Like nearly every holiday in the United States, Mother's Day seems to be as much about getting people to indulge in commercialism (Buy Mom this! Buy Mom that!) as it is about honoring your mother. While I am very happy to give my mom and mother-in-law cards telling them how awesome they are and give them a small token of my appreciation, I also like to celebrate all the mothers who have birthed social progress and given me the gift of more human rights. Make no mistake about it: many of the bravest, loudest, pushiest social reformers were moms. They thought about their lives and their children's futures, and they knew that to give their kids the best chances for success, barriers had to be broken.

Unlike domestic policy, the American public is usually willing to leave foreign affairs to the "experts" unless things are seriously off course. According to polling done by Public Agenda, the contemporary anxiety indicator stands at 136 on a scale where 150 indicates a collapse of confidence in the government's foreign policy. In general, over the past two years, Americans have less and less confidence that our present strategies will enhance US security.

Tuesday marked the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled that women are people who have the right, under the rubric of privacy, to decide whether or not we will give birth if we find ourselves pregnant. Ever since the ruling, opponents of women’s self-determination (i.e. – those who champion the rights of a fetus over those of the actual born and living) have worked tirelessly to revoke this right. They’ve been doing an excellent job with campaigns full of misinformation (for the record, fingernails do not develop until the 12th week of gestation, according to the Mayo clinic, and about 90% of abortions take place before that stage…), intimidation (not very life-affirming to stalk the children of doctors who perform abortions), and outright murder, so for the last few years, NARAL has asked bloggers to use the anniversary of Roe to set the record straight on why they are pro-choice.

After I wrote the story about the woman in Qatif who was gang raped and sentenced to be beaten for it on Sunday, I was depressed and frustrated. My husband asked me what was wrong, and somehow this led us into a discussion the difference between feminism and humanism. If feminism is, at root, a belief that women and men deserve equal human rights (which is how I define feminism), how is that different from humanism, which is essentially that all people have basic human rights?

What is the best way to create change? One essential strategy is to make sure that it is clear that change is wanted by making our voices heard. There are many ways to go about doing this. One way is to vote, another option is to speak out in public forums, and a third is to express one's needs and desires in writing. Women around the world are using all three methods, demanding to be heard.