Why do we have to keep dredging up women’s history? Why do we need all of March to talk about it? I mean, that was then, this is now. Can’t we just move on? After all, we’ve got Hillary. We’ve got Nancy. We win Olympic medals. Women make history all the time.

Yes, but we still have a couple of thousand years of male-dominated history to balance.

Thirty years ago a group of women in Sonoma County (Ca.) started doing the research on “where were the women?” and strove to do no less than rewrite, edit and fill in the blanks in history books. The Sonoma County Women’s History Project blossomed into the national women’s history project and March became women’s history month, recognized in all states.

One founder of the Women’s History Project was the late Mary Ruthsdotter of Sebastopol. Mary died this winter and her memorial was fittingly postponed until March. Mary sure knew her history. She would talk about the gutsy women of the past like old friends she’d just had over for coffee.

One she described as “totally cool” was Jeannette Rankin from Montana, the first woman elected to Congress and who dared to vote against America entering World War I. “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake,” said Rankin – suffragist, peace activist and Republican.

Bay Area filmmaker Louise Vance claims Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the women’s right philosopher and organizer, for her favorite. She tells the story of Stanton growing up and hearing her father, a judge, tell women that they couldn’t leave abusive husbands. Even if they were beaten and ran away, the law said they should be recaptured and returned to the husband. And so, said Vance, “She vowed to tear out all the pages in her father’s law books that made women cry.”
(Stanton also edited out the “obey” part in her own wedding vows in 1840.)

Vance has made a film called “Seneca Falls” that will launch on PBS television stations across the country in March. It’s about America’s first women’s rights convention in 1848, a huge public protest by Stanton and other radicals demanding that women be freed from their social, political and legal slavery. It’s barely mentioned in history books.

When Vance field-tested the film last year she showed it to junior high and high school girls in Ohio. They were angered by it, said Vance. “They said they had never spent one minute on women’s history.” Same thing happened when she showed it to a group of high school girls in San Francisco.

It’s because what women were doing then wasn’t valued enough to be written down. Getting the vote was a huge story but there was a lot more going on in terms of women’s rights. “How about the fact that it was once legal in some states to whip your wife,” said Vance.

What about women not being able to inherit property? And not being allowed to go to college?
Mary Ruthsdotter’s grandmother told her, “Some men used to think women belonged to them like their cows and pigs.”

So, yeah we have to keep acknowledging our history. And writing it down.

Vance has another idea. She wants to find a legislator who will push for a national bill mandating that women’s history be taught in all public schools. Imagine the squeals and growls over that idea from those who still haven’t learned how to share.

Photo of Jeannette Rankin

The proposed ban on covering abortion, part of the House health care reform bill, has drawn predictable reaction. But one of the most dismaying responses is from those who think it won’t really happen. I understand hoping and wishing that that is the case but that’s not how the anti-choice people work. They think they have conquered the House of Representatives. Now, on to the Senate.

Each restriction on abortion, and this would be a big one, is one step closer to making abortion illegal. And then it’s Tijuana, here we come. Right back to where we started from.

“You never know when unintended pregnancy will strike. Be prepared. Buy our abortion plan today.”

Were Congress to somehow boot the Stupak anti-abortion amendment from a final health care delivery plan, which would be a great relief, do we really think the anti-choice crowd will shrug and slink away? Look how much they’ve already won. They managed to hijack the health care debate and turn it into an abortion battle. They interrupted a complicated national conversation on how to provide health care to all Americans including the millions without health insurance and put the focus on their single cause.

Opponents of abortion said, “You want choice? Here’s your choice.” And then they had their way with a Democrat-controlled House over the objection of its Speaker, who also happens to be a pro-choice mother and grandmother.

The Stupak amendment will apply to only those women who buy health insurance in a government subsidized insurance plan, but why are these women expendable? Plus, their numbers are just going to grow as people change or lose jobs and employers dump their group coverage. Some day there might be no insurance coverage at all for abortion and what would that mean to the hospitals, clinics and doctors who provide them? Would they disappear too? And then?

We know that one. The rich would find a way to get abortions, and low and middle income women would be stuck. And on their way to Tijuana.

You call that health care reform? No, it sounds more like a triumph for the Catholic bishops, the radical religious right, the good old boys in Washington and your basic patriarchal rule.

Of course there is a provision that a woman could buy a separate insurance rider to cover abortion, like you can add earthquake coverage to your basic home and property insurance. And how might that advertisement be written? “You never know when unintended pregnancy will strike. Be prepared. Buy our abortion plan today.”

Maybe the anti-abortion amendment was a ruse to temporarily placate abortion foes. Maybe fair and equitable thinking will prevail.

Then again, people said California would never vote against gay marriage.

I put in a call to Mr. Republican. That would be my late father, V. Paul, or Victor Paul. I’d like him to sit in his chair in my living room and talk politics. The wingback’s been in the family for three generations and what he was sitting in when he died of a heart attack while watching the Today show more than 20 years ago in Pennsylvania.

I’m ready for a talk with a life-long proud member of the GOP. V. Paul loved being a Republican and gave me an “I Like Ike” pin when I was little. I sure did like my dad so I wore the pin although it didn’t turn me into a Republican.

I wonder if my dad and Ike know that Susan Eisenhower, the late president’s Republican granddaughter campaigned for Obama. She worried that the political environment was being taken over by angry, noisy extremists. That was over a year ago, in a relatively civilized time before town meetings, Washington marches and presidential addresses turned into a hate-it, hate-him blood sport.

(Speaking of mood swings, I can’t believe it was only this spring I wrote about Americans becoming less rancorous. Boy, did my inner Pollyanna speak too soon.)

But back to V. Paul. I’d liked to ask my dad why he thinks other rational, smart and compassionate Republicans like himself would allow gun-toting fear-mongers to take over their party and foul its legacy. I know there are radicals on both sides but where’s the conservative balance?

Are there no Republicans who cringe when they see this craziness being committed in their name?

I think back to last October when John McCain stood up to the screamers in Minnesota to reassure a woman that Obama was a decent family man and there was no reason to fear him. It reminded me why even some Democrats once thought McCain might make a good president. But the crowd booed McCain. They didn’t want to hear any respectful words about Obama, and that seemed to end it for any high profile Republican daring to set a gracious example.

Too bad. It’s a fine American tradition to disagree. My dad and I used to argue each other’s ideas at the dinner table until he’d finally declare a halt, saying “We’re upsetting your mother.”

I don’t want to demonize Republicans. I don’t want to stereotype them as the No Party. But I don’t get why they give a pass to the rowdy, rude and sometimes racist crowd who seem bent on scaring America.

I don’t believe that all Republicans are out to punish the poor and immigrants and think anyone who needs government help is a deadbeat. But why are there no leaders telling their people to keep it civil and if they want respect to leave the damn guns at home?

My dad and I would certainly disagree over the government taking on health care for all. One of his first jobs was selling insurance in Pittsburgh. The first time I ever heard the term “socialized medicine” was from him. As for Afghanistan and Iraq, it would be the same arguments we had over Vietnam.

But V. Paul argued in a rational, educated way. He didn’t care for coarse vulgar people.
He’d think anyone shouting “you lie” to the president of the United States was pretty much a jackass.

My dad believed that America was the greatest country and the Republican party truly grand but I’d love to know, from his vantage point, if he still thinks that.

Sit down, Dad. We need some help down here.