Naples Florida Weekly
Loading...

Noted women’s rights activists to visit Southwest Florida




CARMON

CARMON

Two nationally known women’s rights activists will visit Southwest Florida this month to speak at Planned Parenthood events in Lee and Collier counties.

Dr. Willie Parker is an abortion provider in Alabama and Mississippi who wrote about his reconciliation of faith and science in his 2017 book Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice.

His speech at a Fort Myers luncheon on Friday, Jan. 25, is followed several weeks later by Irin Carmon, who will headline Naples event on Saturday, Feb. 9.

Ms. Carmon is a journalist and author of the 2015 book “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” Her speech will focus on the impacts the Supreme Court Justice has made on the forefront of women’s rights and reproductive rights.

In a time when the Supreme Court is positioned to reconsider the likes of Roe vs. Wade, Ms. Carmon and Dr. Parker both spoke of the need for activism in advance of their visits.

Irin Carmon

PARKER

PARKER

Q: You’ve been able to uniquely position yourself as a reporter with a pulse on women’s issues, covering such stories as the Charlie Rose allegations last year and your work on Justice Ginsburg’s biography. How have you managed to do that?

A: A colleague of mine once defined feminism as “what is not here.” My professional decisions haven’t been about what’s going to be the next hot thing. It’s been about what stories aren’t being told. I’ve always been interested in these kinds of stories about how women make our way through the world — the challenges and the triumphs.

Q: Your book on Justice Ginsburg debuted before the Me Too movement blew up. Why do you think the timing was ripe for a story on this key figure?

A: I think people were so hungry to see women like that fighting for other women. My co-author Shana (Knizhnik) had started the Tumblr with memes about Justice Ginsberg, and I had worked at Jezebel. We were both very much coming out of this internet feminism that had reclaimed feminism from its stigma, and also showed itself to be humorous and pop cultural, but also substantive and tongue-in-cheek. I think “Notorious RBG” very much came out of that tradition of feminism, which had come to more maturity.

 

Of course, she was christened the Notorious RBG long before President Trump; it was not a phenomenon that had anything to do with Trump, but I think in the wake of the election she became part of the symbol of the resistance, and she wore her dissent collar right after Trump was elected. There are still a lot of people discovering Justice Ginsburg’s story for the first time, I’ve found. It’s never too late for people to recognize the profound historical and contemporary inequalities in our society and to join the people who are working on this fight.

 

Q: What will you cover during your speech at Planned Parenthood?

A: I’ll be highlighting more of (Justice Ginsburg’s) lesser known cases and life experiences and how they brought her to the point of believing in reproductive autonomy.

Q: What was it like working with Justice Ginsburg and getting to know her?

A: The memes depict a fearsome person who is really tough but she is also very reserved, she chooses her words very carefully and she’s very traditionally ladylike — but I don’t think those things are necessarily at odds. One of the things the book does is chart how people underestimated her throughout her life precisely because of those characteristics and how she had to balance being the first woman to do so many things while also making really radical demands of the system. I met with her for interviews and fact checking and by the end, she officiated my wedding, which was a huge privilege.

Dr. Willie Parker

Q: You talk in your book about your change of heart regarding abortion services. Why didn’t you offer them at the beginning of your career as an OBGYN, and what made you start?

A: Rather than having a change of heart, I had more of clarity of vision. I was always sympathetic to the plight of women, but I found my moral authority to do this work. As a person of faith, my identity is Christian. I had merely capitulated to the custom of religious opposition to abortion. When I did a deeper dive, I found that providing health care in the form of abortion was both moral and ethical, and consistent with the values of my profession, and also consistent with my morals as a Christian.

Q: Our country is so polarized these days that it seems difficult conversations about issues such as abortion are impossible. What is your recommendation for having those talks?

A: Mahatma Ghandi said honest disagreement is the beginning of progress, so I’m interested in a civil conversation. I’m always going to be respectful and I will never get personal in terms of criticizing someone’s religion.

But I will say I honestly disagree with you if your understanding of reproduction does not include a scientific understanding of reproduction. I don’t see a religious and scientific understanding of reproduction being mutually exclusive.

Q: Will the issue of abortion ever be laid to rest, or is this one that our society will continue to feel differently on?

A: The issue of abortion will never be laid to rest because there will never be a time without them, but I do believe as Dr. King did, that the moral arc of the universe will lead. I do believe it will become a non-issue at some point when we finally get people to muster the political courage to stand up for the reality we know is a common experience in the lives of women.

Our country was founded with slavery, and slavery was religiously justified. Eventually, abolitionists who came to make the moral argument against slavery prevailed and now it would be ludicrous to talk about reinstituting slavery.

Q: What will you cover in your speech?

A: I want to act as a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat regulates the temperature versus merely reporting it. My goal would be to tell people that while there have been times like these before, our moment is our opportunity. The task does not change. The solution is political activism, in my opinion. You have to educate yourself about the issues and you have to speak out and you have to act out when necessary — I’m not talking about vigilante-type action, I’m talking about people voting and organizing activities to change this political landscape. ¦

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *