Edna Adan

Today Tuesday October 9 2012 the WOD is Edna Adan, an inspiring advocate for women and girls. Her maternity hospital in Somaliland is an oasis of healing and care for the country's women.

Adan was raised in Somaliland in an educated and wealthy family, when the country was a protectorate of the British Empire. When she was 15, a girls' school opened in Somaliland. Adan went to work there as a student teacher and also received private lessons. She was permitted to sit for exams, in a room separate from the boys, and was the first Somali girl awarded one of a few coveted scholarships to study in Britain. She spent seven years there, studying nursing, midwifery and hospital management.

When she returned home to Somaliland, Adan became the first qualified nurse-midwife in the country and the first Somali woman to drive a car. She later became the first lady when she married Somaliland's prime minister, Ibrahim Egal. After they divorced, Adan was recruited to join the World Health Organization (WHO), where she held various key positions advocating for the abolition of harmful traditional practices, such as female genital cutting.

But Adan never let go of a life-long dream to build a hospital, so upon retiring from the WHO she sold all of her possessions, including her beloved Mercedes, and returned to Somaliland to make her dream a reality. There was only one available plot of land within the capital of Hargeisa, land which since the civil war had been used as a trash dump. But it was in the poor area of town, near those who needed the hospital the most. So she negotiated with the president, her ex-husband, and obtained the land for her hospital.

When the structure was completed but the roof not yet installed, the project ran out of money. But with assistance from the Friends of Edna's Hospital and in-kind donations from local merchants, Adan finished construction and the hospitalopened in 2002. Since then, Adan has focused her efforts on a new goal: training and dispatching 1,000 qualified midwives throughout Somaliland. Adan continues to work as the hospital's director and strives to improve the lives and health of women throughout her country.

Merle Hoffman

Today Tuesday June 12, 2012 the AWOD is Merle Hoffman.

(In the current climate in the US we need more women like this to help push back on the war on women.)

Merle Hoffman was born in Philadelphia March 6, 1946 and raised in New York City. She is a legendary women’s rights activist, an award winning journalist, political organizer and health care pioneer. Since the early 1970s, she’s fought on the front lines of the war against women, standing up against anti-choice activists since before Roe v. Wade was passed. In 1971, Hoffman helped found one of America’s first ambulatory abortion centers: the Flushing Women’s Medical Center in New York, since renamed Choices Women’s Medical Center.

Under Hoffman’s leadership, the center has expanded to offer a comprehensive range of both reproductive and primary care services. The medical center is founded under the vision of “Patient Power,” a term Hoffman coined, which is a philosophy grounded in knowledge and education, empowering all patients in the health care system.

She is also the co-founder of the National Abortion Federation, a professional association of abortion providers, and founder of the New York Pro-Choice Coalition, the first umbrella organization of pro-choice individuals and organizations committed to ensuring legal, safe abortion in New York. Hoffman is publisher and editor-in-chief of On the Issues magazine, an online feminist magazine of independent, critical thinking.

In an historic joint venture with the Yelstin Government she worked on developing the first feminist outpatient medical center in Russia as well as organizing Russian Feminists to deliver an open letter to Boris Yeltsin on the state of women's health care. As an activist and organizer, Hoffman was co-founder of the National Abortion Federation (NAF), founder of the New York Pro-Choice Coalition, and organized the first pro-choice civil disobedience action at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. She is a frequent media guest and speaker, including at the 1995 International Women’s Conference in Beijing. She co-produced the documentary film, “Abortion: A Different Light," and produced and hosted a thirty minute cable TV show entitled "MH: On The Issues." In 2002, she was appointed to the National Advisory Board of American Philosophical Practitioners Association. Her archives were acquired by Duke University in 2002 and are a major part of the Sally Bingham Center's women's History papers. Hoffman has been honored for her work by the Department of Corrections of New York City, National Organization for Women (NOW), Women's Health Care Services, Ecovisions, Community Action Network, the National Victim's Center, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Veteran Feminists of America, former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, and others. Hoffman writes frequently on topics related to women, politics and medical care, including for the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Journal of American Women's Associations, in addition to her groundbreaking interviews and editorials in On The Issues Magazine.

Today, she continues to serve as the CEO of Choices, now one of the nation’s largest women’s medical facilities. The legacy of Hoffman’s work and the work she continues to this day has had an immeasurable impact on women’s rights.

Sandra Fluke

I feel I would be remiss to not make her our WOD this week, unless you have been living under a rock you have heard of our WOD for Tuesday March 6, 2012 is Sandra Kay Fluke (born April 17, 1981). She is the American feminist and activist enrolled at Georgetown University Law Center. 

Fluke graduated from Cornell University in 2003 and spent five years working for Sanctuary for Families, a New York-based nonprofit aiding victims of domestic violence, where she launched the agency's pilot Program Evaluation Initiative. She co-founded the New York Statewide Coalition for Fair Access to Family Court, which successfully advocated for legislation granting access to civil orders of protection for unmarried victims of domestic violence, including LGBTQ victims and teens. Fluke was also a member of the Manhattan Borough President's Taskforce on Domestic Violence and numerous other New York City and New York State coalitions that successfully advocated for policy improvements impacting victims of domestic violence.

While at Georgetown University Law Center, she worked on issues that involved domestic violence and human trafficking.

While these accomplishments are impressive and worthy of her being considered as a WOD, I also feel that she has demonstrated poise and class with respect to the vicious attacks perpetrated on her by the Vile sub-human radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

You see, Sandra Fluke testified before Democratic members of the House of Representatives on why she believed free contraception is generally essential.

In Fluke's testimony, she argued in favor of requiring all private insurance plans to cover contraception coverage, even religious institutions. She argued that over the three years as a law student, birth control could cost $3,000 in some cases. She continued that the lack of free contraception would induce many low income students to go without contraceptives and that women's free health clinics cannot meet the need.

She then discussed the consequence of such policies, anecdotally citing a friend with polycystic ovary syndrome. While the condition was "covered by Georgetown insurance", getting treatment was difficult because of the policy. According to Fluke, her friend was denied coverage, even with a verified condition from her doctor. She also added that this is not a rare event for women with these medical conditions under insurance plans that did not coverage contraception. She then stated that she wanted equal treatment for women's health issues and did not see the issue as being against the Catholic Church.

What did that mean to Rush? Well of course that meant that she was a “slut” who wanted the US taxpayers to pay for her birth control so that she can have even more sex. The fact that this man has been married 4 times to younger women and still does not know how birth control works is troubling to say the least. He even went so far as to say he wanted her to videotape herself having sex and post it on-line so the taxpayers who pay for her birth control could watch where their money was going. He continued his attacks on Miss Fluke for three days on his show. Limbaugh repeated his previous attacks against Fluke and insurance coverage for contraception until his advertisers started dropping his show. 

The pressure of the almighty dollar finally forced his hand to issue a statement. He released an apology on his official website, which wasn’t an apology as much as it was an attack on the Left for bringing him to the point that he just Had to “sink to their level”

Fluke responded to his latest apology on ABC's The View saying:

I don't think that a statement like this, saying that his choice of words was not the best, changes anything, and especially when that statement is issued when he's under significant pressure from his sponsors who have begun to pull their support from the show. / I think any woman who has ever been called these types of names is [shocked] at first. / But then I tried to see this for what it is, and I believe that what it is, is an attempt to silence me, to silence the millions of women and the men who support them who have been speaking out about this issue and conveying that contraception is an important healthcare need that they need to have met in an affordable, accessible way.

She said Limbaugh's comments were not "one person who went crazy" and made one inappropriate remark. "He insulted me more than 50 times over three days," said Fluke

Sandra Fluke, standing up for women’s reproductive rights and holding her head high since March 2012. Her parents should be very proud…a sentiment shared and conveyed to her by our president.

Janice D. "Jan" Schakowsky

Today’s Woman of the day is Janice D. "Jan" Schakowsky (born May 26, 1944) is the U.S. Representative for Illinois's 9th congressional district, serving since 1999. Jan grew up in the 9th District and returns home every weekend to meet with individual constituents, business leaders, and groups large and small. 

Jan was elected to represent Illinois’ 9th Congressional District in 1998, after serving for 8 years in the Illinois General Assembly. She is in her 7th term, serving in the House Democratic leadership as a Chief Deputy Whip and as a member of the Steering and Policy Committee. She is member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence where she is Ranking Democrat on the Oversight Subcommittee.

As co-chair of the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, Schakowsky has been known for her support of women's issues while in Congress.

Jan Schakowsky has been a lifelong consumer advocate and a champion for, what she sees as, the disappearing middle class. After a brief teaching career, in 1969 Schakowsky was a young mother and consumer, frustrated by not knowing what items at the store were fresh. She organized the National Consumers Union (NCU). NCU members researched the meaning of the coded numbers on products, which were the only way to know the date something had been made, and thus its freshness. The group printed and sold 25,000 "code books", allowing shoppers to make sense of the numbers and buy fresh bread instead of days-old. When NBC's nightly Huntley-Brinkley newscast reported on the NCU's booklet, manufacturers were embarrassed into providing plain-English "use by" dates. 
 
From 1985 until 1990, Schakowsky was the Executive Director of the Illinois State Council for Senior Citizens. In 1989 she organized an old folks' protest against Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, who had supported a law that reduced the amount Medicare would shoulder for medications and catastrophic illnesses, leaving retired and often fixed-income seniors responsible for more of the costs. Due in part to the protests, the law was repealed.

Schakowsky is by some accounts the most Progressive member of the current US Congress. She is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She frequently gains ratings of between 90 and 100 from liberal and progressive interest groups and lower ratings from conservative groups.

In 2008 the passage of legislation she helped write made children’s products and toys safe, Jan has worked to make life better for working and middle class Americans.

In April 2009 Schakowsky pointedly criticized the tax day Tea Party protests, asserting that they were "an effort to mislead the public about the Obama economic plan that cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans and creates 3.5 million jobs." Schakowsky added, "It's despicable that right-wing Republicans would attempt to cheapen a significant, honorable moment of American history with a shameful political stunt."

For decades, Jan identified her top priority as winning affordable, quality health care for all Americans. In 2009 and 2010, she played a leadership role in writing and passing the historic Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that finally established health care as a right and not a privilege in the United States. 

Working and middle class people see Jan out there fighting for their jobs and paychecks at a time when income inequality has reached record levels. In 2010, then Speaker Pelosi appointed Jan to the President Obama’s 18-member National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform where she bucked the majority and offered her own proposal to balance the budget without cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid -- or further burdening struggling families. 
Jan is proudly pro-choice, favors marriage equality and comprehensive immigration reform. Jan was a founding member of the Out of Iraq Caucus in the U.S. House. She co-chairs the Democratic Senior Task Force which focuses on addressing the needs of older Americans.

We need more women like her in elected positions, someone who will fight for women, children and those who do not have voices. She is indeed an Awesome Woman!

Betty Ford

Today’s Awesome Woman is Betty Ford, (1918-2011) who died yesterday at the age of 93. Her death touched me in a deep & unexpected way as I realized how much she affected my life. As a sober woman for 26 years, I think I owe my life & my recovery to Betty. When she was hospitalized for her addiction to pain pills & alcohol in 1978, instead of hiding the reason for her hospitalization or treat it with shame, she chose to be publicly honest & fully disclose the details of her addictions & treatment with courage & grace. The publicity of her addiction & recovery created an awareness with the general public about the diseases of alcoholism & addiction which lost a lot of the shameful stigma attached to them. Although I did not go through the Betty Ford Clinic, I think my willingness to get the help I needed was a direct result of her shining a light. She made it okay to be a woman alcoholic. And to seek help. And to not be ashamed. It created awareness that one did not have to be the stereotypical skid row bum, that alcoholism affected everyone from all walks of life. And if that was the only thing she did in her life, she deserves the Awesome Woman of the Day pick. But there was much, much more to her.

As First Lady, Ford was active in social policy and shattered precedents as a politically active presidential wife (Time considered her "the most since Eleanor Roosevelt"). In the opinion of several historians, Ford had more impact upon history and culture than her husband. Ford was noted for raising breast cancer awareness following her 1974 mastectomy and was a passionate supporter of, and activist for, the Equal Rights Amendment. Pro-choice on abortion and a leader in the Women's Movement, she gained fame as one of the most candid first ladies in history, commenting on every hot-button issue of the time, including feminism, equal pay, ERA, sex, drugs, abortion, and gun control.

Born in 1918, Betty developed an early passion for dance which she avidly studied . To help defray the expense of her dance classes, she began modeling clothing at a local department store. During some years in high school, Betty opened her own dance school, renting space to use as a studio where she taught children. She also brought dance instruction into a Grand Rapids’ African-American community with a regular weekly class there for children. With her mother’s hospital work exposing Betty Ford early on to people living with disabilities, she also took on students who were deaf and blind, instructing a sight-impaired student to do ballroom dancing, and even learning rudimentary sign-language to instruct the hearing-impaired. She also entertained and worked with children with disabilities at the Mary Free Bed Home for Crippled Children. At Bennington College she continued to study dance and was given the opportunity to study with Martha Graham In New York. She made numerous appearances with the Martha Graham Auxiliary Dance Company in New York.

Her home life while growing up was difficult. After the stock market crash of 1929, she began working at the age of 14. When Betty was 16, her father died in a manner that might have been suicide. Later in life, Betty realized that both her father & brother were alcoholics. After the death of her father, her mother, Hortense Bloomer, supported herself and three children by working as a real-estate agent. Betty Ford later reflected that the example of her mother’s independence would prove to be an important influence in shaping her views on equal pay for equal work policy issues. In a 1987 interview, Mrs. Ford mentioned not only her mother and Martha Graham as her strongest role models and influences but also Eleanor Roosevelt.

At her mother’s urging, Betty returned to Grand Rapids from New York. At the age of 24, she married her first husband, William Warren. The marriage ended in divorce 5 years later on the grounds of “extensive repeated cruelty.” Warren was also alcoholic, a reality that only later Betty Ford confronted while seeking her own recovery from the disease later in life. During this whole period, Betty continued to work. In a 1987 interview, she reflected that the period would prove an instructive one for her as it was her first full recognition of the inequitable salaries between the genders who performed the same work.

In 1947 she began dating Gerald Ford. He proposed marriage to her, but told her they could not marry until the fall because he had a secret regarding something he “had to do first.” She accepted, only to soon be told by him that, he was planning to run for the Republican nomination for the local seat to the U.S. Congress, and then the general election. Ford had practical concerns that the morally conservative district might not support his marriage to a divorced woman who had a career in modern dance. The wedding was announced in June of that year – after he had won the Republican nomination. Betty became both a wife and political spouse practically at the same time. They had four children, but due to Gerald’s political commitments, it fell to Betty Ford to assume most of the traditional responsibilities of a father to the maturing four children in addition to her many active duties as a mother. The increasing stress which resulted from fulfilling commitments to her family, community and her husband’s career and the hectic schedule it required, led in time to physical problems that led to her using and then abusing prescription painkillers.



After she left the White House, she continued to work for women’s rights. She spoke in support for gay and lesbian rights in the workplace and later, with the former President, in favor of same-gender marriage. She created the Betty Ford Center for Chemical Dependency in order to help women in recovery.

A truly amazing and awesome woman. Thank you Betty for being you so publicly.

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Frances Xavier Warde

Inspired by a plaque discovered while strolling through the streets of Pittsburgh this weekend, Today’s AWU Woman of the Day is: Frances Xavier Warde. Born at Belbrook House, Mountrath, Queen's County, Ireland, 1810; died September 17,1884 in Manchester, N.H. She led a group of six Sisters across the Atlantic from Ireland and started a chapter of the Sisters of Mercy in the United States. The Sisters of Mercy began in Ireland in the 1820’s as the House of Mercy established by Catherine McAuley. The House of Mercy became home to the Sisters of Mercy, a new congregation of religious women who, in time, added a fourth vow – a vow of service – to their lifelong commitment to Christ and to his sisters and brothers in need of education, health care, and relief from poverty. As they continued to walk among those they served, the Sisters of Mercy experienced the transformation of early criticism into an admiring nickname – the “walking sisters.”


In 1843 Frances Xavier Warde began in Pittsburgh and by the time of her death in 1884, she had helped establish over 82 Mercy convents, schools, hospitals, orphanages and other works of mercy in some 20 cities across 9 states. Over the course of the next 120 years, many more communities of religious women came to Western Pennsylvania. Some were cloistered nuns, dedicated to a life of prayer. Many came in answer to the call for teachers in the parochial schools established in the Dioceses of Pittsburgh, Erie, Altoona-Johnstown and Greensburg. Some of those communities also responded to the need to provide nurses and agreed to begin healthcare facilities of their own, or to staff or manage hospitals sponsored by local community groups.

A handful of religious communities were devoted exclusively to healthcare. In all, a total of 16 communities of Roman Catholic Sisters worked in over thirty-four hospitals and healthcare facilities in Western Pennsylvania during the period from 1847 to 1969. Although some communities are no longer involved in hospital work, their work in various healthcare-related ministries continues to the present day.

When Sisters began their nursing ministry, some ten years before Florence Nightingale made professionalism a watchword among nurses, they were looked down on for being both nurses and Roman Catholics. Anti-Catholic sentiment was high during those early years in the history of the United States. The turning point for the Sisters and their work was the Civil War. As one of the first groups of organized nurses, Sisters were called to service to care for soldiers regardless of whether Union or Confederate, and without regard to race or religion. The Sisters of Mercy of Pittsburgh responded to the call of Abraham Lincoln and sent Sisters to run military hospitals and care for injured soldiers from the battle fields. Their service, along with that of other congregations throughout the country was recognized by President Lincoln.

"Of all the forms of charity and benevolence seen in the crowded wards of the hospitals, those of Catholic Sisters were among the most efficient. I never knew whence they came or what was the name of their order. More lovely than anything I have ever seen in art so long devoted to illustration of love, mercy, and charity are the pictures that remain of those modest Sisters going on their errands of mercy among the suffering and dying..." [Attributed to Lucius Chittenden in his book "Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration" (1891)]

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Dr. Deb Richter

Nominee for awesome woman of the day is Dr. Deb Richter who played a big role in bringing Single Payer Health Care to Vermont. Kudos for 12 years of persistence!

Vermont’s Single-Payer Health Care Bill Moves Ahead

Gov. Peter Shumlin still has to figure out how much the plan will cost and how to pay for it — and whether he will still be in charge by 2017.

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Christy Turlington Burns

Todays WOD is Christy Turlington Burns (born January 2, 1969) an American model best known for representing Calvin Klein from 1987 to 2007. An ex-smoker whose father died of lung cancer, Turlington is also an anti-smoking activist and an ambassador for CARE. In 2005. She began working with the international humanitarian organization CARE and has since become their Advocate for Maternal Health. She has also been an Ambassador for (RED) since their launch in 2006. Her work on behalf of CARE and (RED) inspired her to pursue a Masters in Public Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School. In 2008, Turlington began working on a documentary film, No Woman, No Cry, profiling the status of maternal health worldwide. The film, Turlington's directorial debut, tells the stories of at-risk pregnant women in four parts of the world, including a remote Maasai tribe in Tanzania, a slum of Bangladesh, a post-abortion care ward in Guatemala, and a prenatal clinic in the United States. No Woman, No Cry made its world premiere at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Concurrent with the debut of her documentary, Turlington launched Every Mother Counts, an advocacy and mobilization campaign to increase education and support for maternal and child health.

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Rose Mapendo

Rose Mapendo is a Tutsi Congolese from the Tutsi Banyamulenge tribe born in a remote village of Mulenge in East Congo. She was married like the majority of girls at a very early age (16 years) in 1979. She never been to school and was raised to become a wife and a mother. In 1994 she moved from her village to a big city called Mbujimayi (the capital city of Kasai Oriental) to give her six children a chance to attend school boys and girls alike, a chance she never had. Her and her husband who was educated started a successful Butcher business. Her husband was the only son of her parents. She and her husband wanted to have as many children as they can have. In 1998 Rose’s life became a nightmare.
http://mapendonewhorizons.​org/node/34

Rose Mapendo, honored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as The Humanitarian of the Year in 2009, and her brother Dr. Kigabo Mbazumutima, have launched Mapendo New Horizons ("MNH"). MNH is a non-profit organization committed to promoting health, peace, reconciliation and equity in African territories, including the Great Lakes region, where extreme violence and abuse have left countless survivors -- especially women and children -- in need of medical, emotional, and social healing. Rose Mapendo is no longer affiliated with Mapendo International in Boston, Massachusetts.


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