Alissa

Ours has always been a male-driven society, and women, for far too long, have been controlled by a patriarchy all too willing to maintain its dominance. But strong and visionary women have fought long and hard to secure fundamental rights for women in our society, vastly improving the well-being not only of women, but of children, society as a whole, and even men themselves.

We are now embroiled in a national debate pitting women’s freedom and rights against so-called religious liberty. While our society must protect the freedom of all individuals to hold their own religious beliefs, we cannot allow those beliefs to limit or eradicate the basic human rights of any individual, male or female. The willingness of our political and religious leaders to do just that for the sake of political expediency demands that women take notice and stop being polite – it is time women got seriously fed up with our society’s willingness to throw them under the bus and start making some serious demands for the respect we so deserve.

According to the nonprofit sexual health research organization the Guttmacher Institute, 99% of sexually active American women have, at some point, used birth control – including 98% of Catholic women who have done so in violation of their religion’s official church doctrine[i]. It is important to keep in mind, however, that this violation is of man-made rules only – and by “man-made,” I ...