Posted with permission by Nicholas Benton, Owner/Editor of the Falls Church News Press.

by Nicholas Benton

The Fourth of July festivities across the U.S. this Saturday are going to elicit a qualitatively different sense of deep joy and national pride than perhaps has been felt since the nation's triumph over totalitarianism in 1945, before most Americans today were even born.

The fireworks and the red, white and blue will evoke something more profound and beautiful, I predict, than most of us expect. It may catch many of us off guard.

As one dear friend remarked to me recently, since President Obama took office, it seems like every day is Christmas. Every day, she said, there is some new bold initiative, some added resounding commitment to keep the campaign promises that elicits joy.

We are, indeed, right in the midst of a profound turnaround in the course the nation has taken in recent decades, a course that took the country to the very precipice of the worst economic meltdown in modern history, brought on by the anti-regulatory orgy of greed and exploitation sanctioned under the previous administration.

Bumped. Originally posted 2008-11-22 02:51:10 -0500. -- GH

(Cross posted at The National Gadfly)

In an article entitled "Equal share in land, property for women urged" by Sikander Shaheen in The Nation (Pakistan) details a campaign by ActionAid within Pakistan, urging equal property rights for women.  (ActionAid is an international anti-poverty organization that has been in operation for over 30 years.)

Dr. Susan Wicklund has devoted most of her 20-year medical career to helping women who are faced with the hard choice of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy during their first trimester—the only cases she herself treats. Now she has written a gripping account of her experiences, in THIS COMMON SECRET, My Journey as an Abortion Doctor.

Even though practicing abortion had been legal in the United States since 1973, in order to provide abortions, Wicklund has had to face right-to-life terrorists who not only threatened her own life but relentlessly persecuted her young daughter. Some of the experiences she writes about are horrible, but her triumph over intimidation and her sensitive treatment of her patients inspiring.

She grew up in a small working class community in Wisconsin—no one in her family had gone beyond high school—nor had she planned a different life. However after she underwent a legal abortion under horrible conditions she was drawn to midwifery, and then to the bold move of becoming a doctor. Her aim was to practice women’s medicine but she was drawn to becoming an abortionist when she realized that even though it was legal, it was still very difficult for women to get help in terminating a pregnancy.