Winning the Right to Vote

On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, passed its final hurdle when it was ratified by three-fourths of the states. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920, which later would be celebrated as "Women's Equality Day."

"Votes for women" — demanded by my great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in 1848 — finally became the law of the land.

My mother, Rhoda Barney Jenkins, the great-granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was born in July, 1920, one month before the passage of the 19th Amendment. In other words, she was born into a society that denied women the basic civil right by which all other rights are gained.

Now 87 and nicknamed "the Tiger," my mother was thrilled when I told her that Planned Parenthood had invited me to help them honor Women's Equality Day.

"If you can't control your reproduction, you can't get a job and get enough money to be independent," she told me. "Now that reproduction is controlled, you can invest in an education and use it. During the time of my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in the early 1800s, the doors of universities were closed to women.

"A general belief was that the study of Greek and mathematics would render a female sterile. Education was dangerous; females were in constant danger of losing 'femininity.' Well, as a teenager, my great-grandma studied Greek, won the school prize, a Greek lexicon, and went on to birth seven kids.

"Obviously, if she had seven children, she wasn't practicing birth control. At the time many women didn't understand the mechanics well enough, other than abstinence. Large families were all the fashion, to populate the United States that was fairly empty at the time.

"Planned Parenthood is absolutely necessary. I support it very highly."

As my great-great-grandmother would say, "Forward into the light!"