Any conservative woman who dares to make waves in the political stratosphere by taking a steel-spined stance for what is right can expect to be immediately subjected to a ferocious onslaught of coarse vulgarities from the left. The self-proclaimed “women’s rights” advocates attack these women with the most demeaning, vulgar, and sexist language imaginable.  Why?  Because they fear them more than any other set of individuals on the planet; they are a supposed contradiction, the feared paradox that exposes the ultimate liberal hypocrisy.

Conservative women are a blatant contradiction to their belief that women are inherently liberal, pro-abortion, pro-“gay marriage,” and victims at home, school, and work by male domination. Republican men, that is. This entitlement-prone, victim mentality creates a permanent slave to the liberal agenda and a vote on which they can always count.  However, liberals should not be so hasty to assume that they have a complete monopoly over women.  There are plenty of us who are the exact opposite of what they have so desperately tried to manipulate or — if that doesn’t work — bully us into being.

Where are the liberal women rallying in support around the women hung, raped, and tortured at the hands of Sharia law? And where are the liberal women crying out in opposition to the systematic hangings of homosexuals in Iran? And where are the liberal women demanding equal rights for the helpless baby girls who are killed in their mother’s wombs in China because their parents wanted a boy but are only allowed one child? Or the babies with handicaps who are not allowed a chance at life at all? Or all the millions of baby girls who would have grown into women if they had not been aborted over the course of the past 50 years? Oh that’s right, there are no liberal women rallying for those causes. They’re all conservatives.

Knowing, living, and fighting for the truth can carry a weighty price for some women. A woman like this in political leadership is to be feared and hated above all else and destroyed as quickly as possible. I have heard this phrase used dozens of times, “You are not a REAL woman,” as though the liberals have the right to define what it is to be a woman. They particularly fear conservative women in politics because they are usually impossible to manipulate.

Most conservative women who enter roles of political leadership are not doing so for career advancement either inside or outside the political world. Instead, they usually attain positions of political leadership as their children are growing older or have moved off to college and, after having become aware of the imminent jeopardy of our country, way of life, safety, and the well-being of their children and grandchildren, they are possessed by a powerful “mama-bear”-type motivation and drive to fight this crisis.

Political maneuvering and manipulation has proved ineffective in containing these women, and so the liberals have realized that they must resort to more drastic means — destroying their credibility, reputation, and image by using the over-obliging media which more than happily blasts them with every imaginable slur, falsehood and sexually brazen insult.  After the ugly battle is over (by the time the debris has been cleared and the truth exposed) the damage has already been done, and few are able to survive the aftermath with their reputation, stamina, and respect still in tact.

Here’s to those who are brave enough to do the right thing no matter what the sacrifice.

Today’s guest blogger is Caroline Biggs a Liberty University Chapter Leader with Young Women for America.

The National Encyclopedia building at Ångbåtsbron in Malmö (Sweden).

Right after International Women’s Day, a new pronoun, “hen,” was added to the online version of Sweden’s National Encyclopedia.  The entry defines hen as a “proposed gender-neutral personal pronoun instead of he [han in Swedish] and she [hon].”  A heated debate was sparked by the publication of Sweden’s first ever gender-neutral children’s book, Kivi och Monsterhund (Kivi and Monsterdog). It tells the story of Kivi, who wants a dog for “hen’s” birthday.

Sweden takes pride in being “the best country to deal with gender equality.”  What they are doing, however, is more than creating gender equality or gender neutrality; the measures they are instituting completely eliminate gender distinction.

Social Democrat politicians have proposed installing gender-neutral restrooms, so that members of the public will not be compelled to categorize themselves as either ladies or gents.  Several preschools have banished references to pupils’ genders, instead referring to children by their first names or as “buddies.”  So, a teacher would say “good morning, buddies” or “good morning, Lisa, Tom, and Jack” rather than, “good morning, boys and girls.”  They believe this fulfills the national curriculum’s guideline that preschools should “counteract traditional gender patterns and gender roles” and give girls and boys “the same opportunities to test and develop abilities and interests without being limited by stereotypical gender roles.”

According to Slate, one clothing store in Sweden got rid of its “boys” and “girls” sections, and a Swedish toy company, Leklust, has received attention for reversing the typical gender roles in its latest catalog — a boy in a Spiderman costume is pictured pushing a pink baby carriage, and a girl outfitted in denim is riding a tractor.  Boys will be allowed to have names like “Lisa,” and girls will have names like “Nick.”  The Swedish Bowling Association has announced plans to merge male and female bowling tournaments in order to make the sport gender-neutral — all will be unisex.

Jan Guillou, one of the country’s well-known authors, declared that the pronoun “hen” is “silly, because it doesn’t change anything. … And I don’t think that my gender has anything to do with my equality because that is a political matter,” she said in an interview.  She referred to gender-neutral lobbyists as “feminist activists who want to destroy our language.”  Others have suggested this new initiative could be both psychologically and socially damaging for Sweden’s children.

Elise Claeson, a columnist and a former equality expert at the Swedish Confederation of Professions, worried that school-aged children would become confused by talks of a third gender, the one referred to as “hen,” at a time when they are developing both physically and mentally.  “Adults should not interrupt children’s discovery of their gender and sexuality,” Claeson insists.

In the kindergartens in Sweden, when pupils play house, they are encouraged to include “mommy, daddy, child” in their imaginary families, as well as “daddy, daddy, child”; “mommy, mommy, child”; “daddy, daddy, sister, aunty, child”; or any other modern combination.  This indicates that the Swedish social engineers not only want to educate children about gender neutrality, but they also want to teach children that homosexual families are acceptable, with a goal of eventually being an approved part of mainstream culture.

While the goal of teaching children to treat people equally is laudable (and Biblical), it is just as important to teach them that gender differences are natural, God-given traits that people are meant to celebrate, not repress.  

Hillary Clinton created a firestorm back in 1992 when she remarked in an interview that she guessed she could have just stayed home and baked cookies.  Fast forward to 2012 and Hilary Rosen — who has visited the White House more than 35 times — attacks Ann Romney, mother of five boys, for “never work[ing] a day in her life.”  Just when we thought the left couldn’t get more insensitive and condescending toward conservative women and derisive of the concept of motherhood, the Democrats’ narrative about a supposed GOP “war on women” gets exposed to reveal the long-standing, patronizing, and extremely abusive feminist “war on conservative women.”

All it takes is a quick look at all the magazine features about “women of the year” or “outstanding women” to discover that the media elites and leftist women in politics and punditry have zero knowledge of the accomplishments of conservative women; nor do they understand or appreciate the contributions to society and the future of the nation by those women who “choose” to nurture and raise their own children.

Rosen’s put-down of Ann Romney also reveals an appalling lack of understanding about the work involved in raising your own children.  I am a career woman who chose to stay home with my children when they were young; those years flew by and were just a blip that hardly registered on my career path.  But, for me and for my children, those were incredibly productive and important years; both they and I are still reaping the benefits of that investment of my time, talents and energies.  It is very short-sighted of Hilary Rosen and others of her ilk to poke fun at those of us who put our husbands and children at the top of our priorities.  Anyone who looks at the fractured families that are so prevalent today will recognize that the nation and individual families are paying an exorbitant price for making family and children’s well-being an afterthought in women’s lives.

I also have to add that, for me, those stay-at-home years were the hardest work I have ever done.  Mothering would be much easier if, during the day, someone else cleans up all the messes, fixes all the meals, does all the laundry, picks up all the toys, handles the squabbles, and is on call for nine hours straight!

But, I feel sorry for working moms; they miss out on the joy of each new discovery their children make.  I didn’t want someone else to have those daily moments of pleasure.  I didn’t want someone else’s values and attitudes shaping my children’s outlook and attitudes toward life.  I didn’t want someone else training and nurturing my children and determining their future prospects and influencing their day-to-day development.

Yes, I understand that, for some women, staying home is not an option, but many are merely sacrificing their time with their children for a nicer house or car, a luxury that would otherwise be out of reach, or a splashy vacation or other perk of modern life that seems necessary at the time.

I am fully aware of — and experienced and survived — the significant financial and career sacrifices families make to live on only one income during their children’s formative years.  I am even more aware of the hefty sacrifices that many of those families make when it comes to their children’s well-being and the mom’s emotional fulfillment.  That latter consideration is certainly part of the reason for the underlying venom in leftist women’s disdain for stay-at-home mothers.

Pick up any women’s magazine today, and you’ll find stories of exhausted women who have no interest or time for themselves, their families, for sex or for homemaking — gorgeous kitchens with the latest in refrigerators and stoves are unused as family members pick up fast food on their way to somewhere besides home.  Read any newspaper, and you’ll see accounts of wealthy kids who are in trouble and kids from tony neighborhoods who are runaways or throwaway teens.  When my children were pre-teens, the dean of my husband’s university college laughingly told us, while making conversation during a cocktail party, that his son had dropped out of high school to “find himself.”  Here was a man with a Ph.D. and a long list of academic accomplishments whose son dropped out of high school.

What was it both Barbara Bush and Jacqueline Kennedy said?  If you fail at being a mother to your children, nothing else matters.

Want a good laugh? Here’s one. The United Nations (U.N.) has published its first “World Happiness Report.”  Yes, within 158 pages the U.N. has “measured” citizens’ happiness levels and then ranked their respective nations.  The U.N. ranked the United States 11^th in the world.  Apparently, Americans are only mildly happy.  But, how sound can the U.N.’s study be?  If it’s sunny in Denmark and raining in Thailand on the days of the study, where would you be happier?  The U.N.’s report is outlandish, but sadly, today’s secular culture measures happiness in terms of external factors that inevitably leave people unfulfilled.

Consider how today’s women are told to measure happiness: career status, material possessions, and independence from men.  Yet, these goals consistently leave women feeling disappointed.  On the cusp of the 1960’s, women were told that sexual liberation would make them happier.  Despite advances in sexual promiscuity, education, and career status, a recent study shows that women’s happiness has declined in the past 35 years.  Why?  Happiness was based on superficial goals and falsehoods.

Not much has changed in recent years.  At the start of the Obama Administration, women were told they would be happier with a “Feminist in Chief” fighting for greater “equality” in the workplace.  Again, women are left disappointed.  Obama’s job policies have actually hurt women more than men, despite what he preaches.  A recent study shows that women have lost seven times more jobs than our male counterparts.

Additionally, the Obama Administration is working tirelessly to convince women that they will be happier with taxpayer-funded health care and contraception.  Despite how pretty the left packages the individual health care and contraception mandates, women (and men) are losing their freedom of conscience and look to inherit an additional $340 billion in national debt.  Perhaps these factors contributed to the 26 percent of American women who are on some type of anti-anxiety medication.

What secular society must understand is that true happiness cannot be based on the external things in our lives, such as money, status, and possessions.  Nazi resistance leader and German theologian  Dietrich Bonheoffer explained that, “Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety.  Yet all the time they are the very source of anxiety.”

Let us recall that God’s Word reminds us, “For You [God] are our glory and joy,” and the message to us from Psalm 40:1-3, “I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry.  He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.  He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.”

According to a recent report published by a U.K.-based Christian Medical Fellowship, on average, Christians live healthier, happier, and longer lives.  This isn’t a coincidence.  After all, those fuzzy feelings of happiness will always come and go along with life’s trials.  But life’s true joy is a daily gift from our loving Heavenly Father.

One day, not too long ago, the finger of God touched my heart in a strange way.  I stopped in at the barn where I keep my show horse, and while visiting with my trainer and other friends, I noticed a family I had not seen there before.  Their son was going up and down the aisle where the horses are stalled, attempting to get their attention, while the dad was watching carefully.  It was obvious that they were not as used to horses as I was, so I left my friends, walked over to the young man’s dad, and asked what the boy’s name was.

John is ten years old and had an obvious delight in these beautiful animals staring at him.  I gently took him over to a horse I knew would be perfectly calm to pet.  I had raised her from birth myself, although she is now a fancy show horse owned by a great rider.  ”John,” I said, “pet this one; she likes you.”  He squealed with joy as Star put her soft muzzle on his forehead and smacked a good lick of his hair.  ”Nothing like a little equine love,” I thought.

John stuck his hand towards the horse, but I warned him that the horse might think his finger was a carrot and urged him to be careful.  He looked at me with eyes full of joy and laughed out loud as he exclaimed, “Carrot!”  By the time I had to leave, John’s hair — or as we horse lovers like to say, “forelock” — was wet from Star’s loving kisses.  I hoped his mom wouldn’t mind that night; there is nothing better than that barn smell as far as I am concerned.

Yes, it was one of those joyous moments, and one I needed, as life sometimes throws you curve balls you think are just too big for you to handle.  Then God allowed me to meet John, a little boy with Down syndrome, who reminded me of the joys set before us every day — the little things that are so important — and the fact that when storms come, you can always delight in the everyday joys of life around you and praise the God who created it all.

I left that barn renewed, and I can still hear the joy of this precious young man in his delightful discovery of horses, the strong yet wise animal God put on earth to be a delight to those who can see and feel them.  Thank you, John, for being here.  Thank you for being the instrument of God’s love to me.  And many thanks to your parents, who chose life so that we could all be blessed.

Our guest blogger is Janne Myrdal, who serves as State Director of Concerned Women for America of North Dakota. To learn more about Down syndrome and the pro-life resources available on this issue, visit Downsyndromebrochure.com, a project of Concerned Women for America.

When the Pilgrims left their homes in England and landed on Plymouth Rock, it wasn’t to ensure protection of their “reproductive rights.”  When Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death!” the freedom of which he spoke was not the provision of free access to contraceptives from all employers. And when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, it wasn’t so that Catholic hospitals and charities would have to pay for something they believed was morally wrong. Our Founding Fathers came to this country to gain freedom, something which the Obama Administration has shown little regard for lately.

In the weeks following President Obama’s contraception mandate and its subsequent so-called “compromise,” there has been a clear divide between parties as the left tries to characterize this issue as a “women’s reproductive rights” issue, and the right has maintained that this is clearly a question of religious liberty. The problem is that liberals simply refuse to look at the facts in front of them which prove that this is not about “reproductive rights” or even about contraception.  The Catholic bishops are not asking the government to ban contraception, and there is ready availability of contraceptives to all women who want or need them.  Already, even without President Obama’s mandate, a majority of insurance plans provide contraceptives, and for those without these plans, women are able to go to federally-funded clinics and health centers which received $632 million from the government in 2012.

The Obama Administration would like to make people believe that contraceptives are “essential health benefits” and that without universally mandated health insurance coverage of contraceptives, women would be significantly harmed.  The problem with this argument is that even if conservatives lost their minds and did concede that contraceptives are “essential” and that it was critical that women be able to access contraceptives for free, they’re already available to virtually anyone who needs or wants them!  Taxpayer money already goes to the provision of family planning services.  Due to government funding, there are over 4,500 family planning clinics and 8,000 community health center delivery sites nationwide – a majority of which provide contraceptives.  Seventy-five percent of all U.S. counties have at least one clinic that provides contraceptives.  As much as President Obama would like to characterize this as a health question or a “war on women,” the simple fact that women already have access to these medications renders his claims untrue.  Bottom line: This is a war on religion.

Thomas Jefferson once said that, “No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority” (emphasis mine).  President Obama’s HHS contraceptive mandate does infringe upon individuals’ rights of conscience.  It forces the Catholic Church and other organizations to do what they believe is morally wrong.  These are precisely the types of laws that our Founding Fathers were fleeing from when they came to America and precisely the types of laws that our Founding Fathers were fighting to prevent when they ratified the Constitution.  There is a reason that the right to freedom of religion is the first of the amendments to the Constitution, and there is a reason that the “right to free health care” does not appear anywhere in the Bill of Rights or any of the subsequent constitutional amendments.  Simply put, our Founding Fathers believed in freedom; they didn’t believe in socialism.

There is an old saying that says, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”  The Obama Administration says that it wants insurers to provide contraceptive services for free so that people will not have to violate their consciences.  Anyone knows, though, that the charities, schools, and organizations will pay for this indirectly through higher premium costs.  The compromise is not compromise – nothing comes for free.  In this case, the cost that President Obama seems willing to force us to pay is not just higher premiums, it’s the loss of religious freedom, liberty, and the right to conscience.

Ultimately, this mandate is just another glimpse of how ObamaCare as a whole is seizing freedom from today’s Americans, and it shows why not just this requirement, but President Obama’s health care plan as a whole, must be immediately repealed.  Americans nationwide are recognizing that ObamaCare poses a fundamental threat to their liberty.  This realization is at the core of nearly every state ObamaCare lawsuit across the country and the subsequent hearing in the Supreme Court earlier this week.

Contrary to President Obama’s assertions, Americans care more about living free lives than receiving free health care.

Our Guest Blogger today is Claire Rossell, an intern with Concerned Women for America’s (CWA) Ronald Reagan Memorial Internship Program.  Learn more about interning with CWA by clicking here.