by Rachel Stockton

Created on: June 28, 2008

When I enrolled in college in 1980, I was a young, enthusiastic feminist, eager to embrace the fairly new (at the time) idea that a woman could choose any career she wanted. Gone were the days when a woman had, for the most part, only three choices when considering her life's work: housewifery, a teaching profession, or nursing. I chose a career in a field that had been, up to that point, largely dominated by men: accounting.

Now, as I look at my adult daughters, I realize that because of the women's liberation movement, they have no idea what it's like to feel they must "limit" their dreams. One of them is studying to be an engineer, and, unlike her mother, she isn't truly cognizant of the fact that she chose a field that at one time was almost entirely male populated. Of this, I am very pleased.

It's hard for me to understand people, especially women, who criticize feminism. One has to wonder if many of those who bemoan its impact tend to glorify a past that was never reality. The days when women had no choice over whether or not they could and would bear children, as well as no choice over when those children were born, were difficult years for many people.

Dr. Asa Howell was a rural Texas physician who practiced during the early to mid-twentieth century. He was also my great-grandfather. Dr. Howell was very familiar with the stark actuality of the life women lead during his medical tenure. His own daughter died during childbirth in 1932.

One of the families he regularly treated lived on a remote farm in Central Texas. They struggled terribly through the twenties and thirties, and the wife bore children as frequently as the heifers bore calves on their land. Dr. Howell regularly shared with his wife the hardship of the Owens', as well as the lives of other families who had neither the education nor the resources to rise above their biological destinies.

After the birth of the their 7th child, Dr. Howell went to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Owens about a new, crude (albeit fairly effective) new method of birth control. He them that Mrs. Owen needed to rinse herself out after intercourse; the chemical wash was a strong spermicidal, and I suspect it was strong enough to eliminate an egg, post fertilization.

Mr. and Mrs. Owens were grateful for the information, and Dr. Howell was glad to have been able to offer them advice on how to alleviate some of their hardship. A few days later, Mr. Owens sent for Dr. Howell; his wife had turned seriously ill, and was having severe

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