OPINION: Mother’s Day’s Forgotten Call to Action
We’ve forgotten that the holiday’s origins had nothing to do with sentimentality—it was a rallying cry for women to seize political power and prevent the “mutual murder” of war.
By Phil Huber
COLUMNIST
We just celebrated Mother’s Day, a holiday most Americans associate with cards, flowers, and family brunches. But we’ve forgotten that the holiday’s origins had nothing to do with sentimentality—it was a rallying cry for women to seize political power and prevent the “mutual murder” of war.
In 1870, Julia Ward Howe, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” watched the Franco-Prussian War erupt and decided women could no longer stand aside while men made decisions that filled “the globe with grief and horror.” Her “Mothers’ Day” proclamation commanded: “Arise, women! Say firmly: ‘We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.’” She understood that to create a more just society, women must claim their rightful place as equal participants in politics.
History had already proven women’s capabilities. During the Civil War, women bought bonds, managed farms, harvested fields, worked in war industries, and nursed soldiers. During World War II, more than six million women entered defense plants, factories, and shipyards—riveting aircraft, welding ships, and producing artillery. Women demonstrated they could do “men’s work” and do it well. Yet each time, they were told to return home when the crisis passed.
Today, 156 years after Howe’s proclamation, we face a different kind of war—a systematic assault on women’s rights, autonomy, and contributions to American society. The current administration’s actions demand that women engage in politics not as a civic nicety, but as a survival imperative.
The Administration’s Record
Consider what has already occurred since January 2025:
On reproductive rights: The administration rescinded Biden-era EMTALA guidance requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortion care, putting pregnant women’s lives at risk. VA facilities can no longer provide abortion services even in cases of rape, incest, or when the veteran’s life is threatened—changes implemented before the formal rulemaking process was complete. The administration initiated steps to severely restrict mifepristone, the medication used in more than half of all abortions.
On contraception access: In April 2025, the administration withheld Title X family planning funding from organizations serving low-income women, resulting in over 800,000 people losing access to birth control or facing imminent loss of access. About 50 Planned Parenthood health centers have closed, and nearly 1,000 patients in Maine alone lost their primary care provider.
On military service: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired or forced out 24 senior military officers, most of them Black or female. He disbanded the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, calling it a “divisive feminist agenda”. The Pentagon eliminated women’s initiative teams that addressed obstacles facing female service members. The administration has begun forcibly removing approximately 1,000 transgender service members. NASA and the Pentagon received directives to remove references to women’s contributions from their websites, and even Arlington Cemetery removed information about female veterans.
On historical recognition: The administration has engaged in what can only be described as an Orwellian erasure of women’s accomplishments from public record.
This isn’t speculation about what might happen—these changes have already occurred or are actively underway.
The Path Forward
Howe’s evolution is instructive. She began believing women had a special maternal role but came to realize that women must be “free agents, fully sharing with man every human right and every human responsibility.” That realization, she said, was “like the addition of a new continent to the map of the world.”
We need that same awakening today. The Civil War and World War II taught us that women are fully capable of managing farms, building weapons, running businesses, and shaping national affairs—they simply need to claim that power.
Here’s what you can do: Join your local political committee that aligns with your concerns. Attend city council and school board meetings. Organize voter registration drives. Support women candidates. Write letters to editors and elected officials. Show up at public hearings. Make your voice heard.
The warning is stark: if women remain politically disengaged, don’t be surprised when you find yourself living like it’s the late 19th century—when women couldn’t vote, couldn’t control their own property, couldn’t leave abusive marriages, and existed as legal dependents of men. Those laws didn’t vanish because men generously granted women rights. They disappeared because women fought, organized, marched, and demanded their place as equal citizens.
Julia Ward Howe called for mothers to refuse to let their sons “be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.” Today’s mothers—and all women—must do more. We must enter the political arena ourselves, not as supplicants requesting consideration, but as equals demanding our rights.
This Mother’s Day, honor Howe’s original vision. The alternative is already unfolding before our eyes.
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