening medical condition, the physician performing the abortion was presented documentation that a court in the minor’s home state allowed the procedure, or when the minor stated that she had been the victim of abuse and the physician reported the abuse to the appropriate authorities. Under the bill, a defendant could use an affirmative defense if he or she reasonably believed that parental consent had been given or that the court had waived the requirement for parental consent.”22

29. Implying That Miscarriage Always Requires Medical Assistance.

The idea that procedures to remove parts of a miscarried embryo that the body did not expel will be affected by abortion bans is a common argument against those bans. It strongly implies that most or all miscarriages require chemical or surgical assistance. In 2026, a doctor is not required to confirm a pregnancy, and a miscarriage is something that only 20% to 30% of women require intervention for.23 A woman doesn’t need a doctor to miscarry. The implication that a woman cannot handle a miscarriage without intervention fear mongers a tragic situation a woman cannot control, and sways women to seek unnecessary medical intervention.

30. Abortion At Home Carries No Risks.

Conversely, the promotion of abortion pills in the mail is rooted in the idea that passing an embryo at home is an entirely safe procedure that is not likely to be traumatic or to require monitoring.

While early miscarriage is something an adult woman with support should be able to do at home in most cases, it is still a very scary thing with a lot of blood loss and a potential for infection.

There is a whitewashing and sterile take on abortion in a society that describes pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum and breastfeeding with vivid portrayals of pools of blood, all kinds of bodily fluids, and gory details that are hardly universal. In that context we call them authentic, raw, relatable- but abortion descriptions are sanitized out of a medical textbook.

Some details about what a woman/girl can expect after an at home pill induced early pregnancy abortion:

You’ll have very heavy bleeding and cramping during a medication abortion. For most people, the cramping and bleeding usually starts 1-4 hours after taking misoprostol. It’s normal to see large blood clots (up to the size of a lemon) or clumps of tissue during your abortion — like a really heavy period or miscarriage. But if you don’t have any bleeding within 24 hours after taking misoprostol, call your nurse, doctor, or local Planned Parenthood health center or other abortion provider.

The cramping and bleeding can last for several hours. Most people finish passing the pregnancy tissue in 4-5 hours, but it may take longer. After the pregnancy tissue comes out and your abortion is over, the cramping and bleeding should ease up over time. It’s normal to have some bleeding and spotting for several weeks after your abortion.

Mifepristone, like any other intervention, does not have zero risk.

“Of the more than 7.5 million people in the U.S. who used the medication between its approval in 2000 and December 31, 2024, 36 deaths associated with mifepristone were reported, per a report from FDA . No deaths have been directly attributed to the drug. (Oct 8, 2025) 24

31. Miscarriage Is No Big Deal.

Abortion as the theme of feminine reproductive capacity implies that the feminine reproductive system reliably provides meaningful choice and an element of control. It strongly implies that the unborn haven’t burrowed their way deep into their mother’s heart, that a pregnancy ending far before a due date is physically no big deal. The clump of cells narrative leaves no room for the pain of miscarriage.

“I’ve been an attorney in the reproductive rights field for 12 years. I thought I knew everything about pregnancies and the ways they end: The statistics about pregnancy loss. The term “miscarriage management.” All of my options if the miscarriage didn’t happen on its own. But nothing could prepare me for how drawn-out and painful miscarrying would actually be.”25

“Many people believe that the loss is the result of something they did. This is a common misconception. In almost every case, the pregnancy loss is not your fault.”26

“My partner doesn’t seem as upset as I am. Is this normal? This is normal. The loss may feel different for your partner. Your partner did not carry the pregnancy like you did. Some partners may experience the loss greatly, and others may not.”27

Abortion as a flag wave in honor of liberated womanhood is incompatible with the tragic realities of miscarriage.

32. Surrogacy

“Surrogacy is when another woman carries and delivers a baby for a couple or person. The person who carries the pregnancy is the surrogate. The people who raise the child are the intended parents.”28

Surrogacy is intertwined with abortion rights in three ways.

First, surrogacy relies on abortion practically: a key part of surrogacy contracts is the agreement about when to abort.

When a woman agrees to become a gestational surrogate—meaning she’ll gestate an IVF-created embryo as it grows into a fetus—she and the commissioning parents will typically sign a legally binding contract. The terms vary widely from contract to contract and state to state, but the vast majority will include a clause allowing the parents to make decisions about abortion.

In surrogacy cases, the most common reason for abortion is multiple pregnancies. And of course, the likelihood of becoming pregnant with twins, triplets, and even four or five fetuses increases once IVF enters the picture—doctors will often implant multiple embryos at a time, to increase the chance that one will take. For various reasons—health, financial, or otherwise—parents whose surrogate ends up carrying multiple fetuses may request to “selectively reduce,” or abort one or more.29

Second, abortion theory provides the justification for ignoring the essential bond between mother and the unborn baby growing inside her, a rationale for disguising the intentional separation of mother and baby as something other than cruelty.

“Surrogacy is fraught with ethical and moral considerations. It is a process that can exploit vulnerable women. It carries significant health and psychological risks for the women whose wombs have been ‘rented,’ the women whose eggs have been harvested to create an embryo, and the children who are born from these arrangements. All too often, the desires of adults—namely, the commissioning parent(s)—supersede the interests of children. Unfortunately, discussions of surrogacy in media—and culture more broadly—rarely focus on the latter.”30

Third, abortion rights establish a framework where a woman’s right to reproductive freedom outstrips all other rights, where justified paternalism is banned, and concern for true consent is dismissed.

A government that is within its rights taxing a child’s lemonade stand,31 or regulating the speed of the flow of water out of a shower head,32 lacks the authority to ban women from creating babies for sale.

Stressing that the baby is not a person, and that the mother’s rights outweigh the child’s, is so politically radioactive that the government can ban the sale of a person’s own organs without violating bodily integrity33 but even partially restricting abortion, like banning abortion post-viability, is viewed as controlling women’s bodies.

Unrestricted reproductive freedom means that surrogacy must be legal.34 Weighing harm to the unborn is a tool of the patriarchy.

“Surrogacy and abortion represent two facets of procreative liberty, the right to reproduce and the right to avoid reproducing. Research on stigma associated with abortion and surrogacy illuminates how these very different experiences carry similar stigmatic harm. Why do certain decisions about reproduction engender social support, other decisions social disapproval? Restrictions on surrogacy and abortion derive from a common legal paradigm — state regulation on the pregnant body — that is rooted in traditional gender roles. Not all laws restricting abortion and surrogacy evince gender stereotyping. Abortion and surrogacy pose complex moral and social dilemmas. But research of stigma associated with abortion and surrogacy suggests that gender stereotypes play a role in the creation of stigma.”35

“A comparison to arguments about sex work is instructive. Many progressive people realize that women should have the choice to engage in sex work. Of course there is abuse in that field, but not always, and the answer isn’t to stop an entire industry. Limiting choice is not a form of protection.”36

The surrogacy industry today came about through the systematic construction of some rights and privileges, and the systematic destruction of others.

33. Surrogate Could Be Forced to Abort Against Her Will According to California Law.

“In the 22nd week of surrogate Brittney Pearson’s pregnancy, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Because the necessary treatment could harm the baby, her doctors recommended inducing labor early and allowing the baby to be cared for in neonatal intensive care while she started chemo. However, the gay couple paying Brittney Pearson to serve as their surrogate did not want a premature baby with potential developmental or health problems. They wanted her instead to have an abortion.

Pearson offered to put the baby up for adoption, but the men refused because, according to Pearson, they did not want a child who was genetically related to one of them somewhere “out there.” According to Pearson, the men threatened both her and her doctors with a lawsuit if she did not abort her child. Because of California’s radical surrogacy laws, which allow financiers of a surrogacy arrangement to be granted legal parental rights of the baby before he or she is born, they likely would have prevailed.”37

In surrogacy contracts in general, the parents of the baby, and not the woman whose body is growing the baby, have the right to decide when to abort.38 This is too tragic to refer to as the exact opposite of “my body, my choice.” It is her body, and their choice.

Policy Prescription:

Feminism sees one way to be human. Not even two ways-male and female-just one. Feminism appears to be about women’s rights, and seems to represent all women.

“One of the biggest failures of modern feminism is that there seems to be a monolithic view of what women want. And if you don’t march in lock step, then you’re insulted or you don’t count as a woman.”39

But, feminism only protects the rights of women when doing so advances the narrative, and doesn’t conflict with the rights of various other groups that feminism decided are a higher priority than women.

Feminism insists that men and women are the same, making it impossible to share that alcohol causes harm faster to women than men. Feminism doesn’t properly tally mortality rates associated with abortion, and includes those deaths in maternal mortality statistics, making it impossible to compare the two. It also inflates US rates of maternal mortality. It hides the very real increased risk to childbearing at advanced maternal age and encourages egg freezing despite that widespread lack of knowledge. Maternal benefits to breastfeeding are not acknowledged. Legal liability forces healthcare practitioners to push prenatal tests only relevant for termination. Women are told they are reasonably able to overpower a man. Feminists supported covid vaccine mandates for pregnant women, infringing a woman’s right to ensure the safety of her unborn baby growing inside her own body. Feminists stayed silent as women were forced to labor in covid masks, impeding their breathing at a vulnerable time. Newborns were removed from mothers on any indication of covid while the mothers had no recourse. Feminists view women with heterodox beliefs as gender traitors, refuse to celebrate the accomplishments of women who don’t align on feminist issues, and wouldn’t stand up for J.K. Rowling, despite her record as a pioneer of women authors and philanthropist for wonen’s causes.

Feminism discourages women from reporting rape, and does precious little to ensure that rape kits are processed. Feminism opposes gun rights even though gun rights protect women, especially as women are weaker than men. Feminism stood with the movements to defund the police and abolish prisons, even though women are far less likely to be violent criminals, and are more vulnerable because men are stronger and women are more ripe for sexual abuse. MeToo conflated serious sexual abuse with non-criminal matters and made the physical defense of women a partisan issue. MeToo unconscionably stood quiet during New Years 2016 in Cologne, Germany; the UK rape gangs, and October 7th: all cases of many men coordinating and planning the raping of many women or girls. Feminism was nearly quiet about the women protesting abusive treatment in Iran. Feminism advocated for the men entering women’s prisons full of mostly nonviolent women offenders, showering with women, and women having no recourse. Feminism demands that women and girl athletes compete with men in leagues designed especially for women. Feminism stands for the decriminalization of prostitution, despite the significant rate of homicide for prostitutes. A group of doctors found helping a state government craft a ‘life of the mother’ exception “unethical” because it makes it less likely that late term abortion will be legalized. Feminism claims that regulations intended for abortion clinics (TRAP) are not related to the safety of the women receiving abortions, and that they are merely roundabout attempts to ban abortion, but feminism has nothing to say about freestanding birth centers subject to similar regulations. Abortion rights activists will make any point they feel is in their best interest including simultaneously fear mongering miscarriage into something that usually requires medical intervention at risk of death (the truth is closer to 20%), while whitwewashing the experience of abortion pills taken at home. Bans on transporting minors across state lines are viewed as attacks on abortion rights, though banning transporting minors across state lines in other contexts is protection for the child. The narrative that supports abortion does not allow for miscarriage to be viewed as a tragic loss. Incompatible. Feminism sets the foundation for the idea of surrogacy as freedom and not exploitation. Surrogacy can lead to a woman forced to abort a baby against her will. Clauses about when to abort are a key feature of surrogacy contracts.

The women of America- and the world- need two new companion movements to feminism. Feminism is a progressive cause that promotes the interests of progressive women. Progressive women ought to continue to be represented by the movement. At the same time, both center-left women and right-wing women need new movements, that serve as companions to feminism, to represent their unique interests.

Women need movements founded on the idea that women have fundamental rights. Period. Women-centered women’s empowerment. Not a comparison to men, or using men as a standard in any way. Women’s rights on women’s own terms. A women’s movement not focused on becoming men, pandering to men, or competing with men: not men’s rights, not man-hating. A movement that does not prioritize advocacy on behalf of any group other than women.

A movement rooted in the idea that women are not a monolith, that one movement cannot represent all women because women disagree on fundamental issues because we are full adults capable of forming opinions, not uteruses on legs.

Women need more rights than men because women are more vulnerable, and because women traditionally care for the most vulnerable humans making women more vulnerable themselves. Rights like the right to be free from assault, because women are weaker; from sexual assault, because women are more ripe for sexual assault; and if that fails, the right to bring the perpetrator to justice; to not be interfered with during birth or immediately after birth, and to not have a newborn removed from its mother.

Both movements would aim to reduce violent crime, to ensure that women aren’t forced to compete against men in women’s sports. Both movements would recognize the tremendous vulnerability of overwhelmingly non-violent women in prisons, and bathrooms, changing rooms and domestic violence shelters. Both movements would speak out against sex-selective abortions in China and India, would acknowledge the horrors of forced sterilization and the violation of bodily integrity of China’s One Child Policy. Both movements would loudly call out the mistreatment of the women of Iran, acknowledge the horrors of October 7th, insist on investigations of the UK grooming gangs. Both movements might campaign for freedom of Palestinian women from Hamas, from birthing children to grow up as suicide bombers. Both movements would have campaigned for the release of the Israeli women hostages who were obviously being sexually assaulted in captivity.

Both movements would advocate for the right for women to not be obstructed from learning to read, to not be subject to unhygienic female genital mutilation, denial of medical care on modesty grounds, involuntary commitment because a man is tired of his wife, being thrown in a truck for not wearing a headscarf, child marriage, domestic violence, rape and incest. Reasonable alimony and child support. The right to be free from sexual harassment-in the sense that a woman suffers consequences to her job if she won’t submit to sexual pressures. The movements would serve as watchdogs to make sure that women maintain the right to vote, in the US, the right to bear arms. The right not to be fired for being pregnant.

The two new movements would differ in important ways.

A center-left movement would advocate for abortion rights while insisting that safety is part and parcel of those rights. It would also strongly advocate for rape prevention and prosecution of rape, including processing rape kits. A center-left movement might state that men and women are functionally equal, but not suppress healthcare information that points out differences.

A right-wing movement would acknowledge that fathers cannot mother babies like mothers do, that women can do special and meaningful things that maen cannot do, that men and women have many differences, not just reproduction and strength, that traditional gender roles work for some women, that single-income families ought to be a viable economic choice, and that being a woman does not dictate holding specific political beliefs. The movement might endorse the ideas that being a woman is a good thing and that being a mother can be a good thing. The movement would advocate for educational opportunities for women, career opportunities for women, and opportunities for full-time motherhood. The movement might advocate both for the removal of overregulation and legal liability that impedes the full spectrum of birthing choices women ought to have access to, like freestanding birth centers and midwifery practices. The movement might raise awareness about women’s vulnerability during pregnancy, during labor and delivery and postpartum. The movement might advocate for breastfeeding women not to be obligated to serve on jury duty. The movement might showcase women whose healthy sense of modesty shines outward.

Conclusion:

The two key misunderstandings of feminism are intertwined: that men and women are the same, and that all women are the same. All women (or nearly all women) have specific vulnerabilities that mandate a humane response. But beyond that, women are not a monolith. Movements to empower women must include that dichotomy. Feminism pretends that that dichotomy doesn’t exist. This is a fatal flaw- the assertion that women need no movement outside of feminism, that women have no needs that feminism cannot meet.

Feminism cannot represent all women because feminism does not concede that all women do not agree. Feminism contains within it many movements, positions and policies that are radical and unacceptable to many women. It is not a label that can confidently be expanded. Any new movement under the umbrella is tainted by what came before. Women need diverse representation to advocate for diverse views of emancipated and self-actualized womanhood.

As shared in Part One:

Feminism is the “belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.”1

Feminism gets translated as supporting women, but that is not always true. Feminism can be a rigid insistence that men are the same as women, or a cluster of progressive causes more than a movement that centers women.

In some cases, some strains of feminism advocate for one policy position, while another strain advocates for the opposite policy position. I attempt to note pushback when applicable, but I don’t always. Allowing these points of view under the rubric of feminism says something about the fundamental ideas that shaped second wave feminism as well as speaking to the integrity of a movement that allows groups with those views to call themselves feminists. It would be easy to find feminists to speak out against women who would call themselves pro-life feminists to explain that they are not feminists, and not welcome under the umbrella. I do not think that that holds true for abolition feminism. If there are sources I am missing, please share.

Here are thirty-three ways women are hurt by feminism, divided into four categories: health truths obscured, feminism only for some women, women’s physical safety compromised, and under the guise of abortion rights. These are a list of the thirty-three ways.2

This essay is posted in three parts. I really conceive of it as one entity, but it is far too long not to split up.

Part One shared the eleven Health Truths Obscured.

Part Two is comprised of both Feminism Only For Some Women (three ways) and Women’s Physical Safety Compromised (eleven ways).

Part Three will conclude with the fourth and final section- Under the Guise of Abortion Rights (nine ways)-as well as my policy prescription for companion movements to feminism to better represent the interests of all women.

Part Two:

B. Feminism Only for Some Women:

Feminism celebrates some women, but offers no encouragement or protection for all women who don’t share a wide array of beliefs. (3)

12. Feminism Views Non-feminist Women as Gender Traitors, Not Peers.

    Feminism has no duty to represent pro-life women, nor to promote the beliefs of pro-life women, but relegating pro-life women to non-woman status because they have a different perspective is undeniably anti-woman. If silencing pro-life women represents the core of feminism, then feminism is not about women, feminism is about progressive policies.3

13. Women Heroes Are Not Heroes If They’re Republicans.

    Feminism refuses to celebrate the success of women who don’t have the same politics. Nikki Haley’s run in the Republican primary would have accomplished two feminist goals: the first woman president, and the defeat of Donald Trump.4

    Backing Haley in the primary did not preclude ultimately backing the Democratic candidate, who at the time was Joe Biden, a white man. Yet, there was no support from feminist circles. This brings into high relief what the priorities of feminism really are.

    Amy Coney Barrett, wife and mother of seven, was nominated and confirmed as the fifth woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. She represents the apex of a working mother reaching the top of her field. She also broke the hegemony of Ivy League justices with carbon copy resumes. Yet feminism and feminists decried her and did not applaud her accomplishments.

    “…her confirmation reflects a tension between feminist intentions of having women occupy positions of power and some powerful women’s anti-feminist ideologies. This tension will only increase as more women of conservative backgrounds reach positions of power. Right-wing Americans revere Justice Barrett as a new kind of feminist: one that seeks to excel as a woman with prestige and influence while adhering to politically conservative ideology.”5

14. Failure to Defend J.K. Rowling.

    J.K. Rowling said that men are men and that women are women. In response, she received death threats, had her name removed from her own books, and was called all sorts of names by the children who became famous acting in the books she wrote and the fictional world she created.

    J.K. Rowling rose to the very top of a male dominated field, but feminists felt no loyalty to defend her as a woman. Instead, feminists discovered that transgender rights are more reflective of the rights of women as a whole than defending a woman philanthropist who did so much to champion the cause of women and children.

    “It is important to note that serious feminists dispute Rowling’s assertion that trans rights are “anti-women’s rights,” and modern feminism is largely a trans-inclusive movement.”6

    “She was named to the Order of the British Empire and was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature and philanthropy. Harry Potter brought her wealth and recognition, which she has used to advance philanthropic endeavours and political causes. She established the Volant Charitable Trust in 2000, and co-founded the charity Lumos in 2005. Rowling’s philanthropy centres on medical causes and supporting at-risk women and children. In 2025, Forbes estimated that Rowling’s charitable giving exceeded US$200 million.” “By 2008, Forbes had named her the world’s highest-paid author.”7

    Knowledge is power. If you find anything interesting, please share.

    Share

Physical Safety

C. Feminism prioritizes political concerns over women’s physical safety. (11)

15. Making It Harder For Rapes to be Prosecuted

    I will discuss two ways feminism contributes to the failure of rapes being prosecuted.

    
    First, feminist ideology tells women not to report violent stranger rape to law enforcement. (I specify violent stranger rape not to rank immorality or suffering, but to focus on the crime most likely to be successfully prosecuted.)

    “Research has shown that disclosure recipients’ responses influenced whether or not crime victims contacted the police.”8 The narrative is that law enforcement will not do anything, so why bother? If a woman is encouraged to report it by whoever she discloses to, she is more likely to report it.

    Substack account Grow Some Labia shares a story, copied here in relevant part:

Just one ‘problem’: Her boyfriend, Enzo, ‘unfamiliar with the feminist literature on rape,’ disagreed and pushed her to report it to the police. As it turned out, when the police finally showed up, they informed them that two men matching the description of her attackers had just been arrested for crashing a stolen car. Both were apprehended. And guess what, they fit the description of a recent past attempted rape victim too.

Long story short, the feminist rape stories Phillips had been inculcated with were still right about some things, but ultimately wrong about everything else. Her treatment at the hospital by all-male doctors was, as predicted, further traumatizing; they were professional but it was invasive and humiliating. She watched from her room as her rapists were wheeled on gurneys down the hall. The nurses ‘snapped’ at her when she refused the pelvic exam, having had quite enough. They told her she’d wreck the investigation. Enzo got her to go along with it, recognizing what a mistake she was making. He promised to hold her hand throughout it, and he did.

Then, months later, guess what happened.

Despite all the failure prophecies by defeatist feminist rape activists, Phillips and her fellow victim got a conviction. 9

Phillips said, “Even if they had been acquitted despite my best efforts, the fact that I had pursued them to the furthest extent possible using the most effective tools available was important to me.” 10

‘Feminist’ literature collaborates with rape culture by preaching the article of faith that women won’t be believed, that there’s no point in reporting a rape because the process will be hell and they’ll likely never get a conviction. What they don’t tell women is that without a report, the rape never gets investigated, the rapist doesn’t get arrested, which also results, shockingly, in no conviction. What they also don’t point out is that the rapist is now free to do it again, knowing feminist theory has got his back.11

Even if some rapes are by nature difficult to prosecute, rapists cannot be taken off the streets without women prosecuting attackers. It is worth reading Grow Some Labia’s piece in full.

Second, feminism puts little to no emphasis, time, or resources, into ensuring the timely processing of rape kits. Rape kits require invasive procedures on a traumatized woman, like in the story above, and when she agrees to allow the scientific evidence to be collected, any society that believes in law and order ought to put every resource possible towards preventing rapists from raping again. Feminism promotes the legalization of abortion every single day but the movement to ensure a timely processing of the evidence necessary to prosecute rapists is something I heard of once, when a woman spoke out against October 7th and mentioned that she was involved in a private charity that promotes faster processing of rape kits in the United States of America.12

A year after a USA TODAY investigation revealed that police around the country weren’t following up on DNA evidence from unsolved rape cases, the Justice Department has published a report urging them to do so.

But the guidance doesn’t guarantee the problem will be solved.

That’s because a federal grant program designed to help state and local agencies deal with untested rape kits has not addressed significant deficiencies uncovered by USA TODAY in 2024: Agencies that receive grants face no penalties if they ignore the Justice Department’s recommendations.

USA TODAY found that although the grant program has spent nearly $350 million since 2015, cases continue to hit the same roadblocks they did when victims first came forward months or years earlier: kits left untested, haphazard or cursory reviews by police and prosecutors, and a reluctance to inform people about what happened to evidence collected from their own bodies.13

That protecting women from rape is a distant second after more and more performative support for abortion is a facet of feminism that is not easily understood.

16. Opposing Gun Rights for Smaller, Weaker Women Against Larger, Stronger Men.

Refusing to support gun rights for women, even as guns level the playing field of a smaller, slower, weaker, woman against a larger, faster, stronger, male attacker is another way that feminist rhetoric works against the physical safety of women. NOW’s (National Organization for Women) web site shares: “More guns put more women in harm’s way, which is why gun control reform is a feminist issue.”14

“Harris and her campaign have utilized guns as a signifier of female empowerment in spite of the fact that gun violence disproportionately impacts Black women. Not only are Black women murdered by men at a rate three times higher than their white counterparts, there is a 91% chance the murderer knew the victim prior to the murder, and a 72% chance that the murder weapon was a gun.”15 The logic is: Black women are killed by guns. Therefore, an individual black or white woman must refuse to arm herself with a gun that could save her life- in solidarity with women murdered by guns. “A true act of feminist resistance would not be encouraging gun ownership, but dismantling gun culture as a whole.”16 It’s a tortured logic, and a high bar to ask women to be martyrs for peace.

17. Defund the Police and Abolishing Prisons.

“Women’s March is in solidarity with The Movement for Black Lives in their call to #DefundPolice. Defunding the police is a feminist issue because black, poor, immigrant and undocumented women are disproportionately targeted, abused and murdered by police. Women’s Marchers across the country have been sharing information with their networks as a means to contribute meaningful conversation. We channel our efforts into sustained organizing in order to bring about the new world we so desperately need.”17

“Kaba and Ritchie don’t want to make police and prisons “kinder and gentler”; they want to do away with the system rooted in punishment. Defunding the police is “the floor, not the ceiling” and communities can start by removing police from specific tasks and settings, like schools and mental health calls. The authors promote community-based safety strategies.”

“Abolition Feminism is a branch of feminism that calls for the elimination of the prison industrial complex.”
Even though women, being weaker than men, are at more risk of falling victim to violent crime. (There is also feminist pushback on this. “#DefundThePolice may be trendy, but hurts women.”18 Pushback gets called “carceral feminists” for opposing a woman victim’s convicted violent attacker walking as freely down a street as she does.)

18. MeToo Set Out To Interrupt Sexual Violence.

“In 2006, the “me too.” movement was founded by survivor and activist Tarana Burke. In those early years, we developed our vision to bring resources, support, and pathways to healing where none existed before. And we got to work building a community of advocates determined to interrupt sexual violence wherever it happens.” [emphasis added]19

“…10 days after the Harvey Weinstein story broke, Alyssa Milano tweeted: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.”

While the #MeToo movement was started a decade ago [2018 article] by African-American activist Tarana Burke, Milano’s tweet ignited a huge outpouring on social media and a cultural turning point. In the nine days following Milano’s tweet, the #MeToo hashtag garnered 1.7 million tweets across every continent. Eighty-five countries had at least 1,000 #MeToo tweets. In the first 24 hours following Milano’s tweet, Facebook reported 12 million posts by 4.7 million users.”20

The track record of MeToo in the U.S. might have underperformed the vision. Excessive scrutiny fell on behaviors that might not have warranted public indictment, like the Aziz Ansari incident,21 while the movement appeared to look the other way when the target was inconvenient, like when Andrew Cuomo ran as an independent for mayor of New York City years after his MeToo allegations.22

19. New Years 2016 in Cologne, Germany.

New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne: The night that traumatized thousands of women and shook Germany. On New Year’s Eve in 2015, [December 31, 2015/January 1, 2016] more than 1,000 women were sexually assaulted in Cologne by groups of men, many from North Africa and the Middle East, triggering a fierce debate over Germany’s refugee policy. Ten years on, victims say their trauma was politicized, as they continue to live with the consequences of that night.

Many of them no longer wanted to speak about it. It had been nearly 10 years since these women were sexually assaulted on the night of December 31, 2015, in Cologne, Germany, on the square between the main station and the cathedral. A police report, published soon after, summarized the events in a large chart. 23

At the time, however, the women spoke out in the press, on the radio and on television. They described that night when the police lost control of the area. Hundreds of men, heavily intoxicated, uninhibited and aggressive – who would later be identified mostly as refugees or undocumented migrants from North Africa and the Middle East – took advantage of the anonymity of the crowd and the darkness to assault the women there, often in groups. There was a sense of abandonment: The victims filed complaints, and then nothing, or almost nothing, happened. Of the 1,210 complaints – half of which were for sexual assault – only one conviction was handed down for that charge, according to the civil court. Nothing else occurred, except for a heated political debate, which left them feeling that the story had slipped from their grasp.24

The details of what exactly went on in Cologne and other German cities on New Year’s Eve 2015 are too horrible and by now too well-known to merit repetition. What deserves to be iterated and reiterated by way of a cautionary tale is the story of the shameful reaction of the German authorities (both local and national) to an unprecedented outbreak of mass sexual truancy among highly organized sections of the migrant community: A reaction which went through textbook stages of denial, cover-up, and, eventually, victim-blaming (in the immediate aftermath of the assaults, the [female] Mayor of Cologne sprang into action with a set of guidelines for women on how best to behave in public so as not to inflame the migrant libido).

Then came the equally wearily predictable warnings of what we were to understand was the real problem here: Not Muslim misogyny, but Islamophobia.25

As a general point, it really is astonishing the extent to which the feminist left (in fact, the left in general) is prepared to veto entire chapters of its own otherwise Inquisitorially-enforced ideology in the interests of maintaining 100% solidarity with Islam — the most ruthlessly misogynistic force in the world today. The same people who see and hear rape culture literally everywhere (on University campuses, in wolf-whistles, on saucy t-shirts worn by rocket scientists, etc) somehow suddenly can’t see or hear it at all when it involves feral mobs of migrants assaulting women en masse in public in major European cities. Amid a miasma of double standards and self-contradictory froth, what’s clear is that the left is only opposed to evils like misogyny, homophobia, and racism inasmuch as they can be bundled into a knout and wielded without mercy to give white, western, man a d**n good thrashing.

From: After Cologne, feminism is dead. Europe must now focus on the more important issue of women’s rights. From Quillette, January 18, 2016.26

20. Failure to Prevent and Failure to Prosecute Grooming Gangs in the UK.

What are grooming gangs?

Child sexual abuse is mostly carried out by relatives and other trusted figures. But in these cases, gangs used grooming techniques to find their victims in public: girls aged 11 to 16, mostly white, often from troubled backgrounds, would be flooded with attention from men a few years older, who often worked as taxi drivers or in takeaways; many were involved in the illegal drug trade. The girls would be given alcohol or drugs and then deceived or forced into sex with one man, who would then pass them on to be raped, often violently, by his friends or relatives.

“It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered,” noted a 2014 report by Jay looking into abuse in Rotherham. “They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated.” Children were “doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened [that] they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators.” Some victims were murdered: in Telford, Lucy Lowe died at 16 with her mother and sister when her abuser set fire to her home in 2000. She was pregnant, for a second time, by him when she died."27

A series of local inquiries have exposed an official response that was unforgivably inadequate. In her 2014 Rotherham report, Jay said that South Yorkshire Police had treated child victims with “contempt,” and that social workers had “underplayed” the problem.

In at least two cases, police arrested the fathers of abused girls when they attempted to remove their daughters from the houses where they were being abused. On another occasion, police attended a derelict house and found an intoxicated girl with several male abusers; they arrested the child for being “drunk and disorderly,” but detained none of the men.

Inquiries in both Telford and Rotherham also found that child sexual exploitation was dismissed as “child prostitution,” teachers and social workers were discouraged from reporting abuse. Witnesses were not protected. Other inquiries and reviews in Rochdale and Oldham identified similar issues.

More recent testimony by victims has also alleged that some of the police officers abused girls themselves, and “corrupt police officers worked alongside the gangs or failed to act on child sexual exploitation”, said the BBC. No public servants have yet been charged in connection with the scandal.28

“That the scandal of so-called grooming gangs is finally gaining the attention it deserves is no thanks to Britain’s elite feminists – the very people you might expect to be standing up for women and girls. The systematic rape and sexual abuse of mainly white working-class girls, many of whom were in local authority care, by groups of mostly Pakistani-heritage men has been known about for decades. But the #MeToo crowd were silent when these stories first emerged and remain largely silent now.”29 [emphasis added]

21. October 7, 2023

    
    “On October 7, Hamas terrorists murdered over 1,200 Israelis, kidnapped over 250 civilians into Gaza, wounded thousands, and fired thousands of rockets against Israeli cities and towns.”30 “The United Nations’s envoy on sex crimes during conflict presented a report Monday at the UN indicating that rape and gang rape likely occurred during the October 7 Hamas onslaught against southern Israel, that ‘clear and convincing’ evidence shows that hostages were raped while being held in Gaza, and that those currently held captive are still facing such abuse.

    The 24-page report, based on more than two weeks of meetings on the ground, states that there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe that Hamas committed rape and sexual abuse during its murderous rampage on October 7, and that there is an even higher standard of evidence to indicate that hostages kidnapped by Hamas that day were subject to rape in captivity.”31 “‘We saw a catalog of the most extreme and inhumane forms of torture and other horrors,’ Patten said at the time, including that there are reasonable grounds to believe that ‘rape and gang rape’ occurred during the October 7 attacks in at least three locations: the Supernova music festival site, Kibbutz Re’im, and along the nearby Route 232.

    Patten said that she met with representatives of 33 Israeli institutions as well as 34 individuals, including survivors and witnesses, released hostages, first responders, and others. She noted that she did not meet with any survivor of sexual violence, saying that she was told the small number of living survivors are undergoing ‘specialized trauma treatment’ and are unable to discuss their experiences.”32

What Happened to the Women’s Movement? Unpacking the Silence Surrounding October 7, (March 8, 2024) from Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s AHA Foundation’s web site explores this:33

It’s been five months since the October 7 massacre. We need to recognize the women’s rights movement as a whole has failed these women and girls. Instead of these attacks being a springboard for women’s rights groups to firmly take a stand against rape as a weapon of war, and demand the return of hostages, many have abdicated their responsibilities and abandoned their principles. We have now seen what appears to be one set of rules for women in general and another set of rules for Jewish women, prompting the hashtag that emerged following October 7: “Me too unless you’re a Jew”. Many organizations and individuals that were very vocal in the Me Too movement have stayed silent following one of the largest and most barbaric instances of gender-based violence in modern history.

Excerpts from an interview with “Michele Hanash is an experienced attorney and women’s and children’s rights advocate,” and “Andrea (Andi) Bottner serves as the Vice President of External Relations at Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), where she leads strategic partnerships and communications efforts.”

The UN has long displayed an anti-Israel bias. It’s sad and shocking, though not surprising therefore, that UN women took nearly two months to issue a really underwhelming statement about October 7. Just days ago, UN Women posted to Instagram that the “war on Gaza is a war on women,” using their platform to twist the war on Hamas, a terrorist organization that brutalizes women, as a war on women, in order to push an anti-Israel agenda. But UN Women made no such statement about the systematic raping, mutilating and hostage taking of Israeli women and girls?! When your narrative is based on Israelis as the oppressor, the cognitive dissonance is too great to acknowledge the atrocities perpetrated against them. Doing so would call into question so much of the anti-Israel propaganda they have spread and based their platform upon. The constant dehumanization of Israelis makes it easier to convince oneself that Israelis somehow deserve to be raped and mutilated, and in this case only, rape is justified as “political resistance”.

I think you are absolutely right, Michele, that the anti-semitic bias is alive and well at the United Nations. I think we have witnessed such shocking silence from outside so-called “women’s rights” organizations, because they have decided to put an extremely progressive, political agenda ahead of their mission to advocate for women’s rights as human rights. Politics and the cost of playing in the political arena have won the day for these such organizations. [emphasis added] It is shameful and beyond hypocritical. There is also inadequate criticism about the bias and the silence. Those of us who see this bias need to be demanding more. Women deserve more and leaders who stand with us and on the side of true women’s rights need to be applauded. Conversely, those cowardly leaders who do not, have to be driven from power. Vote them out. Raise your voice against their hateful remarks. Counter their arguments with the truth. Act and use your voice.

Michele: It’s an epic failure for the movement. Groups that were silent have betrayed the movement. They have put other interests above women’s rights. They are complicit in the atrocities in my opinion.

Andi: These silent and hypocritical, political people have put politics above basic human rights. Rape cannot be used as a weapon of war against any woman, regardless of her color, creed, geographic location, ethnicity, political persuasion, etc. The women’s rights movement must stand for all women as women, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum. The women’s rights movement needs to be bigger than this. [emphasis added]

22. Trickle of Solidarity for the Protesting Women of Iran.

“For 22 days, the UN’s top human rights body has stood silent as Iran’s Islamic regime unleashed a brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters, resulting in thousands of deaths, arbitrary arrests, and widespread torture,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.34

“Our relentless campaign—highlighting the UNHRC’s zero resolutions, zero emergency sessions, and utter inaction—has finally forced the Council to convene this critical meeting. This is a victory for the brave Iranian people and for human rights advocates worldwide who refused to let the UN look the other way.”35 Feminist organizations have not been totally silent. See Ms. Magazine.36 But the uneven and woman-targeting nature of the oppression of the woman of Iran is exactly the type of oppression that feminism, with its hatred of gender roles, deep suspicion of feminine modesty, and revulsion towards organized religion passionately opposes. The outcry is far less than one would expect.

23. Allowing Men Into Women’s Prisons.

“LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer/Intersex/Asexual) rights are one of NOW’s six core issues. NOW is dedicated to combating discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in all areas, including employment, housing, public accommodations, health services, child custody and military policies. We assert the rights of all LGBTQIA+ individuals to live their lives with dignity, security, and marriage equality for all. NOW advocates for all women, including trans women, to have equitable treatment in the courts, in the workforce, in healthcare, and in our communities.”37

Health Implications of Housing Assignments for Incarcerated Transgender Women carries the eerie other worldliness of 2020 in its premise that biological men must be allowed into women’s prisons, because to do otherwise is housing discrimination.38

“This need for safe housing exists not only in community settings, where several reforms (e.g., changes to antidiscrimination policies) have already began to improve access to safe housing for transgender women, but it also extends to the carceral settings (i.e., jails, prisons) where a disproportionate number of transgender women will spend some portion of their lives. Because transgender women are at high risk for sexual assault and other forms of violence while incarcerated, where and how they are housed during periods of incarceration has serious implications for their physical and mental health.”39

Here’s what happened,

NPREC [National Prison Rape Elimination Commission] proposed regulations that went into effect in 2012. The big trans ones are in section 115.42:

“(c) In deciding whether to assign a transgender or intersex inmate to a facility for male or female inmates, and in making other housing and programming assignments, the agency shall consider on a case-by-case basis whether a placement would ensure the inmate’s health and safety, and whether the placement would present management or security problems.

“(d) Placement and programming assignments for each transgender or intersex inmate shall be reassessed at least twice each year to review any threats to safety experienced by the inmate.

“(e) A transgender or intersex inmate’s own views with respect to his or her own safety shall be given serious consideration.

“(f) Transgender and intersex inmates shall be given the opportunity to shower separately from other inmates.”

So each man who says he’s a woman receives individualized care for his health and safety, serious consideration of his views, private showers, and semiannual check-ins. All women are denied showers away from men, ignored if they say they feel unsafe around male inmates, and relegated to the shadows of an allusion to “management or security problems.”

Or maybe women’s safety is not what that term refers to – who knows? I read the current guidelines about these rules and they don’t go anywhere near the idea that men might pose a safety risk to women.40

“Note that women’s prisons are not always segmented by security risk (e.g., with murderers housed apart from shoplifters) to the degree that men’s prisons are, as the female prison population is smaller and overwhelmingly nonviolent.”41

This piece is also worth reading in full.

Advocating for biological men, even with additional vulnerability, to find suitable accommodation in prisons without considering the welfare of the biological women in that prison, first and foremost, is to prioritize political advocacy over the safety of women.

24. Allowing biological men to compete with women in sports.

NOW, the National Organization for Women, opposes protecting girls and women from being forced to compete against boys and men in women’s sports. 42

This is how they explain their reasoning.

Today’s vote in the U.S. House to forbid transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people from participating in school athletic programs has nothing to do with women’s sports or the girls’ rights —and everything to do with the politics of cruelty, exclusion, and discrimination.

The extremists in control of the House want to further harm already-marginalized groups, and transphobia is their latest weapon.

Women and girls face very real problems and discriminatory barriers in school athletics, such as sexual harassment and abuse, inadequate funding, second-class treatment in facilities, travel and equipment, and equal pay for women athletes.

Congress needs to address those issues—and the fact that college women have almost 60,000 fewer opportunities to play than men, and high school girls have over 1 million fewer opportunities than boys to play sports. And we need to open up more opportunities for women and girls of color, who are disproportionately impacted by these disparities.

Contrast with how a female athlete explains the harm of men competing in women’s sports.43

Former NCAA volleyball player Macy Petty also weighed in, sharing her personal experiences competing against men in college.

“I experienced the reality of competing against a trans-identifying male firsthand, and not only was it unfair, it introduced another level of risk and harm to myself and my female teammates,” Petty said in a news release from Concerned Women for America.

“Men’s and women’s volleyball are two different games given the biological realities between men and women. Females can never be safe, nor have a level playing field, if they are forced to compete against men,” Petty said. She is now a legislative strategist at CWA.

The conservative women’s organization also cited its 2025 research report, which “found that trans-identifying males have stolen over 1,941 gold medals from women and girls in the United States; additionally, trans-identifying male athletes have stolen over $493,173 in prize money from women in professional sports.”44

24. Mamdani Favors Decriminalization of Prostitution.

“Liberal feminists view radical feminists’ opposition to the sex trade as paternalistic and contrary to the feminist ideals of female self-determination and sexual liberation. While advocating for the rights of women in prostitution and working to de-stigmatize the sex trade, liberal feminists reject the notion that sex workers are victims in need of rescue (Wahab 2004; Weatherall and Priestly 2001). Instead, they conceptualize participation in the sex trade as sex work, which allows sex workers to be viewed and respected as legitimate laborers deserving the same rights as other workers.”45

Zohran Mamdani won the NYC 2025 mayoralty race on the Democratic ticket. He is currently mayor of NYC.

On Monday, the frontrunner’s campaign drew a distinction between legalization — which Mamdani does not support and would involve the state regulating the sex trade — and decriminalization, which involves not pursuing arrests and prosecution.

Mamdani has said he would emulate the practices of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who presided over a dramatic decline in arrests of sex workers as district attorney offices stepped away from prosecuting them.

“Zohran will return to the decriminalization approach taken by the de Blasio administration, which means he’ll end raids on sex workers and work with District Attorneys to reduce unnecessary prosecutions,” spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement. “This will allow New York City to more effectively combat sex trafficking, reduce exploitation, and keep our communities safe.”46

“… [I]t was a topic he ran on during his 2020 Assembly bid. He’s also a co-sponsor for legislation known as “Cecilia’s Law,” which would decriminalize certain prostitution offenses across the state.”47

The sex trade costs women their lives. “It has been estimated that women involved in street prostitution are 60 to 100 times more likely to be murdered than are nonprostitute females. In addition, homicides of prostitutes are notoriously difficult to investigate and, as such, many cases remain unsolved. Despite this large risk factor, little literature exists on homicides of prostitutes, and there is a lack of basic statistics and knowledge regarding this very specific victim group that could possibly help investigators. The aim of the current study is to conduct an exploratory study to explore the key characteristics of this group and how they differ from other subgroups of homicide.”48

Decriminalizing prostitution is a feminist policy goal. But decreased police presence means less protection for women far too likely to be the victims of homicide.

11

Grow Some Labia!

Some Rape Victims Emerge Stronger, Not Permanently Debilitated

I feel vindicated to read someone else say it…

Read more

2 years ago · 18 likes · 15 comments · Grow Some Labia

40

Bad Facts

Why Men Are Housed in Women's Prisons

“It does require training of staff and education of the inmates in that facility…

Read more

2 years ago · 57 likes · 13 comments · Glenna Goldis

Feminism is the “belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.”1

Feminism gets translated as supporting women, but that is not always true. Feminism can be a rigid insistence that men are the same as women, or a cluster of progressive causes more than a movement that centers women.

In some cases, some strains of feminism advocate for one policy position, while another strain advocates for the opposite policy position. I attempt to note pushback when applicable, but I don’t always. Allowing these points of view under the rubric of feminism says something about the fundamental ideas that shaped second wave feminism as well as speaking to the integrity of a movement that allows groups with those views to call themselves feminists. It would be easy to find feminists to speak out against women who would call themselves pro-life feminists to explain that they are not feminists, and not welcome under the umbrella. I do not think that that holds true for abolition feminism. If there are sources I am missing, please share.

Here are thirty-three ways women are hurt by feminism, divided into four categories: health truths obscured, feminism only for some women, women’s physical safety compromised, and under the guise of abortion rights. The list of the thirty-three ways is in this footnote.2

This essay will be posted in three parts. I really conceive of it as one entity, but it is far too long not to split up.

Part One shares the eleven Health Truths Obscured.

Part Two is comprised of both Feminism Only For Some Women (three ways) and Women’s Physical Safety Compromised (eleven ways).

Part Three concludes with the fourth and final section- Under the Guise of Abortion Rights (nine ways)-as well as my policy prescription for companion movements to feminism to better represent the interests of all women.

Here we go.

Part One:

Feminism promotes narratives in place of sharing genuine health related information both in the media and in healthcare settings. These are a collection of facts that I did not know until recently that don’t jibe with the narratives feminism promotes.

1. Women and Alcohol:

   Gloria Steinem’s 2004 speech says:

   Which meant we had to admit that Freud and the Bible were wrong, which is no small thing. Some were pretty global, like the differences between two women or between two men are greater for every purpose other than reproduction. The single purpose of reproduction. But for 99 percent of life the differences between us as individual women or individual men are greater than the differences generalized between males and females. Like the sexual and racial caste system has to be fought together. [emphasis added]3

   Second wave feminism has at its core that men and women are the same. Women who grew up in the feminist era, like me, will not be aware of the differences between men and women because we were taught as children that “a girl can do anything a boy can do.” Women are full human beings, identical to men in our right to human dignity, but different in many ways.

   Alcohol consumption is one way that men and women differ in significant ways.

   “Changing attitudes toward heavy drinking by women may partly explain the rise in the number of deaths. Women’s alcohol consumption has been normalized…”4

   Presenting men and women as the same has a real impact. “Women have lower amounts of the enzyme, alcohol dehydrogenase, needed to break their drinks down, so they are left with higher levels of a substance that is toxic to organs like the liver. Moreover, women have less body water to dilute the alcohol they’ve consumed — the end result is that alcohol in their systems becomes more concentrated”5

   “Women in their 30s and 40s have increased their alcohol consumption in recent decades, as their lifestyles have changed. Women who turned 35 between 2018 and 2019 were nearly 60% more likely to report recent binge-drinking or alcohol use disorder symptoms than women who turned 35 between 1993 and 1997, according to a 2023 report published in the journal Addiction.”6

   “‘It’s not pay parity; it is drinking parity, and that is a big issue in terms of health risks,’ says Mary Beth Terry, a cancer epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.”

   “Americans’ changing drinking habits depend largely on their age bracket. Consumption among teenagers is going down, decreasing faster among boys than girls. The same is true for young adults. But for older cohorts, men’s drinking rates have held relatively steady or declined slightly, and women’s have increased in recent decades, data suggests, particularly for those who are college-educated or high-income.”7

   “Women’s alcohol-related health problems tend to start at lower levels of drinking compared with men. Women’s bodies tend to contain less water and more fat, resulting in a higher blood alcohol concentration than men, even when body weight and the amount consumed are equal, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.”8

   “Breast cancer rates in the U.S. are also rising some 1% each year, with greater increases for women under age 50. Some researchers point to the increase in alcohol use as a potential contributor, along with other known risks including obesity and childbirth at older ages.”

   “‘We don’t fully understand why we’re seeing this, but alcohol is definitely playing a role,’ said Dr. Amy Comander, breast oncologist and cancer survivorship expert at Mass General Brigham.”

   “Drinking alcohol can increase estrogen levels, which in turn raises breast cancer risk, and other mechanisms might also contribute, researchers said. One drink a day raises a woman’s breast cancer risk by about 10%, studies suggest, a small increase that contributes to tens of thousands of U.S. cases annually. Alcohol leads to more breast cancer diagnoses than any other of the half-dozen cancers that can be linked to alcohol consumption.”9

   “‘You know it is bad for your liver, but breast cancer?’ said Vandenberg-Bastian. ‘People deserve access to clear and unbiased information, and I am in awe that I didn’t have that, even as a nurse.’” 10

2. Incomplete Statistics On Legal Abortion:

   Abortion is the flagship issue of feminism. It symbolizes women’s liberation from the biological realities of femininity and concretizes equality between men and women. Legal abortion in America is tasked with ensuring that women can obtain safe abortions. But the movement is also motivated not to investigate too deeply how many women are injured or lose their lives during the course of legal abortions, and not to share those numbers in an internally consistent or thorough way.

   “This report [CDC Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2022] summarizes data on legal induced abortions for 2022 that were provided voluntarily to CDC by the central health agencies of 48 reporting areas (46 states, the District of Columbia, and New York City, excluding California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey) and comparisons over time for the 47 reporting areas that reported each year during 2013–2022 (46 states and New York City). This report also summarizes abortion-related deaths reported voluntarily to CDC for 2021 as part of the Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System (PMSS).”11

   
   In 2022, four states did not report abortion-related deaths. Reporting is voluntary. Reporting is not necessarily complete because of the voluntary nature.12 Abortion deaths are included in maternal mortality rates. Many would assume that abortion related deaths could be compared to maternal deaths without abortion as a side by side comparison, but abortion deaths are actually included.13

   If a woman wants to make an informed choice based on how many women die of legal abortion a year in the US, she cannot. Because that information isn’t available. It is intuitive to claim that no woman would be swayed by mortality statistics, or even be concerned about the numbers, but in the arena of childbirth, maternal mortality statistics are quoted with great frequency.

   
   Even if deaths due to legal abortions are magnitudes lower than deaths due to childbirth, which definitely seems like the case, reporting is inadequate and insufficiently reliable.
   

3. Misleading Maternal Mortality Statistics:

   
   While a woman wanting to learn more about abortion statistics cannot find complete statistics to illustrate the safety of legal abortion, when she researches maternal mortality rates in America, she will find frightening and over exaggerated rates that are incompatible with statistics collected in other countries.

   
   Feminism might incentivize finding higher rates of maternal mortality to accentuate the life-threatening nature of childbirth in order to bolster support for the right to legal abortion. Maternal mortality rates include attempts or performed abortions outside of legal providers. Scrupulously tallying maternal deaths while taking a laid back approach to cataloging legal abortion deaths will make the safety of legal abortion more stark. Including legal abortion related deaths in maternal mortality rates also helps.14 Feminism perhaps could motivate those seeking greater government funding for women’s health to calculate dire maternal mortality statistics to illustrate a more pressing need. Feminism is aligned with advocates for socialized medicine, and higher maternal mortality rates in the U.S. vs. countries with socialized medicine might help convince the public that private healthcare causes maternal deaths.

   
   Maternal mortality statistics can be misleading.

   One way is how the rates are calculated—the amount of time after birth that defines a death as maternal. Maternal mortality is defined as any death during pregnancy, childbirth and a fixed time after the end of pregnancy: >42 days is called maternal death, up to 1 year after pregnancy is considered late maternal death.15

   
   Yet, in this Harvard Gazette interview, “You also found that ‘late maternal deaths’ — those that occur between 42 days and 1 year after pregnancy — accounted for nearly a third of the total [of maternal mortality in the U.S]. Yet the World Health Organization does not include late maternal death in its definition of pregnancy-related mortality.”16

   
   “Internationally, any death during pregnancy and up to 42 days after birth is considered a maternal mortality. In the U.S., we’re moving toward being inclusive of the full year after birth, because the 42 days postpartum is somewhat arbitrary.”17 The U.S. classifies a death as maternal when it occurs in a time period more than eight times longer after birth than the window other countries use.

   
   The second way the statistics can be misleading is due to irregularities in the methods of data collection.

   The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System reports that maternal-mortality rates in the U.S. have roughly tripled since 2001, to 32.9 per 100,000 live births in 2021. This is nearly three times as high as rates in other developed countries—but, as the study concludes, it’s largely a statistical artifact.
   Deaths among pregnant women or new mothers are often classified as “maternal” even if they owe to other causes, such as cancer or pre-existing conditions. The culprit is a check box that states added to death certificates in 2003 to identify women who had died while pregnant or between 42 days and a year of when their pregnancy ended.
   As the study explains, this check box “led to a rapid increase in reported maternal mortality rates” and “some egregious errors,” including hundreds of women over 70 “being certified as pregnant at the time of death or in the year before death” largely because of administrative errors.
   Researchers reanalyzed mortality data to identify only deaths that occurred during pregnancy or postpartum that had at least one mention of pregnancy among the causes of death on the certificate. The authors found that the maternal mortality rate remained essentially flat between 1999 and 2002 (10.2 per 100,000 live births) and 2018 and 2021 (10.4). This would put the U.S. on par with other developed countries.“ [emphasis added]18
   

   Another aspect of maternal mortality statistics that surprised me was the tenuous connection between some of the causes and healthcare. “Homicide, suicide, and drug overdose accounted for more than one fourth of maternal deaths (2018 of the total of 7901) from 2018 through 2023; deaths from these causes nearly equaled the combined toll of cardiovascular disease, infection, hypertension, and hemorrhage.”19 I used to think that maternal mortality statistics concerned only labor and delivery, postpartum hemorrhage, etc, but the reality is far broader than that.

4. Advanced Maternal Age:

   
   Betty Friedan, in her The Feminine Mystique, page ix, “Twenty Years After,” the October 1984 prologue to the edition of the 1963 book, talks about “first babies at forty.” “I keep being surprised at the changes in which the women’s movement set in motion continue to play themselves out in our lives...”

   Childbearing at later ages is a goal of feminism as it levels the playing field between women and men’s educational and career opportunities. Perhaps because of that, or to not discourage women from pursuing motherhood once already older, or so not as to frighten older pregnant women, the increased risks to mother and baby from childbearing at later ages has been largely obscured. I had no idea about these statistics until I was pregnant at the ages of 45 and 46. Knowledge is power, and women deserve to understand the factors involved in order to make good decisions, or even just to know as much about our bodies as possible when in a specific situation.

   Having a baby after 35, and even more so after 40 and 45, carries extra risks for both mother and baby, including higher risks of death for both.

   There is increased risk for gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, labor dystocia (“failure to progress,” more common in first time mothers), cesarean delivery, preterm- spontaneous or iatrogenic (induced)-neonate, requiring the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), and low birth weight.

   Risks increase with advancing age especially over 40. From ages 45-54, there is increased risk of preeclampsia, C-section, postpartum hemorrhage, and gestational diabetes.

   At 35 and older, it is 2 to 4 times more likely to have chronic hypertension and nearly twice as likely to have diabetes mellitus. At 40 and older, there is 2 to 3 times the risk of gestational diabetes.20

   “Even after controlling for baseline characteristics of prepregnancy hypertension and diabetes, older women remained at significant risk of developing preeclampsia and gestational diabetes.”21

   There is increased risk for both large for gestational age and small for gestational age babies, so ultrasounds are recommended in third trimester for pregnancies with anticipated delivery at age 40 or over.

   The stillbirth rate (data from 2013) overall in babies past 20 weeks is 6 per 1,000 births for mothers of all ages. For women age 40-44, it’s 10 per 1,000. For women age 45-52, it’s 13.8 per 1,000. There is age related correlation, even controlling for hypertension and diabetes.

   The rate of stillbirth at 39 weeks for women 40+ is nearly the same rate as stillbirth for women ages 25-29 years of age beyond 41 weeks gestation.

   For moms 35 and under, there is a 20% C-Section rate. For ages 35-39, it is nearly 26%. For ages 45-49 it is 37%. 22

   Later ages of having a first child are also associated with higher breast cancer risk.23 First babies at forty might be the fulfillment of the feminist dream, it is still less healthy for mom.

   Babies are amazing. On some level, pregnancy is always a risk. But young women should know exactly what the increased risks are so they can make a choice about what is healthier for their bodies and their future babies rather than going by sweet anecdotes or on vibes about whether women look or feel old. Women pregnant at any age need to know what protocols are suggested and what the risks are.

   

5. Egg Freezing Oversimplified.
   Egg freezing (oocyte cryopreservation) is a fertility preservation method where a woman’s eggs are extracted, frozen, and stored, typically using a flash-freezing method called vitrification. This process allows for future use in in vitro fertilization (IVF), enabling individuals to preserve their fertility for social, career, or medical reasons.24

Egg freezing is something feminism encourages to avoid the pressure to have children earlier, allow women to maximize educational and career opportunities, as well as to assert control over reproductive capabilities.

But egg freezing has more steps than people realize, and success is not assured.25 Egg freezing also does not address many of the concerns related to advanced maternal age discussed above.

6. Suppressing Maternal Health Benefits of Breastfeeding.
   

   Feminism prizes women’s educational and career opportunities. Enabling mom to separate from baby supports those endeavors. Further, feminist ideas about men and women being the same favor baby feeding that doesn’t involve women’s bodies, but rather formula that mother or father are both equally qualified to administer.26 Formula is feminist.27

   Perhaps because of these ideological goals, the benefits of breastfeeding for women’s long term health are not widely known. “As in 2018, in 2021 a low percentage of respondents believed that breastfeeding protects the mother against breast cancer (23.9%), high blood pressure (15.5%), or type 2 diabetes (15.4)…More public awareness of maternal benefits of breastfeeding might help increase demand for breastfeeding-supportive programs and policies.”28 I have been nursing for twenty-five years, with some breaks, and I didn’t know this. I have been lectured at by lactation consultants and given packets many times, too.

   By under-spreading the awareness of breastfeeding maternal health benefits, breastfeeding gets portrayed as maternal martyrdom and an opportunity to shame women for inadequate mothering.

   Breastfeeding reduces the risk of breast cancer: A call for action in high‐income countries with low rates of breastfeeding shares that the UK has lower rates of breastfeeding than other countries. “An estimated 4.7% of breast cancer cases in the UK are caused by not breastfeeding.”29

   “Yes, breastfeeding reduces your risk of breast cancer. The longer you breastfeed, the lower your risk. A large study found that breastfeeding could decrease the risk of breast cancer by 4.3% for every 12 months of breastfeeding.

   This did not vary between high and low-income countries or with age, menopausal status, ethnic group, or age of the mother at first birth. Breastfeeding for more than one year reduces the risk of triple-negative breast cancer by around 20% and the risk in women with BRCA1 mutations by around 22-50%.”30

   How significant is this increase in collective rates of breast cancer? Possibly significant enough to cancel out the benefits European women expected to gain from microplastics bans.

   Breast cancer rates are closely tied to what researchers call “reproductive and lifestyle risk factors”—factors more prevalent in developed nations:

   • Later age at first pregnancy

   • Fewer children and less breastfeeding

   • Hormone replacement therapy use

   • Higher alcohol consumption

   • Increased body weight and physical inactivity

   “These factors may be counteracting any protective effects from reduced chemical exposures, particularly in affluent Western European countries.” 31

   Breastfeeding brings mom a reduced risk of eighteen negative effects and diseases, including breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, endometriosis, diabetes, osteoporosis, blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases, metabolic syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer disease and multiple sclerosis.32

   When the maternal benefits… of breastfeeding are suppressed, women are deprived of informed choice.
   

7. Prenatal Protocols Encourage Abortion
   

   Feminism jealously guards the right to abortion. Prenatal tests are encouraged in the early stages of pregnancy, even if they are only relevant to termination and mom is not open to terminating. Causes of action like wrongful birth33 and wrongful life place the onus on the practitioner to sufficiently push abortion on a mother. In my pregnancy with our youngest in 2023-2024, after Roe was overturned, the receptionist tried to schedule me for a ‘nuchal translucency’ test, a name I had never heard. One of the midwives told me that some of the tests tested for operable problems. None of the tests we discussed had relevance outside of termination. Testing for Downs in the first trimester is a termination-focused test, otherwise testing later is more intuitive. As an older mother, the recurring prenatal tests and signing waivers are like being asked, “You know that you are old. Are you still sure that you want this baby?” over and over again.

   There is no resource that I could find that separates prenatal tests for treatable conditions from non-treatable descriptions, like Downs syndrome. This would make prenatal testing customizable for a mom not considering abortion. That would reflect true choice. There was no list of tests relevant to moms not open to termination that I could find in 2000, when our first child was born, and I have not found anything relevant in my internet searches while preparing this piece in 2026. I live in a blue state. Perhaps a red state is different.
   

8. Women Are Not As Strong As Men.
   

   Gloria Steinem’s 2004 speech, quoted above in the discussion of women’s alcohol tolerance relative to men’s, says:

   Which meant we had to admit that Freud and the Bible were wrong, which is no small thing. Some were pretty global, like the differences between two women or between two men are greater for every purpose other than reproduction. The single purpose of reproduction. But for 99 percent of life the differences between us as individual women or individual men are greater than the differences generalized between males and females. Like the sexual and racial caste system has to be fought together. [emphasis added] A Speech by Gloria Steinem. Leaps of Consciousness.34

   A current krav maga web site, however, says this:

   “Physical differences between men and women are measurable and relevant. On average, men possess greater upper body strength, higher muscle density, and increased anaerobic power. These differences affect striking force, grappling pressure, and endurance during sustained struggle.

   Reach and mass also affect leverage. A larger body can absorb impact more effectively and apply pressure with less effort. In prolonged engagements, these factors compound. This is why extended physical struggle favors the stronger individual.

   Acknowledging these differences is necessary for responsible self defense training. Ignoring them creates false confidence and increases risk.” 35
   

9. Covid Vaccine Encouraged During Pregnancy.
   

   Feminism was aligned with political factions who promoted a certain set of covid-era protocols. Instead of analyzing women’s health and best interests, feminism allied with its adjacent political groups.

   “Feminism correlates with pro-vaccine behavior even for those concerned about vaccine safety.” Feminism was a more relevant factor than gender.36

   The covid vaccine was touted as safe for pregnant women. Yet, it is unethical to conduct a pharmaceutical trial on pregnant women.37 How was it possible in that narrow time frame to know that it was safe? How can anyone force a pregnant woman, who might be avoiding Tylenol when she’s in pain to avoid adverse effects, to take a vaccine, that even if safe for non-pregnant people might not be safe for pregnant women? Women who declined the vaccine during pregnancy cited their reason as the “safety of their unborn infant.”38
   

10. The Impact of Covid Era Mask Wearing During Labor.
    

    Here too, feminism prioritized political allyship over the very real concerns of women.

    “Breathing may seem simple—after all, it’s something you’ve been doing all your life—but during labor, using breath correctly can help optimize oxygen flow to both you and your baby. Understanding proper breathing techniques during labor can ease pain, reduce stress, and make the experience more manageable.”39

    “The use of face masks became mandatory during SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Wearing masks may lead to complaints about laboured breathing and stress.”

    “Breathing resistance and work of breathing were significantly increased while wearing a mask. During exercise the increase in minute ventilation tended to be lower and breathing time was significantly longer with mask than without mask. Wearing a mask caused significant minimal decreases in blood oxygen pressure, oxygen saturation, an initial increase in blood and inspiratory carbon dioxide pressure, and a higher perceived physical exertion and temperature and humidity behind the mask under very heavy exercise.”40

    Labor involves tremendous exertion and extreme vulnerability. Despite this, women were forced to labor with masks on. How could any ideology that defends women’s unique needs and vulnerabilities not speak out?

    I will note that I found a feminist piece out of the UK opposing this practice of covid mask wearing during labor.41 However, in the US, having given birth in 2021, and knowing other women who gave birth at different points in the evolution of covid era protocols, the well being of women at our most vulnerable- during labor and delivery, and immediately afterwards- was absolutely not a priority of feminism.

    

11. Women’s Trauma of Covid Induced Removal of Newborns
    

    The third covid era protocol that uniquely affected women that received almost no pushback from feminism involves the questionable removal of newborns from their mothers on the basis of a mother testing positive for covid.

    “The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises that facilities ‘consider temporarily separating the mother from her infant’ until the mother is no longer considered contagious.”42 In March of 2020, a lot was unknown about covid. But as time passed, the logistics of spreading covid were more clear. Yet, many hospitals maintained draconian covid regulations. There was a very low bar for the evidence that a mother actually had covid. Separation of mother and baby got harder to defend after a full year of covid, two full years, etc.

    “Almost all mothers whose infants are removed at birth for safeguarding reasons experience acute trauma, shame and overwhelming grief.” “They require sensitive, non-judgemental care, attuned to their support needs, that acknowledges their maternal identity and the enormity of their loss.”43

    The time immediately after birth is sacred for mothers and babies. There is likely no more epitome of feminine fragility than a post-birth mother and her tiny baby, both unable to fend for themselves in that moment. A movement that advocates for women ought to have spoken out in that moment, given a voice to the voiceless. It was a time for “I am woman. Hear me roar.” not a deafening silence. It was the peak moment where the sisterhood of women who fully grasp the mysticism and the sanctity and the extreme vulnerability of bringing a new life into the world should have spoken truth to power. Silence is never violence, but it sometimes is complicity. Perhaps here.

    Feminism is about leveling the playing field between men and women. It is not a movement to advocate for the physical safety or the emotional well-being of women. That is not its stated purpose. That is not what it has done, and that is not what it intends to do in the future. Feminism is a political cause, allied with other political causes, like specific covid protocols. The well-being of women comes second, if at all, after political considerations.

    What I will suggest in Part Three is not the dismantling of feminism, but rather, the burgeoning of companion movements to solely advocate for the well-being safety of women, not equality with men specifically, and not allyship with a cluster of progressive causes. There ought to be women’s movements that speak for all women, where every woman can find her voice, where the theory of womanhood is well-articulated, and where the umbrella hasn’t gotten so large that radical and harmful activists are knowingly and consistently allowed to use the label. Movements where invoking the name is policed, and those who manipulate concepts intended to help women in order to hurt women are called out and excluded from the umbrella.

    Part Two, which I will be posting next, is comprised of both Feminism Only For Some Women (three ways) and Women’s Physical Safety Compromised (eleven ways).

    
    Thank you for reading. This was a long one.
    

    Graphs sourced from Hoyert DL. Maternal mortality rates in the United States, 2023. NCHS Health E-Stats. 2025. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15620/cdc/174577.

Here are three of the many possibilities.

First, people close to someone don’t want to see them in an all-absorbing relationship: a husband, a baby, another baby. A friend loses out on time to spend, on possible help.

A single friend whose friend gets married feels even more alone and abandoned. A married friend feels not special anymore.

Second, a woman’s mother wants her daughter to “live her life,” to travel the world, to get the degree her mother never got, to live the life she wishes she had lived. But what mom doesn’t recognize is that having her beloved daughter was better to her than all of the wonderful ideas about how best to live life. Her own daughter is the most important thing in the world to her, yet she advises her daughter not to make efforts to procure the relationship she cherishes most.

To quote Thomas Sowell, from another context, there are no solutions, only trade offs. A daughter “living her life” misses out on the fruits of her mother’s more traditional path. She does not yield both. She can harvest her youth in one way or the other. Mom must bear that in mind as she cheerleads a path quite different from her own.

Third, advising a young woman to “live her life,” to establish her career before having babies, questioning if she is sure that this guy really is the one feels like it’s not a big deal.

The same person who would never dream of telling someone else if and when to have a baby, feeling that that is too personal to interfere with, too heavy handed, can feel very breezy about telling a woman not to have a baby. It is as if scaring a young woman has no impact, as if youth has no natural end, as if finding the love of your life is something that happens every Tuesday. It’s baby fever, eye roll. Perhaps, but also time is finite and fertility is finite, and waiting can mean not having a child at all.

These are tough questions.

It’s hard to understand why putting one’s thumb on the scale is not a very big deal for the advice giver. For the receiver, it is wise to weigh where the advice is coming from--and take it with a grain of salt.

The beauty of multigenerational family requires recognizing each other’s humanity, even when it is obscured by a stage as all-encompassing as the elderly stage.

We need to extend ourselves to get everything we can out of our relationships and out of life.

As people get older, so many things we take for granted are now challenging. Most people at a certain age have some degree of hearing loss. It can be impossible to follow many people talking at once. The most lively and enjoyable entertainment of a gathering is something they are shut out of. Besides the hearing aspects, cultural references and slang can make conversations harder to follow too. But the hearing is generally the main problem. The best idea is for one person to sit where someone older can see their face and read their lips, if necessary, and have a one-on-one conversation.

Getting older brings the potential of loneliness. The ways they know are no longer how it’s done. Friends have often passed on, or are too disoriented to converse with, or are otherwise sick, and at minimum can’t hear each other. People don’t visit as much as they should. Phone calls don’t hit the spot because of the hearing challenge, but also the culture gaps. Sometimes reading has lost its pleasure because of vision issues.

Mobility can be a challenge. Trying to use a car instead of a taller vehicle or SUV can be helpful. Having a bathroom, bedroom, and shower on the ground floor for older guests can be helpful. Tripping hazards are something to look for also. Long car rides or flights can be too much as people get older.

Walking outside by themselves is not always a great idea, with the risk of injury being higher. Companionship on a walk is a lovely idea.

Serving simple and traditional food is better than trendy dishes that younger people like- or, ideally, a mix of both.

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Sensitivity to challenges to people as they get older enriches everyone. Older people have so much to add, and they aren’t older people as a monolith, they are who they were before.

I asked our kids (cheating) (because I needed help with the transcription) what’s special about older people. They said that older people are “wise, have life experience, nice, went through hard things, and are closer to the experience at Sinai (receiving the Torah and becoming the Jewish nation).”

Older people are a treasure- as individuals, as people who have withstood the test of time, as carriers of the Divine Spark.

We enrich ourselves and reinforce our own unconditional worth when we uphold the dignity and the worthiness of our elders.

“Everyone Alive Together”

There’s a time period in your life, and you have to be aware of it before it passes, because I’m realizing that I thought it was the default. But it’s not the default.

It’s the time period in your life when everybody is alive at the same time. It’s the time when maybe you have kids, and your parents are alive, and maybe your grandparents are alive. It’s when all the important people in your life are alive. Oh my G-d.

There needs to be a word for that era in your life. I mean that’s the era you want to preserve in amber. That’s the era you’re always gonna wanna go back to. Now, because I’m naïve and an idiot, I just kind of was like floating by thinking that things were gonna stay the way they were. This year rocked me to my core. I’m realizing oh my G-d, loss is real and I’m realizing that what we really wanna do is take those years when everybody’s alive together and you wanna remember.

And you wanna put your phone down, or you wanna take your phone, and record them just being alive. And just say, “this isn’t for a video, this is just for the future, just for future me.” Because, oh my gosh, it’s precious. Walking into the house, seeing people there, being able to just drop by, if that’s kind of life you have, or even you just being able to pick up the phone and call, having the generations meet and mingle. There needs to be a word for the time in your life when you are still someone’s kid, and you have kids, and your parents are still someone’s kid, and you guys are all still alive. And that is a precious time. I think there’s a book I read it like The Seven Good Years and it was a time when the author’s father and his son were alive at the same time for seven years, was called the good years.

So, whenever you see an older person, you have to know they had the good years and they’re living without those good years and that means they’re automatically tough. Because most of us have not gotten there yet. Most of us have not. Once you get there your heart has to grow a lot to deal with the loss, and that’s why I have a lot of respect for older people because they’ve gone to the other side of the good years.

So, if you’re in the good years right now, I hope you put your phone down and acknowledge it. Look at people in the eye, give a hug. Say “Man, I’m so happy that we get to sit around and do nothing. One day, doing nothing with you is gonna be the thing I wish I could do more than anything else.”

So, go do nothing with people you love. That’s what we’re here for. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. That really is it.

Note:

https://share.google/L1gHhifLrvqPYDDGn The Seven Good Years

“The Seven Good Years is a humorous and poignant memoir by Israeli author Etgar Keret, chronicling the seven years between his son’s birth during a terrorist attack and his father’s death from cancer, framed by the constant threat of war in Israel. Told through a series of witty, absurd, and touching vignettes, the book explores themes of family, mortality, and finding hope amidst darkness, blending personal anecdotes with sharp observations on life in a conflict-ridden country.”

When our big kids were little, I worked hard. Really hard. Having only small children is a lot of work-physically, dragging car seats and strollers and children that go limp (like in Knuffle Bunny), pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum. And the 24 hour-ness of it all.

Our kids used to ask for the same things no matter the day. It was Purim, the most chaotic, music and snack filled day of the year. It was Yom Kippur, the most solemn day of the year when adults fast, there was no difference to them. So there was never a break.

Taking kids out could see anything happen, because no behavior was off limits or too absurd for them to try.

Holidays meant thinking up everything myself and executing it, with the little recipients not really grasping all the work that went into it, or reliably actually wearing the costume, using the flag, or saying the Four Questions.

Now, with older kids, and having done basic child rearing tasks thousands of times, I am a kind of a pretend mom.

We have a one-and-a-half-year-old and a four-year-old so I really still am a mom of littles, but I feel like someone in a graduate school program sent back to re-experience high school. It’s a bit of a joke. But boy, was it hard the first time!

Now, the big kids plan the grand plans. They understand when it’s a holiday, and their younger siblings listen to them far better than they ever listened to me. The littles crave their approval and trust their older siblings’ judgment.

Whatever I say is deemed suspect- too nice, because I am the mother. Anything objectionable- an ulterior motive.

At this point, with our family size, everything that is not an utter catastrophe is a party.

Sushi for supper (a very big treat) is a sushi buffet.

Whatever we wear to an event is what everyone’s wearing.

When we take everyone out (rarely) we look like our own school, and the little ones behave from the peer pressure from the older ones. When I used to look incompetent with two or three kids running circles around me, I now seem like some sort of wizard.

A Purim theme is a gala affair, where even unimaginative costumes get more oomph with bigger numbers. And a baby!

Passover prep involves many hands, not just mine. Back to school sees expert opinions on what shoes everyone is wearing this year.

We get boy sneaker ideas from our nephew who was born nine years after our oldest son.

Everything is different, and mostly better.

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The only thing--a huge one- -that notches a difference between now and then-in the other direction- was that the task of mothering, for example, a 6 year old, a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and a newborn, was immersive. It was an all-included package. I didn’t wonder then about the things I wonder now. I had no time, no bandwidth to spare. And more foundationally, I felt full. I felt like every talent, every strength, every program for self-growth was plugged in where it was needed most. It was an almost total fulfillment, basically always. Which was as good as it sounds, but I didn’t have time to appreciate it, because, obviously.

Each stage has its own joie de vivre to plug into. And there is so much joy in watching the big kids grow to adulthood, while still savoring the sticky little hands that want nothing more than to sit on my lap. 24/7 snuggles available. The life of a mom of young ones.

And it is hard to raise littles. So hard. But that is the joy of it. When your responsibilities lighten, there is room again for an adolescent watching myself from the outside, wondering how I measure up to others. I had some of that while immersed in the care of babies and toddlers, but the tiniest vestige of it.

So it is a joy to pretend to mother in an age where most of it is so easy for me.

But I miss the toil and the focus, the sense of purpose, in doing something truly difficult and truly worthwhile.

What is so hard about being a young mother is that the stakes seem so high. The stakes are high. Motherhood, for many women, is the task we take most pride in over all others. It seems the most impactful, has the furthest reach, is so personal to us-physically, and in terms of amount of time spent, it’s most triggering to our core self, re-activating childhood insecurities.

But mothering after watching some of your children grow up is a lot less about mom’s self, and more about the child. Because you have processed the trauma that mothering triggers (willingly or unwillingly) and likely over identified with your older children, and these children you get to just enjoy.

If the tantrum does not end, that will not end me. If a child misses an assignment or doesn’t have the item they need in school, I feel so bad and I want that never to happen, because I love them, not because my sense of self is on the line.

With a first baby, a woman’s identity- her personhood-feels at stake (I don’t think it really is. But this is how it feels.) Every tantrum is- you or me. For me, as time passed, I learned to wait it out, distract myself. By now, I anticipate the foreseeable ones, and it’s not pleasant, but I don’t feel unsafe.

Our four-year-old took a black permanent marker and wrote his name in lower-case letters with cross outs right under where his name was embroidered on his school backpack. I probably would have found that distressing as a younger mother, but now I think it’s adorable that he can write his name. He hasn’t learned a b c’s in school yet.

Our one-and-a-half year old didn’t want to get out of the van and go back in the house when we got home from somewhere. She just sat down in the grass, refusing to move. She’s so little that it wasn’t a proper tantrum, more like a petite miniature quasi-tantrum. She looked so cute on the grass, I took her picture in her little coat. Then, she smiled. Because she smiles for pictures. (Oh, joy!) I scooped her up and brought her inside.

Don’t it always seem to go, that we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone. 🎶

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Knuffle Bunny https://a.co/d/2FQqF1Y

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I have been driving for thirty years. Which is surprising, because I learned at 18, pretty late. I was afraid to learn to drive, afraid of killing someone, so I only learned half before seminary, didn’t take the test, went to Israel for ten months, came back, learned again, took the test and passed. At that point, I was eighteen.

I am not the greatest driver. Good enough. My parallel parking skills are sufficient. Our first apartment in America was a ‘parallel park or never go home again’ type of situation, so I learned. Since that Corolla, and two minivans later (ten years ago) we got a 12 passenger van, which I adore. I love having that many seats. I do parallel park the huge van. Functionally.

Still, with all that, I am a far cry away from being the Wonder Woman of parallel parking. More like the theory of the “good enough” mother. If I am here, writing this, and not still angling into a tight spot, I won the jackpot of parallel parking--going home.

I don’t cut the dashing figure of a geometric wizard/spatial relationship guru who in a glittering world would teach someone else how to parallel park.

Yet, here I am.

My strength in teaching parallel parking is the use of action verbs.

Angle in. Correct. Inch forward. You really ideally want staccato moves, leaving the empty space in front and in back of you for getting the angle right.

Everyone has their strengths. For me, it’s talking too much. For others, it’s parallel parking. I pray that this child of ours finds theirs, and like everyone else, learns to be “good enough” at everything else.

Yapchik is potato kugel with meat inside it cooked for 12+ hours. The recipe I use calls for 8 to 10 potatoes, peeled; salt and pepper, 4 eggs, and 3 strips of flanken- a fatty type of beef, sometimes with a bone, sometimes without. Standard potato kugel (without meat in it) is typically made of some version of an onion, several peeled potatoes, oil, flour, eggs, salt and pepper. The onion and potatoes are shredded or pulverized, or a combination of both, usually in a food processor, but the traditional way is with a box grater, by hand. Then all of the ingredients are mixed together and baked at a medium high temperature for an hour, the way I make it, other larger recipes call for two hours. An ideal potato kugel is a luscious deep brown on the outside-crispy-and a yellowy white on the inside- soft. A combination of the best of crispy potato chips and melt in your mouth mashed potatoes, warm, filling, stick to your ribs comfort food. Usually it is served hot on Shabbos day when we are not permitted to cook. It is cooked before Shabbos, on Friday afternoon, and put to warm overnight until lunch the next day. The meat flavors seep into the potatoes for an extremely hearty meat and potatoes dish. Even more cozy in the winter. I serve it as the true foundation of a Shabbos lunch.

What about cholent, you say? (Like our little nephew said to me at lunch, “Where’s the cholent? “)

I am sure that everyone does everything differently, but the way I do it is that a regular Shabbos has cholent made by my husband in the standard size crock pot. A medium to large special Shabbos, especially Shabbos on a holiday, calls for yapchik- in 9 inch by 13 inch size pans- sometimes one, most likely two, but also three and sometimes four. (One yapchik, the way I make it, serves roughly 12.) For a simcha Shabbos- bar mitzvah, or even the baby kiddush for our youngest baby girl, we use our huge crockpot (a turkey roaster) and a huge cholent that has a 9 x 13 of potato kugel in it. I would have to look it up, but it can have five kishkas, etc. in the cholent too. It’s caterer style food for a genuinely sizable crowd.

For Shabbos Chanukah, we prepared three yapchiks. (I should have made four, but I think that I mentally made my menu before I invited everyone in my head. In any case, as you will see, that would have made no difference.)

For Friday night dinner, we prepared for 20+ I wanted to make things special, so I added in extra courses to what I normally make.

But lunch was scheduled to be more than double the size of the Friday night meal, so we made all sorts of appetizers- side of salmon with sesame teriyaki sauce, corn flake crumb breaded baked gefilte fish (ground carp, whitefish or pike, mixed with other ingredients and then cooked, traditionally served on Shabbos) with chrain (beets and horseradish condiment used on gefilte fish). Also side dishes like deli roll: sliced pastrami and turkey roll topped with fried onions, wrapped in puff pastry and brushed with a mixture of barbecue sauce and duck sauce, baked till golden brown and flaky. We had homemade cole slaw, a huge salad with tons of romaine lettuce, grape tomatoes, corn kernels, tiny cubes of salami, pumpkin seeds, and hearts of palm, topped with crispy fried onions. Served separately: roasted eggplant, roasted yellow squash and roasted green squash. Also marinated grilled chicken fingers with parsley and slivers of breaded and fried schnitzel.

Three very large braided challahs with sweet crumble, and four sourdough round loaves coated with everything spice. And three small rolls, because I always mean to make extra rolls with a large crowd so that we could make (the blessing of) hamotzi a few times and not have to do it all at once. It takes a lot of waiting to have the whole crowd wash. A full-size birthday cake from the bakery for my husband for Friday night and three mini cakes for the day- one for our nephew and two for two of our sons.

We set the oven on Sabbath mode. Intending it to stay on the entire Shabbos-25 hours. But we couldn’t get it to work. The more we tweaked it, the further it got from our goal of a fully cooked piping hot main on a cold winter Shabbos afternoon. Running out of time, we settled for the best we could do. The best was not great. The oven must have turned itself off a half-hour to one hour after Shabbos started. We tossed ideas back and forth, and even asked a rabbi what to do, and tried to transfer it to someone else’s hot plate. But the heat was too little and the yapchik spoiled. All three pans (I should have made four) done. Garbage.

I kept thinking about all the nonsense that I panic about when hosting. Always, that moment when the terror of not having enough food takes hold of me. The times we put up a huge cholent and I would wake up Shabbos morning, sure that it was burnt. For no reason. And all the various unlikely and irrelevant things I worry about when hosting.

We were just having family. No one to impress. And the point was to spend time together. Hopefully the extras would be enough alone, but if not, people would be hungrier than I intended. But ultimately, everything would be fine.

We served the salmon, the gefilte fish, the cole slaw, the pickles and the roasted vegetables. Everyone was fine. We served the deli roll with two types of chicken and the salad. Everyone was fine.

And, in the end, everything was fine.

We even had a significant amount of salmon left.

It often takes so little to shake me up when hosting. Especially a large crowd.

And this time, I was like. It will be what will be. Panicking is not going to help.

So I didn’t.

We had a beautiful table, set with navy rounded square plates with silver dreidels, and short clear jars of orange-red roses, orange spray roses and yellow spray roses.

It was beautiful.

Everyone survived.

I feel like I got to the top of the mountain. Like I made it.

I host frequently, and pretty large groups, pretty frequently. I have gotten better at a lot of things.

But learning not to panic, even just this once.

I am taking a moment to celebrate an achievement. More than getting it right is keeping it together when you get it wrong.

In feminine tasks, there are few benchmarks that aren’t artificial, few summits to climb, no ribbons to run through at the end of all sorts of marathons. But this, this was a sign to me, that in one tiny aspect, even temporarily, I made it.

The recipe for yapchik, with an alternative spelling.

https://www.kosher.com/recipe/yaptzik-potato-and-meat-kugel-recipe-3659/

I can.

I did.

I finished it already.

They told me that no one would marry me if I went to law school.

They told me that I would lose my feminine side if I went to law school.

They said that you can’t take a semester off from law school to live in Israel and come back and graduate.

They said that you can’t bring a baby to law school.

They said that you can’t graduate from law school spending so much time in a hospital with a sick toddler and pregnant too. I studied for my last final, Transnational Litigation and Dispute Regulation, in the parents lounge overnight while our daughter was inpatient.

They said that you can’t take the bar with a chronically ill developmentally delayed child and a nursing baby and pass.

They said that you can’t have children and not become hyper anxious, micromanaging and unable to relax.

They said that you can’t send children to school with love, you have to force them to school.

They said that you have to be afraid of your babies- afraid to have one, afraid to have another, afraid to make a commitment to them. You have to view your babies as a threat to your personhood. You have to.

They said that if you stay home all day caring for babies and toddlers, your brain will turn to mush. You will be able to talk about nothing but the price of diapers. All of your intellectual curiosity will be extinguished, your ability to analyze, your love of learning- poof, gone.

They said that if you stay at home with children you will be so sad to miss out on adult conversation and all the super fun things adults spend a lot of time trying to get out of doing.

They said that your husband can’t be an intellectual partner if you have a baby. Because babies ruin a marriage, and your brain, and everything in a ten mile radius disintegrates to mush. Like a new soul entering the world somehow resembles a nuclear accident.

They said that you will have no hobbies, no interests outside of your children if you put your children first. But lo and behold I do flower arranging, I visit art museums, a little needlepoint. I painted several years ago.

They said that the only way to mother is to spend every waking moment terrified and obsessed with the possibility of another child. But, no. I love babies.

They said that if after law school you focus solely on your children, you will become a baby machine (like that’s a bad thing, or worse than people think of lawyers).

They said in so many ways that if I don’t cling to my pre-baby self for dear life that I will fade away, that the light will go out of my eyes.

Guess what?

I didn’t listen.

Happy birthday to me.

Dear pre-school staff:

I have sat down to write this letter innumerable times since Mimi’s passing. What your whole school did for our daughter was just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. As I look back on Mimi’s life one of my fondest memories is of her school days.

I went to —— last week and I got there at about 2:45--right around the time I should have been passing —- if I was on the way to pick up Mimi from school. I wished so hard that I could just keep driving towards the school and somehow I could pick her up -in her stroller with the five-point harness fastened.

She would be so happy to see me and she would yell “Ma! Ma!” and point to whatever she had done, or made that day. I would say “Mimi, How was your day?” and M. would help me out by wheeling her stroller to the car and sometimes even putting her stroller in for me.

The day she passed away, on my list to do was to call L. and tell I her not to worry-- that Mimi had missed school the day before and wouldn’t be at school that day- but everything was fine.

A number of stories come to mind.

On the way to bring Mimi to school the day of the pumpkin picking trip, my mother was driving our car, as I had just given birth. We were running late- it was one of the baby’s first outings. A county police car was ahead of us at the light, and as the light turned green the car was slow to start moving again. My mother gave a small honk to remind him that the light was green. The policeman pulled us over and asked what my mother thought she was doing. My mother answered something to the effect of “something stupid.” She then went on to make an impassioned plea to the officer as to how this little girl is going on a class trip and how exciting it is that she has a class trip to go on, and how we must get there. He let us go.

After Mimi came home with her pumpkin, I baked pumpkin muffins with her. She cracked the eggs and emptied out the dry ingredients into the bowl.

I remember you telling me that she took her coat off all by herself—something we thought she couldn’t do—in anticipation of having her nails polished. She was so proud of her polished nails. She would use her left stronger arm to drag out her weaker right one to show (ironically) the underside of her hand as soon as she came home from school.

Thank you L. for the beautiful white nail polish with tiny yellow dots in the shape of a flower.

M.was such a sweet, loving, and caring aide. And last year we were so lucky too! Mz. was so wonderful! Mimi was wearing the earrings Mz. got her the morning she passed away.

You joked with her, you coaxed her to try new things, you reasoned with her, you changed her diapers, no easy feat. You were very creative and found clothes to fit her when she ran out of changes. You found a chair for her that she would fit in and figured out how to modify everything for the tiniest student. You would put her orthotics and her splint on and she would come home wearing them-or at least make it into the car until she demanded that they be taken off. There was such a feeling of validation that I would get from hearing about how you guys had such a hard time changing her diaper, and changing the dressing around her G-tube.

The very fact that she went to school was like the one normal routine in her life- despite her many, many absences. I was afraid that you would give out a “fewest days spent in class before graduation” prize at the graduation.

The presentation at Mimi’s graduation made me cry- the song with the sign language. That was beautiful.

I have every project she made at school, and all of the pictures you printed out of her. You always took the cutest pictures of her- a child and her accomplishments.

I loved how creative you were with children who could do so little (N.) especially the foot prints and hand prints. Mimi would come home with paint under her nails and I couldn’t wait to see what she made.

The turkey got a place of honor at our family’s Thanksgiving/Mimi’s birthday celebration. Everyone oohed and ahed over it. The flowers she made for me as a Mother’s Day present were in a vase, without water of course, on my kitchen table. The Father’s Day project was a real tear jerker. You warned me and you were right. That poem fit the relationship between Mimi and my husband so well. I cannot thank you enough for the beautiful Chanukah projects- so sensitive of you to come up with them. They are so appropriate, and of course, the last work of hers that we have.

The way that every teacher, teacher’s aide, one-on-one aide, and therapist that ever worked with Mimi in your school-and even a therapist who didn’t- came to see us during shiva just further exemplified the caring.

Your school offered hope, reliable medical care, and open arms to children with even the most severe disabilities. With love and compassion, you viewed Mimi as a person with an eye towards her potential.

Each and every one of your staff members should read this letter and feel proud. They could tell anyone who wants to know that this is what they do during the day.

Your school is a school full of hope. I watched the big girls practice ballet at a barre outside their classroom one day. They were dressed in leotards and tutus and ballet slippers and I nearly cried- or maybe I did.

I could trust that medically she was in good hands and have a few minutes to feel like she was taken care of and fulfilling needs that she had- interaction, stimulation, socialization- without me.

The nurses in your school are highly competent, caring and very responsible. They were always trying to come up with new ways to make Mimi more comfortable.

At school Mimi was independent. She interacted with the staff and the students at the school without me there as an interpreter.

Through you, she had a measure of independence. That is what I prize most in her short life and what I am proudest of in my other children.

With all of my specifics, I must have forgotten to mention by name a lot of people- including all of Mimi’s therapists. I apologize. Each and every person was wonderful, and I thank all of you.

I plan on sending a copy of this letter to D., Mimi’s case manager, to thank her for hooking us up with such a great school.

I hope to correspond with you about happy events.

All the Best, Rivka

The birth of our first child was long and drawn out, as first births often are.

My husband and my mother were there for the birth. But after she was born, at 5 pm late on a winter afternoon, my mother-in-law came, my father came, my sisters, my uncles, my grandmother. Almost everyone was able to meet her brand, brand new. My father in law had clients so he had to come the next morning. She was a beautiful baby, with a tuft of white blonde hair and chiseled features. I remember thinking how lucky this baby is to be born into so much love, and how it was a good thing to bring a baby into a world like this.

My mother had shopped the sales, and bought two over-ample wardrobes: one for a boy, one for a girl, ready to keep one when we found out, and return the other.

She left after the birth and came back to the hospital with armfuls of tiny clothes and snowsuits and socks and stretchies.

We had so much stuff that we couldn’t figure out how to leave the hospital.

When I was admitted, the weather was mild. But by the time I was discharged only a few days later, it turned frigid. Finally, my husband piled all of the stuff into the car, heavy blankets, quilted snowsuits, leaving almost nothing in the room. Then we wrestled her into the brand new car seat, our first time as parents.

Her going home outfit was a long sleeve onesie, with an exposed seam mauve fleece snapping cardigan, and mauve fleece tiny overalls with a pocket in the front that had a mini felt doll that went in it, a matching mauve hat with a bubble gum size knot on top, along with beyond tiny terry socks.

We got ready to leave and the nurses were like- you have no blanket, you can’t take her out like that. The car seats didn’t have the infant headrests as part of the setup like they do today, so they rolled up hospital baby blankets to cushion her head, and covered her with some also. Maybe six altogether of oversized, washed-out diamond print hospital baby blankets with drawings of yellow ducks with hats. They swaddled the babies in the hospital, but at that time the receiving blankets they sold weren’t large enough to swaddle a baby with, so you could just think that you were crazy because you couldn’t get it (no YouTube) and not realize that the blankets in the hospital were twice the size. Lucky we were allowed to keep those hospital blankets.

We took her back to my parents’ house. Everyone oohed and ahhed over the little princess and I got a lot of support to get back on my feet.

(I took law exams when she was two weeks old, so it was an intense recovery.)

People tend to think that when someone loses a child, that it wasn’t a real child, a child who was loved, who was worried about, where every detail was important, where a sniffle was a cause for concern.

They assume that children that have tragic stories are somehow a different species, sometimes that their parents are somehow fundamentally exceptional or flawed in some way as well.

But I find no logical basis for that.

Our first child was adored by everyone, cherished, cared for.

There are things bigger than us that we can’t control and we can’t even comprehend.

It’s not a birth story. It’s an attempt to describe a moment in time that I can sometimes access and plug into.

When our third-to-youngest child was born, I was prepared to give birth in a hospital near our home. My midwife at the time delivered out of two hospitals, one closer to our house, and one further away.

When the time came and I called the practice to tell them that I was in active labor, they informed me that the midwife on call threw her back out and that consequently, my only option was to give birth in the further hospital with the covering midwife, who I never met. The covering midwife only had privileges at the further hospital, the midwife on call had privileges at both.

My husband and I went to a hospital I never intended to be at to meet the woman to help me in my birth for the first time.

The midwife was excellent. She said that she knew a way that a laboring woman could squeeze her hand as tight as she wanted without breaking it.

She set me up on the crisp, clean, someone else washes them, hospital sheets in that unnatural hospital quiet, probably more the hum of machines than actual quiet, and she gave me a darkest purple vinyl inflated peanut with horizontal indented lines to put between my knees as I lay on my side.

She said, “We will just wait for the baby to come down.”

There is this moment, when I would find myself inside a hospital room after going to the hospital in labor, or under strict orders (I haggled over to delay) to be induced, where I would settle with my husband and my suitcase and my pillow in the dark grey pillow case with black oversized abstract flowers, where I would think, I sit here now in the quiet, but between me and leaving this incredibly unnaturally quiet and calm room, there is noise and tension and fear and messiness and quite a bit of pain. Such a strange feeling.

So in this instance, my labor had progressed, I got an epidural, and this time, the only time, I experienced full relief of pain. Usually, the pain pokes through, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, sometimes so much I don’t know why I bothered sitting through a long needle in my back that requires sitting perfectly still, squeezing a pillow, through a contraction.

I lay there, shedding the discomfort and anxiety of the ninth month, basking in relief. I expected pain, I expected an impossible pressure to speed things forward, the pressure to push when I felt like I can’t, the general pressure of so many people standing around waiting for something to happen that I can’t make happen any faster. The fear, the pain, the anxiety.

None of it.

We just waited.

Calm, quiet, evenness.

The baby will come down by itself.

I try to channel that feeling sometimes. That feeling that everything will be ok. The feeling that the best outcome is inevitable, that just being calm and patient and waiting and open will bring every good that G-d is willing to provide.

The post script is that a while later, a beautiful baby girl was born. It was one of my hardest deliveries and a more complicated recovery, but that moment of feeling that everything will be ok, that everything is taken care of, carried me through the birth, the recovery and still grounds me today, six years later, when I think of it.

Today’s feminism is men-centered women’s pseudo-empowerment.

Modern day feminism says, “Why can’t I be a man? Why do men always have more fun?”

It’s an obsession with masculinity, not a deep sense of fulfillment with womanhood.

Hence the term “mental load.” My husband doesn’t do enough.

In my philosophy, uniquely feminine contributions to running a family, to crafting the foundations of emotional stability for humanity, for filling the cracks in human development with love, would be a matter of pride.

Hard work? Yes.

Fulfilling? Yes.

Indispensable? Yes.

Women’s work.

In Judaism, we say that the woman is the cornerstone of the home, the mainstay of the house. Akeres habayis.

A woman makes a house a home.

A woman is the glue that keeps a family together.

If, as a woman, your eye is on the woman, you see women’s work. Muscles aching, sweat dripping, glorious accomplishments.

If all you see is the man, it’s a mental load, a burden yearning to shift to someone else’s shoulders.

“He ain’t heavy, Father. He’s my brother.1”

Those iconic words have symbolized the spirit of Boys Town for decades. But many people don’t know how it originated.

In 1918, a young boy suffering from polio had to be regularly carried up and down the stairs at Boys Town. Father Flanagan asked one of the older boys if carrying the young boys was difficult. He responded, “He ain’t heavy, Father. He’s my brother.”

The boy on his back didn’t not seem heavy because the boy was technically weightless. It wasn’t because carrying a person on one’s back isn’t exhausting. It wasn’t that he was eating bonbons. It’s because when you recognize the Divine spark in a fellow human being, caring for that person isn’t a burden and it isn’t a load. It’s a labor of love.

The load of caring for the ones we love isn’t easy, and, like anything, if we do one thing, we can’t do another. But if we do it out of love, it isn’t heavy.

I love making supper for my family. I love handing a child a warm towel straight out of the dryer before a bath. Appreciation for my efforts is a requirement for decency. I don’t mind some help, or someone to take over from time to time. Children growing up and taking care of themselves and helping out with communal chores is a wonderful development. A husband’s help is both necessary and appreciated.

If I am proud and happy to be a woman, my focus is not on how much a man does, it is on how much I do, what a fabulous job I do, how I spread love, how I spread G-d’s light.

My load isn’t a load, it’s a skilled task I execute with excellence. It’s a conduit for the overwhelming and unconditional love I have for my family.

Instead of a burden, it’s a privilege.