Women’s rights

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Tomorrow is a VERY important midterm. It’s Roevember. And people are on ballots across the country who are election deniers. This midterm is crucial to democracy. Vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote vote

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The Climate Crisis as Seen in the New Mexico Fires…And a couple ideas about what to do about the Climate Crisis

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My home state of New Mexico has been on fire. Evacuations took place. Some of the fires are getting contained but this should remind us how hard we need to fight the climate crisis.

Fires of this tremendous magnitude will become more and more common as the climate crisis rages on.

We’ve got to wake up to this reality and start fighting the climate crisis like our lives depend on it. And indeed they do.

One step I am working on to reduce my own carbon footprint is to divest from Wells Fargo bank. I’m planning on taking my money out of Wells Fargo because they continue to fund fossil fuel projects. I plan to instead put my money into a credit union that funds our community. I’ve opened up an account at one, now I just need to move my money into it. It’s a work in progress.

As mentioned in an article titled “The long-shot campaign to get big banks out of fossil fuels” by Vox written in April of 2022, “Big banks are indeed continuing to fund fossil fuel expansion: Last year alone, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America spent a combined $137 billion on fossil fuel projects, according to a report from a coalition of environmental advocacy groups..”

We need to put pressure on companies such as big banks to stop investing in fossil fuels and instead invest in wind and solar energy.

I’m also looking into how to make my energy come strictly from solar and wind resources. I’m a renter, so I can’t put solar panels on my roof. But I get energy from Xcel, and they appear to have an opt-in program where you can request energy from just solar and wind. I’m looking into this, as this is also a work in progress…

These, of course are small steps. What we truly need is a Green New Deal, to immediately get off fossil fuels and demand corporations pay for the damage they’ve done and change their ways.

Another important aspect of reducing the climate crisis, and one that is not talked about a lot, but which is one of the most important aspects, is allowing people to control their own bodies. Comprehensive sex education and access to contraception is vital to a healthy planet. And when accidents happen and pregnancy somehow happens, it is important to allow people the right to choose whether or not to carry that pregnancy to term. Overpopulation is arguably the largest component fueling the climate crisis. If forced birthers get their way, abortion will become illegal in many states. Forcing people to carry pregnancies to term and to procreate, when they don’t want to, fuels overpopulation. If people want to bring life into the world, that is beautiful and that is their human right. But if they choose not to do so, that is also valid and also their human right. It is important to allow people to make the choice to avoid creating life if they want to, which in turn helps reduce the amount of people on the planet consuming fossil fuels and environmental resources. Forcing more people onto the planet through women and men who don’t want to be parents is morally wrong.

All in all, I do believe we have the power to sustain a healthy planet and to curb the crisis. But time is running out. We have to fight and push corporations and politicians to do the right thing. Or else fires, hurricanes, and other man-made natural disasters will continue to decimate our people, our wildlife and our planet. We are already on track to making the planet uninhabitable: We must fight hard to make sure we do what we can.

The Prodigal Uterus

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With the amount of misinformation that is spread about the female body and with forced birthers in the Supreme Court gearing up to get rid of Roe v Wade, I’d like to share some excerpts from the book “Woman: An Intimate Geography.” By Natalie Angier the Pulitzer Prize winning writer and science journalist.

For centuries, the female body has been (often intentionally) clouded in mystery. Hippocrates’ fundamental mistakes in understanding of the female body dictated scientific and medical (mis)understanding of it for years and years. But now, much more is understood. Just for the sake of it, let’s delve into some fun facts and explorations of the female body’s unique internal features, particularly the uterus.

The non-pregnant uterus is about the size of a child’s fist. The ovaries are the size of a strawberry. The clitoris is a complex network, and is like an iceberg in the sense that there is much more below the surface than you can see. (The full anatomy of the clitoris was only “discovered” in 1998.)

In her chapter titled “the Prodigal Uterus” Angier writes, “The war of the womb continues to this day. One of our most bellicose and indefatigable of issues, the abortion debate, distilled to a question of who owns the uterus, woman or fetus (or fetal proxy such as the church or state.)”

“The womb does not define a woman, philosophically, biologically, or even etymologically. A woman does not need to be born with a uterus to be a woman, nor does she have to keep her uterus to remain a woman. We don’t want to fall into the trap of womb-worship, or hope that men suffer from womb envy…Having said all of that, I argue that the uterus was and is a magnificent invention, a revolution in physiology…”

“More recently, the uterus has emerged as a maker as well as a taker. Yes, it responds to steroid hormones from ovaries and other organs, but it also expresses hormones and releases them into the global marketplace of the body. It makes proteins, sugars, and fats… the uterus also fabricates drugs that in other contexts would be illegal. It synthesizes and secretes beta-endorphins and dynorphins, two of the body’s natural opiates and chemical cousins to morphine and heroin.”

“[The uterus] makes anandamide, a molecule almost identical to the active ingredients in marijuana. Until recently, these compounds were thought to be exclusive property of the central nervous system- the brain and spinal cord…The uterus produces at least as much opiate material as neural tissue does, and makes ten times more of the cannabis equivalent than any other organ of the body does.”

In other words, the uterus secretes feel good chemicals and hormones, just like the brain does. How amazing is that?

I haven’t entirely decided what my purpose or my argument in this blog post is other than to exemplify the incredible nature of the female body and to state unequivocally that woman/person with the womb, owns the womb. There is still so much that is unknown about the female body, but at its very simplistic form, woman/ person with the womb, owns the womb. The uterus serves a purpose beyond growing life. It secretes chemicals that are necessary to the well-being of the woman/person with it. We own our wombs. We own our reproduction AND our decision to avoid it. It is a nature-given gift and burden. Let it continue to be our decision to make.