Not My Property is a campaign dedicated to empowering women to take back ownership of their own bodies and health. Our governments – federal, state, and local -- have imposed laws and restrictions that take away our control over our health and our lives. We don’t need to stand for this anymore. From this point on WE will demand that our health and our lives become our property once again – when our policymakers want to make laws that diminish our autonomy, our health, and our moral authority, we will speak out.
When the government makes decisions regarding our health and our lives, they imply that we are incapable of making those rational decisions on our own. In order to keep us in line, our governments focus on ways to take power from us. It’s time to tell our government they will no longer have authority over OUR PROPERTY – our REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS, our HEALTH, our LIVES.
Just take a few moments and think about the most pivotal campaigns of the last 200 years, the end of slavery, women’s right to vote, civil rights and the anti-war movement to mention a few. Each started with a grassroots movement meeting strong opposition holding an ideological argument at its base, similar to the current frame around reproductive rights.
The current debate about reproductive rights is framed around an ideological concept, taking the focus away from the heart of the issue, HEALTH: healthy women, healthy children, healthy families. Health empowerment is the new focus. With education and knowledge people can make the correct decisions for themselves, their partners, and their families. Denying or limiting access to honest education, comprehensive birth control options, and safe and legal abortion will only hinder the decision making process, and ultimately proves dangerous and hurtful to women and their families. Reproduction is only one part of a woman’s long and fulfilling life. It unfairly places women at a disadvantage when we take reproduction out of the larger context in which it belongs – health of women and families.
Not My Property is a common place to gather information, support and ideas to continue to push the buttons and empower women nationwide to take back their power – the power to make their own informed decisions about their health and well-being. This blog will be the organic center of the grassroots campaign; this is where people can post pictures, video files, essays, poetry, different action campaigns, what works and does not work at the local level that will hopefully inspire others to make change in their own communities. Technology offers us the ability to bring together groups of people that in the past would not have the opportunity to get together and change the world. We will be able to connect the lines of communication of activists nationwide. We will provide different tools for action projects in local communities, links to similar websites for support and providing the entire community with support.
Join us to start telling the government, “Don’t you dare touch that – not MY property!”
How to blog:
1. Send your post to smarkle@nova.edu, it can be essays, responses, ideas, photos or video.
2. Use the links to download useful information including: educational modules, power-points, action alerts and information regarding the candidates positions in the upcoming election.
