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Claire Salamon asked me to post this: # 380 Monday, October 29, 2007 - WOMEN OF NEW JERSEY: TIME TO FIGHT! On November 6th, women of New Jersey will fight to protect their children, their families-and their own freedom-by voting to support the New Jersey Stem Cell Research Bond Act: WWW.NJFORHOPE.ORG What do stem cells have to do with women's freedom? You already know. Just ask yourself one question: in a typical family, if someone is injured or becomes ill, on whom does the extra work fall? All too often-most of the time!-- it is the woman who gets stuck with the chores of caregiving. It is not right. But it is reality. Now, if the illness is a temporary one, like a common cold or the flu, the unfairness is temporary too. Everybody is a little extra careful around Mom, short-tempered because she is working like two people, but in a few days everything gets back to normal. But what if the sickness or injury is chronic: an incurable condition? Two people's lives are crippled: the sufferer, and the caregiver. Slavery is not too strong a word for what the permanent caregiver endures. To have no life of your own, to become the limbs and body of the one you love, to endure agonies of exhaustion, when the back burns with the constant bending and lifting; when the mind goes half-crazy from interrupted sleep, the endless getting up in the night to turn a loved one over in the bed because they are paralyzed and cannot do it; the anguish of having to give pain to a loved one because a catheter has to be inserted, or a gloved hand must reach up into the intestinal tract, and it hurts them-and also there is the secret shame and guilt of resenting him or her. and sometimes in our darkest hours, we may even finding ourselves half-wishing he or she-- or we ourselves-- would die, so the suffering could just stop. But then the morning comes, and the caregiver gets up somehow, and goes on, dragging herself from chore to chore for endless years, even as her own health breaks down. It is not enough to say, oh, well, she married him, she took the marriage vows. And it is never right to say, this is a woman's lot, this is what a woman is expected to do! Especially not when we may have it in our power to end their suffering. www.njforcure.org The state of New Jersey has long been inspired by the courage of the Riccio family, how every morning Patricia Riccio tells her paralyzed son Carl-"today I am going to go out and find you a cure", and every day she works to make that promise real. What if we could make it possible for Ms. Riccio to go home, and say to her son: "Today is the day; today I found it." And there is another New Jersey mother, somebody you may not know. Her name is Kavitha Balakrishna and she was-is-a fully accredited medical doctor, Kavitha went through medical school, fighting for grades as every med student must, enduring the long sleepless nights, and exhaustion-and she prevailed. She won-and she had started her career as a doctor, and was happy in her useful work. But then her child, a little boy, Pranav, 18 months old, was diagnosed with Spinal Muscle Atrophy (SMA), a vicious disease which slowly saps the strength of the child, taking away their physical abilities, weakening them, until they can no longer breathe. Kavitha gave up her career as a doctor. Now, she now stays at home to care for her child. When he catches a cold, she sits by his bed all night long, fighting to keep him alive. Pranav is four now, and Kavitha sits there still. If you call her at her house, you will always find her, never more than a few feet from her child's side. She does this with a full heart, willingly putting her own life on hold -- but nobility does not lessen sacrifice. So long as her child suffers, so will Kavitha Balakrishna. Maybe it is time we did something about it. When November 6th rolls around, the women of New Jersey have it in their power to strike a blow at this unfairness: done to women all around the world. WWW.NJFORHOPE.ORG To vote YES! on the Stem Cell Research Bond Act is to strike a blow for freedom from the endless prison of incurable illness-not only for our suffering loved ones, but for their caregivers as well-a chance to make somebody free. Women of New Jersey, if ever you wanted to fight against unfairness, now is the time. Think it is too late, that cure will not come in time for you? Then think of the girls now growing up, and fight for them. Do you want them to endure what you went through, or maybe what you are going through right now? First, make sure, you yourself vote: Tuesday, November 6th. If you need a ride to the voting booths, contact your local Democratic headquarters-they support the New Jersey Stem Cell Research Bond Act-and they will get you a ride. If you can drive, you can do more: give friends and neighbors a ride to the voting booths. Take your mom. Take your sister. Drag your husband and your Uncle Fred and your Aunt Ethel. Get them to the voting booths. This will be one of the closest elections in history-because the opponents of the research are using the churches to spread misinformation and flat lies about the research. We don't want to lose half a billion dollars in research funding-- by five or six votes. You know the truth: stem cell research is good and decent and deserves support. We must get everybody we can to the polls, November 6th. And, if you can, chip in a couple bucks, right now. WWW.NJFORHOPE.ORG Do it now before you forget-give what you can, give more than you can-why ? Because here is one more great unfairness. New Jersey is fighting this battle, alone, almost with a zero campaign budget. When California fought for Proposition 71, we had a budget. Bob Klein, the leader of Proposition 71, made that possible, by doing what nobody else had ever done. Bob Klein took his own money, the profits he had made by working hard for decades-and he gave it to the campaign to pass Proposition 71, California's Stem Cells for Research and Cures Act. He personally donated $3.1 million, and much more. He let the campaign work out of his own offices. He let the campaign take over his life, which meant he lost money because that took him away from his regular job-and he persuaded other champions of charity to contribute. The result? The campaign had $30 million dollars. There was money for polls and TV ads, money to get the message out, to combat the lies the opposition spread. The truth became known-and California now spends $300 million a year to advance the research. Missouri? To protect the rights of researchers, a similar amount was raised in the campaign to pass Amendment 2, due to the astonishing kindness of the Stowers family. But there are very few people like Bob Klein and Jim and Virginia Stowers, who have both the ability and the willingness to give and give and give. So brace yourself. How much do you think New Jersey's campaign budget has, to try and make possible $450 million in stem cell research spread over ten years? One hundred thousand dollars. That's right. That's all. What California did with thirty million, New Jersey must do with one-tenth of a million. It isn't fair. But since when have women ever had it fair? Maybe it is time to make a change. WWW.NJFORHOPE.ORG Don Reed www.stemcellbattles.com Rayilyn Brown Board Member AZNPF Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn