Shine Women of the Year (Love + Sex): Hillary Rodham Clinton

One of my favorite women in history andone of Time's 100 most important people of the last centuryis Margaret Sanger. She was a crusader for reproductive freedom and fought to educate and empower women about conception and contraception, and then to make birth control accessible to everyone. Among her many activist endeavors, Margaret Sanger founded the organization that eventually became Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She also wrote and spoke many words that could easily rally a new generation of women to fight for their own sexual health rights.

One of Margaret Sanger's quotes has come to mind often in the last year as abortion rights were argued, voted on, and protested as a part of the election:

"No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother."

I thought of this as I held my own signs high, cast my own ballot, and read with great concern about how close our country teeters on the edge of eradicating women's right to choose. I thought about how I would have done the same during the early 1900s, joining Margaret Sanger in her efforts to keep women informed, safe, and in charge of their own bodies.

I also thought about the women who have stepped forward to continue the education, lobbying, and fighting back whenever our access to birth control, abortion, and medical counseling is threatened. One woman who has pushed Sanger's work into this century and has adamantly championed women's sexual health rights this year is Hillary Rodham Clinton.

For that, we name her Shine's woman of the year for Love + Sex.

We applauded her combined effort with Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, to articulately and aggressively speak out against a rule proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The rule, Rodham Clinton and Richards explained, would grant every employee and volunteer of any medical facility the right to refuse to participate in any part of administering abortions, sterilization procedures, and even prescribing birth control.

The rule, they wrote, would not only cost an exorbitant amount of money to run, but would jeopardize women's right to making medical decisions with her doctor, to getting immediate care for life-threatening diseases like HIV, and to getting the contraception she needs.

Whether we voted for you in the primary or not, whether we dreamt you'd be America's first female chief executive or would've picked another woman, you are, by far the clear choice here. We have a long road ahead of us until we are free in the way Margaret Sanger envisioned for us all, but we're farther down the road because of you, Hillary Rodham Clinton.


[photo credit: Stephen J. Boitano/Getty Images Entertainment]