Letter From WoLF Executive Director Sharon Byrne

Greetings from the front! I am on my 9th day with WoLF, and last week has been one of the most exciting weeks I’ve ever experienced.

Last Monday, I was dispatched to Oklahoma City for Governor Stitt’s signing of the Women’s Bill of Rights. It felt amazing to be part of creating women’s history in ensuring the sex-based rights of women and girls are protected. Governor Stitt is the first governor in the United States to sign the Women’s Bill of Rights.

I got to meet Riley Gaines, also present for the signing, and have a really good conversation with her. Some other experiences that really stand out:

1. Women of color approached me after the press conference. They’re serving on the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women, based on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, to which I’ve served as a delegate. They thanked me for my remarks on the plight of women in prisons, forced to be with male felons convicted of rape and murder. It’s a situation that’s almost inconceivable as of just a few years ago. 

2. Governor Stitt approached me before the signing, and said “You’re a Progressive, aren’t you?” I responded that I am a Californian, very independent politically, in that I seek the best policies regardless of party, but yes, I imagine I would be considered rather progressive in Oklahoma. He identified himself as very conservative, and said that he felt it was great that we’ve partnered up on this. Yes! This, to me, IS the ideal way forward. You take the best ideas, and craft the best possible solutions, regardless of party or ideology.

3. Some of the very young women working with us had never known the world before it entered what I call the “Upside Down”, where the headlines seem crazier and scarier than the worst sci-fi novel, but it’s our new reality. They’re aware a world existed before, one that was better for women and girls, but they’d not experienced it. And this is but one reason I signed up for this fight. Our daughters deserve to know freedom, to have their sex respected, and to have unassailable human rights as women.

Freshly back from Oklahoma, I had a terrific conversation with WoLF member Ruth Nakagawa. Like me, she’s in California, and the 2023 California Legislative Session features a slew of bills. They’re coming through Appropriations, and heading to a floor vote soon. We’re very excited about one of them, Senate Bill 14, which would make Child Sex Trafficking a serious crime under the Three Strikes law.

One would have thought this was already the case, but it took Senator Shannon Grove to push it forward. You might have thought it would then be a slam dunk, but it died in the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, when members voted it down, thinking it would increase incarceration rates - a seriously misguided vote. 

Californians howled loudly in response. Were these committee members taking a stand FOR child sex traffickers?

That led to a hasty reconvening within the week, pushed by Governor Newsom, to revote on the bill, and move it forward. We’re pleased to solidly get behind this legislation!

We plan to call on our California WoLF pack to help us rally for this session! There’s a lot to do, as there are some absolutely heinous bills too, like AB 957, that could remove children from their parent’s custody for not affirming their “gender identity.” WoLF issued a call to action here. If you haven’t told Governor Newsom how you feel about this, please do so now!

California is an important state because this is the place to push for legislation that helps protect and advance women’s and girls’ rights. That helps families too, because when women do better, we all win. California also puts out terrible legislation, and this year is no exception. We want to make a strong stand in Sacramento, and we’re so grateful to WoLF members like Ruth, who are organizing, excited to get on the ground, and make this push with us.

Help us advocate for good legislation, and push back on these bad bills! 

We cannot do this work without YOU. In just my first few days here, I’ve seen how fast the WoLF team is, how many issues we cover, and am delighted to report this is an impressive team! But it only works, because of you. We welcome your support.

I’m excited to get to know you better, and hear your thoughts.

A Door Just Cracked Open

The American Association of Pediatrics just called for a systematic review of the medical research on gender-affirming treatments. It will be conducted by an external organization.

They also voted to reaffirm their 2018 policy that supports these treatments.

It’s significant that they’re pushing for a systematic review, because several European countries backed away from prescribing gender medical treatments after conducting reviews of their medical data. The US Endocrine Society admitted they, too, lack quality data on the effects of gender medications, yet advised practitioners to keep providing these medications to adolescents. Insiders report that member pediatricians have not even been allowed to bring this forward for discussion for the past two years, so this is a wee bit of progress.

What’s Going On With Health Care for Moms in the US?

Politico just ran a story about the disappearance of maternal hospitals across the United States. Here in my hometown of Santa Barbara, a large group of women began engaging last year when it emerged there were no more OB/Gyns practicing in the area, and women were having to drive more than an hour outside the county, to get prenatal care and give birth.

Lack of maternal care is apparently a national problem, and a big one. Though the data is from 2020-2021, the article points to recent abortion bans as leading some OB/Gyns to make decisions not to practice in a state with a ban in place due to legal risk. But that doesn’t explain California’s steep drop in maternal hospitals. Something else is at work. One of the statistics in the article, that ought to alarm everyone who cares about maternal health:

‘In 2021, roughly 33 people died for every 100,000 live births in the U.S., according to the CDC, up 40 percent from 2020. That’s roughly 10 times the mortality rate of other industrialized nations such as Spain, Germany, Australia, or Japan. The maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black people was 69.9, two-and-a-half times the rate of non-Hispanic whites, according to the CDC.’

Here’s the table where you can see how nations are doing with maternal mortality rates worldwide.

The USA should be doing better than this for our women.

Finally, Ohio voted Tuesday to defeat Issue 1, a bill in a late summer election that would have raised the threshold of votes needed to pass a ballot initiative to 60%, from a simple majority, in place since 1912. This was put on the ballot by the legislature in advance of a measure on the November ballot in Ohio on abortion.

A little backstory:

• Ohio’s 6-week abortion ban took effect on the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

• It was blocked by a state court, and that’s still in proceedings. 

• The proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot would protect the right of individuals to make their own reproductive decisions. It would forbid the state from prohibiting or interfering with the "voluntary exercise of this right."

The amendment would allow the state to prohibit abortion after fetal viability, which it defines as "the point in a pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient's treating physician, the fetus has a significant likelihood of survival outside the uterus with reasonable measures."

Yesterday’s vote was whether to raise the bar for the November ballot initiative to now require 60% of the vote in order to pass. That was defeated.

This is the second major vote we’ve seen since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, where questions about abortion were put to state voters, and they came to a different outcome than their state legislature. The first vote was in Kansas last year, where a number of Republican voters decided against removing protections for abortion from the Kansas constitution.

Americans at the ballot box seem to be landing in a less extreme place than their state legislatures, on this topic.

That’s the news from my first two weeks on the Women’s Liberation Front, and it’s been busy but productive! Thank you.

In Solidarity,

Sharon Byrne

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