When you ask me what matters, what’s important, I can think of many things. But in light of the current American political climate, what matters most to me are women’s rights.

There have been so many challenges to our rights over the years. We have fought for them before, argued for the right to own property, to be treated equally, to vote, to live on our own, to breastfeed in public, to be what we want to be, to use our brains as they were meant to be used, to buy birth control, to control our own bodies. At the core, we have had to continually fight to be able to choose. 

Why is that important to me? Well, I am a woman, one who has challenged others in how we view each other, in how we raise each other, in how we teach each other. I have a daughter who wants to go out and conquer the world, albeit with love and care. I want her to have all the choices she needs. I teach middle school; I see so many girls who believe they have no choices, who are raised to see women as less than men, who can’t see a way out. I want that to be different for them. I want them to see a future full of choices based on what they want and need, not on what parts they are born with.

Women are a significant deciding factor on the planet and we matter. All our varying thoughts, beliefs, and desires matter. The woman in my quilt hears all these different voices in her head, ancestors and descendants telling her what she should care about most. There should be no limits on that. We should be in government, making decisions; we should be on health committees deciding our fates; we should be in charge of companies controlling the medications or treatments we have the right to use. But at the base of all that, our rights matter. Choice matters. Equality matters. We are not Less Than because of our parts, because of a single chromosome. We—women—matter.