Scarlett Says No

Clear information. Sharp Opinions.

Category: Women’s Rights

  • They didn’t change the laws, they changed the words.

    They didn’t change the laws, they changed the words.

    How “embryo adoption” became the next step to personhood.

    They learned something after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

    If you tell people exactly what you’re trying to do, they push back.

    So now they call it something people won’t question.

    “Embryo adoption.”

    It sounds compassionate.

    Who could possibly be against helping families?

    That’s exactly why the name matters.

    The Trump administration is using federal dollars to support an Embryo Adoption Program. On the surface, it sounds like another fertility program.

    It isn’t.

    The entire premise is that frozen embryos should be treated as children waiting to be adopted.

    Read that again.

    Not potential life.

    Not embryos stored in a fertility clinic.

    Children.

    That isn’t just a wording choice.

    It’s a legal argument.

    For years, anti-abortion organizations have been working toward one goal: fetal personhood. The idea is simple. If legal personhood begins the moment an egg is fertilized, then every fertilized embryo has the legal rights of a child.

    Once you accept that idea, everything else starts to change.

    If a frozen embryo is a child, what happens to IVF clinics that routinely create multiple embryos?

    What happens when embryos are tested for genetic conditions?

    What happens when unused embryos are discarded because the family has completed treatment?

    And what happens to emergency contraception or other birth control methods that opponents argue could affect a fertilized egg, even when medical evidence says they primarily work by preventing ovulation?

    These aren’t hypothetical questions.

    They’re the legal consequences of redefining when personhood begins.

    Notice what’s missing from the conversation.

    Nobody asked the American people whether frozen embryos should have the same legal status as children.

    Nobody voted on it.

    Congress didn’t debate it.

    Instead, the language is changing first.

    Because language shapes law.

    If government agencies start describing frozen embryos as children in grant programs, policy documents, and official guidance, that language doesn’t stay there forever. It becomes part of the legal foundation for future court cases, legislation, and regulatory decisions.

    Support IVF if you want.

    Oppose abortion if you want.

    Those are debates reasonable people can have.

    But every American should be paying attention when the federal government quietly starts redefining personhood one policy at a time.

    This isn’t just about helping families have children.

    It’s about changing what the government believes a child already is.

    And once that definition changes, the consequences won’t stop at abortion.

    Scarlett says no.

  • They Want June Cleaver Back

    They Want June Cleaver Back

    Women Remember the Fine Print.

    Every time women’s rights come up, somebody starts romanticizing the past.

    They want June Cleaver back.

    And Donna Reed.

    And Harriet Nelson.

    And every perfectly dressed television mother who smiled in a spotless kitchen while dinner magically appeared, children behaved, and nobody talked about money, fear, abuse, depression, alcoholism, infidelity, or what happened when the front door closed.

    Later came Carol Brady, Marion Cunningham, and a dozen other television versions of the ideal American family.

    The message was always the same:

    This is what a good woman looks like.

    Smile.

    Serve.

    Sacrifice.

    Don’t complain.

    Don’t ask for too much.

    And whatever you do, don’t make anyone uncomfortable by wanting more.

    The problem?

    Most of it was fantasy.

    Television sold America an image.

    Real women lived something very different.

    Women couldn’t get a credit card in their own name.

    Women couldn’t easily get a mortgage.

    Women often couldn’t build independent credit.

    Women had fewer career opportunities.

    Women frequently stayed in bad marriages because leaving meant financial disaster.

    June Cleaver never had to wonder how she would support herself if Ward left.

    The script never asked that question.

    Real women did.

    That’s why I roll my eyes every time someone talks about going back to “traditional values.”

    Traditional for whom?

    Because what some people call traditional values often looks suspiciously like traditional dependence.

    Women have spent generations fighting for rights men never had to fight for.

    The right to vote.

    The right to own property.

    The right to build credit.

    The right to have careers.

    The right to serve in the military.

    The right to control their own financial future.

    Not because women wanted special treatment.

    Because women wanted access to opportunities that men already had.

    And now we’re watching a military ceremony honoring women veterans get canceled.

    A ceremony recognizing women who volunteered, served, sacrificed, deployed, led, and defended this country.

    Women who earned that recognition.

    Women who earned that respect.

    Women who shouldn’t have to keep proving their value every single generation.

    That’s what bothers me.

    Women raise families.

    Women build careers.

    Women care for aging parents.

    Women volunteer.

    Women run businesses.

    Women serve their communities.

    Women serve their country.

    Women keep entire households functioning while carrying mental loads that would break most people.

    Then society turns around and asks whether women have contributed enough to deserve recognition.

    ENOUGH!

    Women are not a diversity initiative.

    Women are not a special interest group.

    Women are half the population.

    We’ve spent centuries helping build this country while fighting for rights that many men received simply by being born.

    Forgive us if we’re not interested in going backward.

    Scarlett says no.

  • Scarlett’s Granddaughters Have Fewer Rights Than She Did

    Scarlett’s Granddaughters Have Fewer Rights Than She Did

    Every now and then, Scarlett wonders where she would be today if she had not had an abortion in her 20s.

    Not because she regrets it.

    Not because she is looking for forgiveness.

    And certainly not because she owes strangers an explanation.

    She wonders because one decision can change the entire direction of a life.

    A different job.

    A different city.

    Different relationships.

    Different opportunities.

    Maybe different children.

    Maybe a completely different version of Scarlett.

    She will never know.

    That is the thing about life.

    You only get to live one version of it.

    The loudest people in the abortion debate always seem convinced they know exactly what would have happened.

    They do not.

    Neither does Scarlett.

    Maybe her life would have been better.

    Maybe it would have been harder.

    Maybe both.

    If Scarlett is being honest, she believes she made the right decision.

    More than that, she believes her life was better because she made it.

    She believes her family’s life was better because she made it.

    The opportunities she had.

    The people she loved.

    The children she eventually raised.

    The grandchildren she adores.

    None of it exists exactly as it does today without that choice.

    But certainty is a funny thing.

    Because Scarlett will never know.

    There is no alternate universe she can visit.

    No second life she can compare against this one.

    Only the life she lived.

    The one she built.

    The one she (mostly) loves.

    And the one she was free to choose.

    But she knows one thing for certain:

    The decision was hers.

    And that matters.

    While Scarlett was a child, abortion became legal.

    Women before her fought for that right.

    Not because they loved abortion.

    Not because they celebrated it.

    Not because they wanted anyone to have one.

    They fought because they understood something painfully basic:

    A woman should own her own future.

    She should decide whether she is ready.

    She should decide what risks she is willing to take.

    She should decide what path her life follows.

    Not politicians.

    Not judges.

    Not preachers.

    Not strangers.

    Her.

    By the time Scarlett was old enough to face that decision, that right existed.

    When one of the biggest crossroads of her life arrived, Scarlett was allowed to choose.

    Today, Scarlett’s granddaughters have fewer rights than she did.

    After decades of progress.

    Scarlett’s GRANDDAUGHTERS have fewer rights than she did.

    After generations of women fought, marched, voted, organized, argued, and sacrificed.

    SCARLETT’S GRANDDAUGHTERS HAVE FEWER RIGHTS THAN SHE DID.

    We are now debating whether young women deserve the same freedom their grandmothers had.

    What in the flip kind of progress is that?

    And before anyone says, “Well, adoption is always an option,” Scarlett would like a word.

    She was adopted.

    So yes, she knows adoption can be a beautiful answer.

    Scarlett had a classmate who was also adopted.  That friend’s parents told her she was chosen.

    Chosen.

    They said it so she would know she was loved.

    Wanted.

    Welcomed.

    That is one version of adoption.

    Scarlett had another.

    When her mother was angry about whatever normal childhood behavior had pushed the wrong button that day, she would remind Scarlett she should be grateful to have a roof over her head.

    Grateful she was not in foster care.  Grateful for private school.  Just flipping grateful.

    Imagine being a child and learning that love could come with a bill.

    Imagine learning that shelter could be used as a weapon.

    Imagine learning that belonging could be conditional if you were inconvenient enough.

    So please spare Scarlett the neat little adoption speeches.

    Adoption may be an answer.

    It is not the answer.

    Not for every woman.

    Not for every pregnancy.

    Not for every child.

    Not for every life.

    The people shouting “just put the baby up for adoption” are usually not volunteering to carry the pregnancy, endure the birth, navigate the trauma, pay the bills, or live with the consequences.

    Imagine.

    You do not have to agree with Scarlett’s decision.

    That was never the point.

    The point is that it was hers.

    No politician knew her circumstances.

    No judge knew her fears.

    No activist knew her future.

    And none of them had to live with the consequences.

    Scarlett did.

    That is what freedom means.

    The right to make profoundly personal decisions for yourself.

    The right to succeed because of them.

    The right to struggle because of them.

    The right to own them.

    So yes, Scarlett sometimes thinks about the life she did not live.

    But she spends a lot more time thinking about the young women whose futures are being decided by people they will never meet.

    And that makes her angry.

    Because every woman deserves ownership of her own future.

    Scarlett had that right.

    Our granddaughters should have it too.

    Scarlett says no.

  • Two Bad Voting Ideas. One Very Obvious Goal.

    Two Bad Voting Ideas. One Very Obvious Goal.

    There are two different ideas being floated here, and both are bad.

    They are not exactly the same.

    They are just bad in different ways.

    Bad Idea #1: “One Household, One Vote”

    This is the idea that a household should vote as one unit.

    Sounds cozy, right?

    A family meeting. A dinner-table discussion. A little civic togetherness.

    Except households are not governments.

    Households are made up of individual people with individual rights.

    A wife does not lose her political voice because she got married.

    An adult child living at home does not become a footnote.

    A grandmother in the guest room does not get absorbed into someone else’s ballot.

    And let’s not pretend we don’t know how this usually works.

    The “household vote” almost always points back to the old “head of household” model — meaning one person gets treated like the decision-maker, and everyone else gets told to be agreeable.

    That is not democracy.

    That is disenfranchisement with curtains.

    Bad Idea #2: The “Family Vote”

    This one is different.

    The “family vote” says parents should get extra voting power because they have children.

    So instead of one adult, one vote, parents would also vote on behalf of their kids.

    A couple with four children could potentially have six votes.

    A single adult gets one.

    A childless couple gets two.

    An infertile couple gets two.

    A retiree gets one.

    A young worker gets one.

    A person caring for aging parents gets no extra votes.

    See the problem?

    This does not give children a voice.

    It gives parents more power.

    Children are not filling out ballots.

    Children are not weighing tax policy, reproductive rights, education funding, foreign policy, healthcare, climate policy, or Supreme Court appointments.

    Their parents are.

    And parents already vote with their children’s futures in mind if they choose to.

    They do not need bonus ballots.

    The Real Problem

    Both ideas attack the same basic principle:

    One person. One vote.

    Not one household.

    Not one family unit.

    Not one adult plus bonus votes for dependents.

    Citizenship is not supposed to be weighted by marriage, fertility, household structure, religion, income, or whether someone has reproduced.

    Because the second we start saying some citizens deserve more political power than others, we are no longer protecting democracy.

    We are redesigning it for the people who already want control.

    And somehow, the people pushing these ideas always seem very confident they will be the ones holding the extra votes.

    Funny how that works.

    Scarlett says no thank you.

  • The Billionaire and the Predator.

    The Billionaire and the Predator.

    Bill Gates told Congress Jeffrey Epstein tried to blackmail him over an affair.

    And somehow we are still supposed to pretend the real scandal is “poor judgment.”

    No.

    This was not a confusing social mix-up at a charity luncheon.

    Gates knew Epstein had been convicted of sex crimes. He kept meeting with him anyway because Epstein supposedly had access to rich donors.

    There it is.

    A convicted sex offender became acceptable because he was useful.

    Gates denies criminal wrongdoing, says he never went to Epstein’s island or homes, and called the whole thing a “grave error in judgment.”

    Fine.

    But his name reportedly appears more than 3,000 times in Epstein-related federal records.

    That is not “oops.”

    That is “open the damn transcript.”

    The survivors deserve answers. The public deserves answers. And billionaires do not get a special privacy curtain when the subject is a child sex trafficker and the people around him.

    Scarlett says no.