A Woman's Worth
  by Janet Brazill

The space shuttle landing was beautiful! With the world watching, Commander Eileen Collins brought the shuttle's journey to a perfect end. After a trip fraught with worry over repeating the Columbia's doomed flight, this female coolly and competently did her job.

Even chauvinist males had to admit that this woman performed every bit as well at this difficult task as a man would have done. Her performance was a glorious testament to the fact that given equal education and equal opportunity, modern women can contribute equally well to life in the modern world.

Young women need to realize that it was not always so. In fact, it has been only in the last half of the last century that women have been able to enter careers of their choosing. This journey has been a lengthy struggle against the perceptions of patriarchal religions that women were destined for only one purpose. As Martin Luther stated: Women "should remain at home, …bear and bring up children. If a woman… dies from childbearing, it matters not… she is there to do it." Modern evangelicals still preach that a "woman's place" is in the home.

It is up to today's young women to continue the fight so that the opportunities finally available to modern women are not lost by the resurgence of oppressive religious beliefs. This is already happening in Afghanistan where the Taliban brand of harsh religious fanaticism has returned in many areas to deprive women of an education, forcing their dependence on male members of the household. Women are hidden away in their homes, or totally obscured by garments when in public.

It is happening in Iraq, where the latest draft of the new Iraq constitution would let religious authorities curtail the rights women have enjoyed since 1959. Women were freer under Saddam Hussein's tyranny than their neighbors in Iran or Saudi Arabia where clerics set the laws. They had been among the best educated in the Middle East, but now 35 percent of Iraq's girls are dropping out of school as Muslim clerics gain power there, threatening to return women to the restrictions of Islamic law.

It is even happening in our own country in insidious ways. Education is imperiled by religious leaders' attacks on public schools, but perhaps more important for modern Americans is the assault on women's reproductive independence. The 20th Century saw a long struggle against religious forces who opposed the use of birth control. It was only in 1965 that the Supreme Court's Connecticut vs. Griswold decision gave married women the right to use contraceptives. Single women did not gain that right until two years later. Prior to this, Margaret Sanger and other crusaders were jailed for their efforts to better the lives of American women by giving them the ability to plan and space their families.

But now the newfound political influence of birth control opponents threatens this hard-won freedom. Perverted sex-education promotes ignorance. Catholic legislators deny rape victims the use of emergency contraception to prevent pregnancies. Some insurance companies refuse to cover contraceptives and religious pharmacists refuse to dispense them.

A comprehensive education, coupled with the ability to control their reproductive functions, has given modern women the power to become whatever they want, to achieve whatever they dream. Religions must not be allowed to destroy this.
 
 

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