During the past few years, one of my hobbies has been researching my family and my husband’s family history. I have been particularly interested in female ancestors and imagined what it would have been like to live at a time without the right to vote, speak openly and freely, pursue a career outside the home and have a choice for reproductive rights. From reading the history of our country, I calculate that these rights for women actually started in 1920 when women were given the right to vote.

Currently, both well-meaning pro-life and pro-choice groups are rallying and debating a woman’s reproductive rights. While doing my genealogy research, I learned that many female ancestors died while giving birth. I have found medical records for some verifying this as cause of death. I have visited many cemeteries to see numerous graves of both family and non-family young women and babies.

Some of my questions are: Was it God’s purpose that women risk dying giving birth when we were not as advanced medically? Why were men able to remarry and live full lives fathering more children? Why are so many men rallying when they have never experienced menstruation or childbirth? Why are so many women willing to turn back the clock?

Patrinka Baccus

Sheffield