In response to the Obama Administration’s decision to have insurance companies cover the costs of counseling for battered women, (and other benefits), Fox News contributor Sandy Rios made the following statement:

“Is the White House out of their mind? Does the West Wing not know what the left wing is doing? We’re $14 trillion in debt and now we’re going to cover birth control, breast pumps, counseling for abuse? Are we going to do pedicures and manicures as well?”  (Read more here and here.)

It is strange to think that we live in a world, where in one country women fight for their right to talk publicly about their vaginas and in another country women are still prohibited from showing their hair, and yet in another country, laws prohibit donning burkas all together and somewhere they still mutilate women, cutting away their pleasure organ. Strange, because, we are inter-connected like never before, through internet, media, trade relations, environmental crisis and warfare, and it's becoming harder and harder to keep ugly secrets. Information is more readily available and as a species, we are more enlightened and know so much, not only about our brains and biology but also about the state of our planet, the games we play in the world through gender, money, politics and power. Perhaps I have high hopes and expect too much of our human race, but the co-existence of both futuristic and ancient paradigms baffles me. Especially because, despite our super-evolved consciousness and sophisticated ways, we all seem to live in prisons. Some we choose, some we don't.