My family has very strong women. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn't have any money, because Africa was the 'dark continent', and because I was a girl.
For the last decade, I've worked as a federal judge in a court that spans six Western states, serving about 20 percent of the continental United States and about 18 million people. The men and women I've worked with at every level in our circuit are an inspiration to me.
Jesus is why women have traveled continents, spent decades learning a strange language so they could translate the Gospel, planting churches, caring for the sick, educating the illiterate, and marching for the oppressed.
Motherhood is a great honor and privilege, yet it is also synonymous with servanthood. Every day women are called upon to selflessly meet the needs of their families. Whether they are awake at night nursing a baby, spending their time and money on less-than-grateful teenagers, or preparing meals, moms continuously put others before themselves.
The public likes to think that women only care about contraception.
When I say, 'I want women to have access to authentic female healthcare,' I mean that I want women to have access to healthcare that supports their natural femininity. I mean that I want women to have access to healthcare that doesn't include the use of contraception and abortion.
Denial of contraception to women without the financial means to afford it could cause substantial economic burdens, and even greater burdens if the lack of contraception results in an unintended pregnancy.
I feel very strongly about contraception even though I know people say that, as a good Catholic girl, I shouldn't. But I disagree because I think one of the keys to women's progression in the 20th century is being able to control their fertility.
The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion; things to make life easier for men, in fact.
It pains me deeply to see members of my own party attempting to legislate women's health and contraception choices.
There was a time when researchers imagined that Plan B, or the morning-after pill, might become not an emergency form of contraception but a routine one; women would take it once a month to induce a period and never even know whether they had gotten pregnant.
It is essential that the women's preventive coverage benefit, including contraception, be available to all women, regardless of what health plan they have or where they work - as Congress intended. Providing access to birth control just makes good sense.
Many poor and low-income women cannot afford to purchase contraceptive services and supplies on their own.
Education of both men and women is a wonderful contraceptive.
Every one and every single time is different, and I didn't have C-sections, which I don't know if that's lucky or unlucky, but I was able to feel every contraction. You forget what it feels like. God's got a great way of making women forget what it's like because we would never go through it again.
Women feel like we're fat if we can't wear the clothes we wore in high school. Men, in contrast, only start to feel fat only when they can no longer fit into a foreign car.
Today when I think about diversity, I actually think about the word 'inclusion.' And I think this is a time of great inclusion. It's not men, it's not women alone. Whether it's geographic, it's approach, it's your style, it's your way of learning, the way you want to contribute, it's your age - it is really broad.
There are so many men and women who hold no distinctive positions but whose contribution towards the development of society has been enormous.
Anything can be used for or against the welfare of women - or the welfare of anyone - depending on who controls it.
I can't find anything in the Constitution that says you prefer the life of the mother, or the convenience of the mother if it's an abortion by choice, over the potential life of the fetus. Look, I think women, if they're required to not have abortions, could die and could - so I favor a woman's right to choose.
