Listening to Kate Moore

The other day I had the pleasure of attending a program featuring author Kate Moore by zoom. My local library had a program in which Moore spoke to us about her book – The Woman They Could Not Silence (2021).

 Perhaps you have heard about this book. It focuses on the story of Elizabeth Packard, a woman who was institutionalized by her husband in 1860. Why was she institutionalized? Well, Elizabeth decided she had opinions as worthy as her husband’s. And she openly disagreed with him after twenty-one years of marriage. Despite the fact that she was the mother to six children who were all well turned out, managed the household perfectly, and was renowned for her gardening skills, her husband was able to get a doctor to say she needed to be hospitalized.

He set up rounds of gossip, purposely abandoned their marital bed, and found doctors who would rubberstamp the papers to have her put away in a mental institution in Jacksonville, Illinois. And because of the laws of the day, Elizabeth could not fight it. She was her husband’s property and he held all the cards.

That did not stop Elizabeth.

While in the hospital, she began to keep a journal using stolen paper and rags along with pencil nubs and pens she happened to acquire. She was able to hide these in her things. She found many of her cellmates were women like her, wives of men with power who had no more use for their wives and had them sent to Jacksonville. When Elizabeth pushed too much for her release or improvements within the hospital, she was sent from the ‘nice’ ward to the one that was cots in a large room.

So how did Elizabeth react?

She began by treating these women with dignity and helped clean them and the ward. She treated both staff , who were overworked, and her fellow inmates as if they were people.

Eventually her son was able to get her out. Still her husband found ways to demean her by selling their Manteno home and keeping her children away from her. But that didn’t stop Elizabeth. She wrote about her experience, convinced people to support her efforts to publish her work. And then she lobbied law makers to change laws so other women would not be treated as she had been. She never stopped using her voice, becoming wealthy in the process. And that wealth allowed her to get her children back.

Moore stated she was inspired by the “Me, Too” movement in 2015 and wanted to find a woman who prevailed while telling her truth. That when faced with obstacles, this woman had succeeded. During her search, she found Elizabeth briefly mentioned. With a little digging, Moore found Elizabeth’s books that had been digitized. The more she read, Moore knew this was the woman she wanted to write about.

Packard’s story resonates today as we see women’s rights being whittled away once more. Abortions rights depend on what state you live in. Some politicians want a nation-wide abortion ban after stating it should be the States that determine if they want abortions to be legal or not. Once Arizona took these politicians at their word, allowing an 1860 law banning abortion to be the law, suddenly top national and state Republican candidates are backing off a total ban.

Since Roe was overturned, women are having difficulty getting care should they have a problem pregnancy. Young women cannot have a miscarriage these days without being considered a criminal. Doctors in the wrong state won’t give them treatment until these women bleed out a little too much for fear of being prosecuted. Women with problem pregnancies and/or a dead fetus are expected to carry these pregnancies, even if it cost them their fertility or life.

Why does having a failed pregnancy, many times a wanted pregnancy, make women criminals?

 Elizabeth Packard did not live long enough to vote. But I feel she would have used her voice at the ballot box. She would have told us to fight to keep control of our bodies, of our healthcare. That no man, no law, should be in charge of your body and your access to healthcare.

Take Elizabeth’s lessons to heart. Go in that booth and vote. Vote for people who will protect your right to healthcare, your right to birth control. Vote for your best interest so that one day, when you might be facing one of the worst nightmares of having a wanted pregnancy go haywire, that you can get the needed healthcare without having to go to court to get it.

If not for yourself, then do it for the generations of women in your family who may need healthcare in the future.

God Bless The Old America!

Image from Facebook

 

I saw this meme on Facebook this morning. So nice, so nostalgic.

But I am trying to figure out which America this person is missing because there are parts of America that I never want to see again.

Which ones you ask?

Well, there is that part that thought it was OK for women to not be educated, to only run a house, raise kids, and take care of the husband. Women were not expected to have money, jobs, credit ratings, mortgages, or enough education to have a job/career to pay for all of the above in case the husband died or ran off.

Which leads to my other favorite part of America. The one that said it was OK to beat the crap out of your wife and/or children. Police, neighbors, friends, and family would look the other way if they knew that a woman was getting beat up on a regular basis. After all, she just fell down the stairs or ran into a door or something like that.

Now that makes me thing about the shame of sexual abuse. If a family member or friend or priest was abusing your kids, it was a shameful secret for the victim. It would take years of education for our society to realize that rape – no matter what – is wrong. Even so, we still like to think it is the victim’s fault.

Another old part of America I do not miss? Racism that lead to lynching and beat downs of black men who did something wrong such as look at a white woman, speak out against racism, become a little bit more than what was expected. Combine that with the mean and hateful behavior of separate schools, water fountains, and inability to sit at a luncheon counter. This was a happy place to live?

Am I saying our country is perfect now?

No way because we have some serious problems. There are shootings all over the place that are killing innocent kids. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you because it is not happening in your neighborhood or city but it is happening. Who needs car bombing in the market square when there are shootings every week?

We have veterans not getting the medical care or assistance from various programs by the government for no other reason than our politicians voted against them in Washington. Must be nice to be able to say ‘thank you for your service’ right before denying the VA more money to give healthcare to those vets. Could that be the reason why there are waiting lists at VA hospitals across the country?

We need some public works programs to get people back to work. Bridges and roads and public buildings need repair. Find that money to do  rebuilding because these projects will help the country more than anything else. Guys working on a new bridge bring that money home to their families which then get spent at stores and gas stations and on mortgages.

So now, look at that picture once again. Write in the comment section what parts of America do you miss and what you would change about now because we have a lot of fixing to do, some of it is left over baggage. I wonder if each of us picked a project to get a group of friends to work on, what would get accomplished?

Image from Facebook