Friday, August 26th, 2011
Today we commemorate the 91st anniversary of the 19th amendment, which finally created a nation based on the consent of the governed by guaranteeing women the right to vote. We at the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center are celebrating with an important announcement.
How do we find ourselves in the company of the Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional in Guatemala, the Gandhi Ashram Trust in Bangladesh, and the Gulag Museum at Perm-36, Russia? The Matilda Joslyn Gage Center is the fourth Site of Conscience, alongside these world-wide organizations to receive a Project Support Fund grant from the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. We are the only United States site to be chosen.
With our new and exciting project “Who Chooses?,” which will be begun by this grant, we are boldly confronting one of the most controversial and divisive issues in the United States today: women’s reproductive rights. Noting the absence of public discussion around this issue, and understanding the need for a space where respectful dialogue can take place, we decided to create a dialogue program that will allow participants to exchange ideas and expand their knowledge of reproductive rights in a safe, non-volatile setting.
We wanted to also increase our dialogue capacity, as we move to make respectful discussion of differences the language of our organization. This grant will allow us to train dialogue facilitators while creating a dialogue model around the reproductive rights issue.
“Who Chooses?” will link Gage’s writings and ideas on two of Gage’s major social justice issues — women’s rights and the separation of church and state - with the current controversy over reproductive rights. We will approach the issue of reproductive rights from a standpoint calculated to avoid polarized discussion. Instead of asking whether the public is, for example, for or against abortion, we will prompt participants to examine the question of “who chooses,” or who should decide if a woman should or should not have a child. We will also attempt to address the widespread misinformation surrounding reproductive rights by creating an informative brochure, approaching the issue from the perspective of law, religion and history.
We invite you to join us for this unique project to create a national model for choice dialogue. We have a limited number of spaces available for volunteers, docents, board members and supporters to participate and become trained as dialogue facilitators. Please let us know if you’d like to apply for participation. Statements of interest should be sent to: director@matildajoslyngage.org .
Reproductive rights carries the same controversial stigma today that voting rights carried in Matilda’s day, and the arguments then and now are surprisingly similar. We honor Matilda for her work to bring clarity to the discussion about voting by bringing clarity to the issue of reproduction. “Who Chooses?” is designed to foster strong dialogue and the respectful exchange of ideas among the public - all viewpoints are welcome.
