Open Letter to NOW
Dear President Kim Gandy,
I have written you several times. This will probably be the last.
As a 1973 graduate of Arizona State University, I long considered the National Organization for Women (NOW) as a champion for issues impacting women. Thus, in 1999, during the impeachment debates, I was mystified by public statements coming from NOW.
How could an organization defending the interests of women climb into bed with a womanizer who abused the power of this nation’s highest office and lied about it in court? Yes, I mean to say NOW climbed into bed with Clinton. In order to keep a Democrat in office, especially a charmer like Clinton, NOW was willing to sell the woman’s soul.Holding onto my respect for the woman’s movement, I sent in my $40 dues and joined NOW. I wanted to learn about the organization, dialogue with members, and work to make changes within its process.
Over three years, attending your national conferences around the country, I have spent over $3,000 trying to raise NOW's interest in cervical cancer, which kills more women each year than HIV/AIDS. When members this year were given a choice to advance important current issues, they rejected my cervical cancer resolution as a right-wing scare tactic. Instead, they voted 100 percent (minus my one vote) to advocate for UN inspectors at American polls in the presidential election. Meanwhile, this year, another five thousand women will die of cervical cancer.On September 7, I wrote to you and NOW Board members about cervical cancer, appealing to you for the third year in a row, to take up this issue as an advocate for the health and welfare of women…most especially for our younger women in junior and senior high schools. Your lack of response is not surprising.
For three years, NOW has rejected in substance each cervical cancer resolution brought to the membership and to the National Board. You have failed to respond to this health crisis, even as you do everything possible to advance over-the-counter access to the morning-after pill. In both cases, the health of our daughters is at stake, and you stake everything on promoting sex without consequences.
The ultimate insult against women is NOW's marriage with Planned Parenthood and NARAL to promote abortion. Well . . . you call it “choice.” But if you were really only advocating choice, NOW would evidence an open ear to important issues related to abortion: parental consent, informed choice, infertility, forced and coerced abortions, sex selective abortion of girl fetuses, fetal pain, Conner’s law, partial birth abortion and conscientious objections to abortion. Women are hardly served by NOW's allegiance to abortion on demand that sacrifices public discussion of these important issues. It would be a welcome change if NOW were to declare itself a Pro-Truth organization regarding abortion, allowing women to understand the full implications of this life-changing surgery.
Instead, for the past three years, a resolution has come before NOW members asking them to defend a woman’s right to bear a child as an obvious extension of the sacred right to choose. Again, each year, you have turned a deaf ear to this resolution.
I have listened to NOW’s impassioned pleas to give “equal rights” to marriage to the gay community. At last year’s conference, I spoke with a NOW legal representative and suggested that its stance on same-sex marriage was confusing when NOW fails to acknowledge the special positive benefits of heterosexual marriage between a man and a woman. She stopped short of patting me on the head in condescension.
An extensive search of your website regarding “marriage” reveals a deluge of articles advocating same-sex marriage. The next biggest discussion of marriage on NOW's website is a long list of articles which are unmitigated attacks on Promise Keepers and other conservatives who support marriage as a positive union between men and women, husbands and wives.
In the 60's I was drawn to the women’s movement and popular feminists because they promised to give women “a voice” in the culture and in politics. Yet, when women I meet today try to voice their victimization under America’s abortion-on-demand policies, they are ridiculed or dismissed. Women writers who challenge the staunch pro-abortion, anti-patriarch views endemic in NOW are hissed and booed…they are written off as “so-called feminists.” These writers give voice to my concerns as a woman. Are we then "so-called women?"I have been looking ahead with dread to NOW's 2005 Conference in Nashville. It would be my fourth year trying to get you interested in cervical cancer. And it would be another $1000 out of my family’s budget.
Today, I wake after the re-election of George Bush and know there are easier ways to change things for women than going through NOW. Although you reject this notion, the political climate is now more friendly to women and consideration of all…ALL…issues impacting their lives as women, workers, wives, and mothers. More importantly, though, there is a new stream of respected media outlets that is open to hearing from “so-called women.” No longer do I see NOW being the sole arbiter of “what is good for women.” Please consider this letter my resignation from NOW. I appreciate the time I spent meeting NOW's many members, and I respect their sincerity in advocating for positions important to them. Unfortunately, these same positions do great harm to the women I care about.
Sincerely,
Jane Jimenez
Arizona NOW
Phoenix, Arizona
Jane Jimenez is a freelance writer dedicated to issues of importance to women and the family. Her website is From the Home Front.
I have written you several times. This will probably be the last.
As a 1973 graduate of Arizona State University, I long considered the National Organization for Women (NOW) as a champion for issues impacting women. Thus, in 1999, during the impeachment debates, I was mystified by public statements coming from NOW.
How could an organization defending the interests of women climb into bed with a womanizer who abused the power of this nation’s highest office and lied about it in court? Yes, I mean to say NOW climbed into bed with Clinton. In order to keep a Democrat in office, especially a charmer like Clinton, NOW was willing to sell the woman’s soul.Holding onto my respect for the woman’s movement, I sent in my $40 dues and joined NOW. I wanted to learn about the organization, dialogue with members, and work to make changes within its process.
Over three years, attending your national conferences around the country, I have spent over $3,000 trying to raise NOW's interest in cervical cancer, which kills more women each year than HIV/AIDS. When members this year were given a choice to advance important current issues, they rejected my cervical cancer resolution as a right-wing scare tactic. Instead, they voted 100 percent (minus my one vote) to advocate for UN inspectors at American polls in the presidential election. Meanwhile, this year, another five thousand women will die of cervical cancer.On September 7, I wrote to you and NOW Board members about cervical cancer, appealing to you for the third year in a row, to take up this issue as an advocate for the health and welfare of women…most especially for our younger women in junior and senior high schools. Your lack of response is not surprising.
For three years, NOW has rejected in substance each cervical cancer resolution brought to the membership and to the National Board. You have failed to respond to this health crisis, even as you do everything possible to advance over-the-counter access to the morning-after pill. In both cases, the health of our daughters is at stake, and you stake everything on promoting sex without consequences.
The ultimate insult against women is NOW's marriage with Planned Parenthood and NARAL to promote abortion. Well . . . you call it “choice.” But if you were really only advocating choice, NOW would evidence an open ear to important issues related to abortion: parental consent, informed choice, infertility, forced and coerced abortions, sex selective abortion of girl fetuses, fetal pain, Conner’s law, partial birth abortion and conscientious objections to abortion. Women are hardly served by NOW's allegiance to abortion on demand that sacrifices public discussion of these important issues. It would be a welcome change if NOW were to declare itself a Pro-Truth organization regarding abortion, allowing women to understand the full implications of this life-changing surgery.
Instead, for the past three years, a resolution has come before NOW members asking them to defend a woman’s right to bear a child as an obvious extension of the sacred right to choose. Again, each year, you have turned a deaf ear to this resolution.
I have listened to NOW’s impassioned pleas to give “equal rights” to marriage to the gay community. At last year’s conference, I spoke with a NOW legal representative and suggested that its stance on same-sex marriage was confusing when NOW fails to acknowledge the special positive benefits of heterosexual marriage between a man and a woman. She stopped short of patting me on the head in condescension.
An extensive search of your website regarding “marriage” reveals a deluge of articles advocating same-sex marriage. The next biggest discussion of marriage on NOW's website is a long list of articles which are unmitigated attacks on Promise Keepers and other conservatives who support marriage as a positive union between men and women, husbands and wives.
In the 60's I was drawn to the women’s movement and popular feminists because they promised to give women “a voice” in the culture and in politics. Yet, when women I meet today try to voice their victimization under America’s abortion-on-demand policies, they are ridiculed or dismissed. Women writers who challenge the staunch pro-abortion, anti-patriarch views endemic in NOW are hissed and booed…they are written off as “so-called feminists.” These writers give voice to my concerns as a woman. Are we then "so-called women?"I have been looking ahead with dread to NOW's 2005 Conference in Nashville. It would be my fourth year trying to get you interested in cervical cancer. And it would be another $1000 out of my family’s budget.
Today, I wake after the re-election of George Bush and know there are easier ways to change things for women than going through NOW. Although you reject this notion, the political climate is now more friendly to women and consideration of all…ALL…issues impacting their lives as women, workers, wives, and mothers. More importantly, though, there is a new stream of respected media outlets that is open to hearing from “so-called women.” No longer do I see NOW being the sole arbiter of “what is good for women.” Please consider this letter my resignation from NOW. I appreciate the time I spent meeting NOW's many members, and I respect their sincerity in advocating for positions important to them. Unfortunately, these same positions do great harm to the women I care about.
Sincerely,
Jane Jimenez
Arizona NOW
Phoenix, Arizona
Jane Jimenez is a freelance writer dedicated to issues of importance to women and the family. Her website is From the Home Front.
posted by compugor at 9:11 PM
