My body, my decision; your body, your decision. Can we please keep that distinction straight?

The fight for reproductive rights was tremendously important to Dot Calm.

You might even call it a crusade.

Dot was one of the first women to try birth control as it became available.

She was happily married and simply wanted a healthy sexual relationship with her beloved husband.

She had given birth to two healthy daughters, but neither pregnancy had gone smoothly. She hemorrhaged with the first, nearly full term, and went on bed rest until she delivered. The second was born ten weeks early and under three pounds, long before "preemies" had become a household word. An additional pregnancy ended in miscarriage after a few months. Each pregnancy sapped her strength--permanently, she once told me--and she knew that she would not survive another. Add to that a letter from a Catholic friend with eight (or more) children already, saying that she had had enough and was going to start using birth control.

Thus began Dot's adventure into the new world of reproductive choice.

"The Pill," when first introduced, caused severe-enough side effects to discourage Dot from taking it for very long. Her body rejected the IUD. But she dutifully tried all the forms of birth control on offer.

She knew that, even if none of them worked for her, she was still providing modern medicine with data they could use to make birth control better. Like for when her daughters grew up.

Ultimately, Mr. Calm "got snipped," and Dot's experiences helped create today's "mini-pill" that arguably both of her daughters used at one time or another--including to treat migraines.

Apparently, Hobby Lobby does not allow its female employees to have estrogen-related migraines...but I digress.

Dot did not believe in pre- or extra-marital sex, but she also knew that it was not up to her to decide for the next woman.

If a friend or one of her daughters had come to her for advice, she would have coached her to have enough self respect not to throw her body around like loose change. But Dot also said that a man lusting for sex can usually find a woman stupid enough to give it up.

And Dot flat-out refused to dump the entire responsibility onto only half of the participants. 

Given her harrowing experiences with pregnancy and childbirth, Dot Calm concluded that it has to be the woman's right to terminate her pregnancy.

"Once a woman is pregnant, it's too late to start yelling at her," Dot once said. Once a woman has an unwanted pregnancy, the thing to do is HELP her, Dot said--help her as she WANTS to be helped.

Case in point. One of Dot's daughter's high school classmates got pregnant out of wedlock. The Catholic school principal tried to intimidate the girl into getting an abortion to avert scandal. Dot was incensed. "They kicked the girl out of the Honor Society, but they probably patted the boy on the back, if they cared to find out who he was," she derided. "They SHOULD be asking this girl what SHE wants and then supporting her. I heard that the girl wants to have the baby and give it up for adoption. They should be helping her do that. Either way, it is the girl's decision--not the school's, and not even her parents'."

Dot knew that there were women out there whom she'd never meet who would want or need abortions for reasons she could never imagine. Having heard too many stories about coat hangers and back-alleys, Dot wanted these women to be able to make their own decisions about their own bodies in safety.

Like Molly Ivins, Dot Calm was frustrated that so many Christians seem to think that women don't have any morals.

"Women take sex, pregnancy, and child-bearing very seriously. VERY seriously," Dot said. "It is wrong to treat them as if only men are qualified to make decisions for them. And the men who want to run women's lives are not even doctors. They are churchmen or politicians.

"If you don't have a uterus, you don't get a say!"