Sunday Reflections: I’m Just a Mother Wanting Her Daughters to Have More Rights Than I Did, Not Less

March is Women’s History Month, a thing I have been reflecting on a lot as both a woman and the mother to two daughters. As a woman, I have never taken my rights for granted. During elections, I have bundled my girls up in the freezing snow when they were young to go and vote. The first time my oldest can remember voting, we voted for Obama. I remember that sense of hope as he won. A few weeks later, I gave birth to my second daughter.

Here we are now, in the year 2025, and we have a political party who is actively trying to take my daughters rights away. In Project 2025, conservatives highlight things like putting women back into their “traditional roles”, as of course determined by them. Several Republican candidates and talking heads have floated things like taking away a woman’s right to vote, something which the SAVE Act just might do. I recently texted both of my daughters with the plea to please never get married, and if you do get married, don’t change your last name. And I said this as a happily married woman to a man of 30 years and I did take his last name. But I never thought about how someone could use that against women in the future. Changing your name upon marriage isn’t just a lot of work, now it can bring political hurdles we never thought about.

Both of my daughters take a variety of medications to help with things like endometriosis and anxiety. These are life sustaining medications that help them deal with a variety of very real health symptoms. Current leadership talks about wanting to outlaw birth control and take away SSRIs, medication types that are prescribed for a variety of mental health issues, including anxiety. A man who is not a doctor and has admitted to having part of his brain eaten by a worm is now in the position to direct our health choices, and he’s coming after long established medical aids like vaccines and SSRIs. A person’s ability to make their own personal health decisions is a fundamental right; and although I have long been aware that there are portions of our society who hate women and view them as lesser humans who should be subservient to their husbands, and I am aware that there has been a stunning surge of misogyny since the election, I am appalled that we find ourselves having to defend basic freedoms to the party who fought against mask mandates under the guise of personal freedom just a few short years ago. But when misogynists talk about freedom, they are never talking about women’s freedom, just as when racists talk about freedom, they are only talking about the freedom of white people, and they often mean rich white men here.

When I began hearing about the Project 2025 outline for women’s rights, I began campaigning hard for my daughter’s rights. I remember speaking to a friend, a male friend, who said they wouldn’t take rights away. This was after Roe v. Wade had been reversed, a point which I made. But I also remembered seeing an image like the one below of women in Afghanistan prior to the 1970s and afterwards:

Even though we call them rights, the reality is they can be taken away. Women are not the only group of peoples fighting hard to retain long fought for rights under Project 2025. The LGBTQ+ community, Blacks, Latino, and disability rights advocates – just to name a few – have been and continue to raise the alarm of how Project 2025 assaults and rescinds hard won rights.

My oldest daughter is about to graduate from college with a degree in science. She is wicked smart, hard working, and honestly one of my favorite people. With the dual attack on science and women’s rights, I find myself awake at nights often fearing what kind of future current policy makers have for her. And I’m not going to lie, I’m angry. I’m angry that a man found credibly liable of sexual assault has just arranged for the return of two other men held in Romania for human sex trafficking as he also works to make the world less safe for my daughters while taking away their rights.

When I found out I was pregnant with my first child, it was a surprise. And I remember clearly the ultrasound where they told me that child was a girl; I turned my head away and cried softly. When my husband asked me why, I looked at him and said, “this world is very hard for girls, and I cry because I hope it will not be so for her.” The truth is, right now, a lot of people are trying to make it even harder for her. And that super, smart, confident kid of mine, she knows. And she’s scared. Those conversations I have with her are some of the hardest conversations I have ever had to have as a mom.

The only thing I have ever wanted for my daughters was for them to have a better world, a safer world, with more rights that I ever had – not less. I will fight tooth and nail to make that happen. I love these two girls of mine more than anything, I will do everything I can to protect them. I am thankful for every woman in history before more that fought for their rights; and to honor their memory and sacrifice, I will continue that fight.

Sunday Reflections are a weekend opinion column in which Karen talks about her personal fears, worries, triumphs and more. They do not represent the views of all TLTers, SLJ or my day time employer. This is a personal blog, and I often get personal.

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