Here’s an idea. Make members of Congress carry around an egg like sex ed teachers assign teenagers to sensitize them to the awesome responsibility of pregnancy. Have them stuff a bag of flour under their pin striped fronts which will grow harder to button day by day. Somehow come up with a way to simulate the physical siege on the body during labor and delivery.

Or, how about this? Have them happily knitting booties, suddenly miscarry and then be hauled off by the uterus police to prove it wasn’t an abortion.

Pregnancy drag – for the men who can’t be women but are obsessed with controlling women’s bodies. I know my ideas are ludicrous but so are some of the efforts by right wing leaders in what is now aptly called their “War on Women.”

The notion of the uterus police came up when Georgia legislator Bobby Franklin called for the state to investigate women who miscarry to prove it was God’s doing and not their own and a doctor’s. This reminded me of that classic thriller The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood which is worth re-reading, if only for the plot summary. The U.S. is taken over by religious, racist, misogynist fanatics who eliminate all rights for women. Women have one of two roles, baby makers or wives, decided by the rich men in power. Women are not allowed to hold jobs, read books or have any money of their own.

When Atwood’s book came out in the mid 1980s it was called a “feminist’s nightmare.” Now it might be called a conservative legislator’s wet dream. I’m sorry that sounds crude. But there are creepy, scary people making unwelcome moves on women’s bodies.

Maybe we need to stop being so ladylike and thinking “those silly, reckless boys, what will they do next?”

They’re going after reproductive choice and Planned Parenthood. They’d cut funding for prenatal care, breast exams and other cancer screenings, take away nutritional supplements for babies and do away with teen pregnancy prevention programs. Maryland officials would axe Head Start, which benefits working families, on the grounds that women should stay home with their children. Speaker John Boehner calls barring federal funding for abortion his highest priority.

Is this a war or a jihad? A blogger on the Vibrant Nation website, noting the current trend of women-bashing and legislating, said she’s started listing “all the good things about wearing a burqua–just in case.”

I look at the posters for International Women’s Day with those beautiful strong faces of determined, hopeful women who struggle so hard to achieve what we have long taken for granted – the ability to plan our families, get a healthy start for our babies. Are they looking at us now, wondering what’s happening?

When are we going to push back? Where are our marches? I take heart that we are of common purpose, no matter our politics or agenda. Consider the two Republican women from Wyoming, state legislators Sue Wallis and Lisa Shepperson who publicly went against the boys to say they refused to support any government meddling in what a woman and her doctor decide, including abortion.

We have come so far. We have much to lose, including the admiration and trust of women around the world. If we don’t stand together we’ll get the nightmare we deserve. And the others will just dream on.

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