A Good Place To Begin

ACCORDING TO A SURVEY conducted online by MSN and including about a million people, sixty percent believe that over the counter birth control should be available. Most of the voters were american, but many were from around the world. What percentge of the respondants were women is unclear... Bill gates made a lotta phone calls.

What does this say about the will of the people, to use that age old phrase? Perhaps it says that the way of the future is freedom, freedom of the individual, or rather, individual self control, rather than control by government, corporation, or church.

For women there is no easily available birth control anywhere in the world. Why not? Because women have no power anywhere in the world? Are the traditional power structures, mainly consisting of men, usually small groups of wealthy/powerful men, afraid to give this freedom to women?

So where should the change begin, whence should the revolution proceed? Among the poor nations and peoples of the world? The workers? Gays, ethnic minorities, religious independents? Take your pick. The forms of human suppression are many. But maybe a good place to begin is with women, and their reproductive right, their right to decide for themselves when to give birth.

It is a large, potentially powerful group of oppressed people, struggling for a very basic, fundamental right which has long, too long, been  denied them. A good place to begin the fight for an end to oppression, worldwide. A good place to begin the great global crusade for human dignity, human rights, human equality.