{"id":4414,"date":"2005-08-05T07:44:37","date_gmt":"2005-08-05T07:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/choosing-when-to-be-a-mother-hen.html"},"modified":"2005-08-05T07:44:37","modified_gmt":"2005-08-05T07:44:37","slug":"choosing-when-to-be-a-mother-hen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/choosing-when-to-be-a-mother-hen.html","title":{"rendered":"Choosing when to be a mother hen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gag me with a baby spoon:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/08\/05\/nyregion\/05lives.html\">Sweet NYTimes profile of a abortion-rights activist<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>She rummages on her desk and produces two charming snapshots that confirm her good fortune, blushing with pride and with apologies for her generic mom-ness, right to the roots of her fluffy blond hair. <\/p>\n<p>Imagine that: the woman who infuriated Gov. George E. Pataki last weekend, and continues to do so this week by denouncing him as a &quot;double-crosser&quot; and a &quot;flip-flopper&quot; over his decision to veto a bill that would make the so-called morning-after pill available without a prescription is a dedicated mother hen herself. Twice over. <\/p>\n<p>And yes, Ms. Conlin discovered two babies are precisely twice as much work as one. Not to mention the double whammy of a weight gain she is still trying to whittle away: &quot;I tithe to the gym down the street,&quot; she says of being too busy to actually get there. <\/p>\n<p>Ms. Conlin, 46, freckled and flushed, had heard that pregnancy, sonograms and motherhood might alter her perspective on the birth control issue &#8211; or, as she terms it, reproductive rights. Didn&#8217;t happen. Her babies came by choice, not by chance or mistake. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;It doesn&#8217;t make sense to people who see us as abortion-rights activists, but to me, being pro-choice means seeing it as bigger than one issue and one position,&quot; she says. Naral, which was formed in 1968 to repeal abortion laws and now operates in 30 states, functions on a simple premise: &quot;Its reason for being is to make sure every woman in this country is able to chart her reproductive destiny,&quot; she says. &quot;Without that, women are not free.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Catholic school background almost all the way, blah, blah, blah&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gag me with a baby spoon: Sweet NYTimes profile of a abortion-rights activist She rummages on her desk and produces two charming snapshots that confirm her good fortune, blushing with pride and with apologies for her generic mom-ness, right to the roots of her fluffy blond hair. Imagine that: the woman who infuriated Gov. George&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Choosing when to be a mother hen - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/choosing-when-to-be-a-mother-hen.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Choosing when to be a mother hen - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gag me with a baby spoon: Sweet NYTimes profile of a abortion-rights activist She rummages on her desk and produces two charming snapshots that confirm her good fortune, blushing with pride and with apologies for her generic mom-ness, right to the roots of her fluffy blond hair. Imagine that: the woman who infuriated Gov. 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Imagine that: the woman who infuriated Gov. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}