Women Helping Women: Laura Bush
December 24, 2008
by Contributor
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First Lady Laura Bush’s lifelong dedication to promoting literacy is well documented. As Honorary Ambassador for the United Nations Literacy Decade, Mrs. Bush, in an effort to promote literacy, convened leaders from around the world during the United Nations General Assembly in September 2006, for the White House Conference on Global Literacy. She has often spoken about her belief that literacy is essential for achieving the goals of eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, fostering economic development, and achieving gender equality. However, Laura Bush’s passion as an advocate for some of the most serious issues facing women today is almost unknown.
Laura Bush’s advocacy for women’s health began with breast cancer awareness while she was First Lady of Texas, and has continued during her time as our country’s First Lady through her partnership with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation. In 2007, Mrs. Bush’s work to raise both awareness of, and research grants for women’s health issues resulted in the expansion of Texas Tech’s Women’s Health Institute to include the Jenna Welch Women’s Center, named after Mrs. Bush’s mother, who is a breast cancer survivor. Mrs. Bush has continued to travel throughout the world to raise awareness of women’s health issues and has just celebrated her fifth anniversary as ambassador of The Heart Truth, an organization dedicated to raising awareness of the need for detection and prevention of heart disease in women.
In contrast to Mrs. Bush’s national public image, people in her home state of Texas have widely regarded Mrs. Bush to have what is know locally as “spunk”. This brand of quiet, brave feminism was demonstrated to the world in 2001 when, as the first non-president to host a Weekly Presidential Radio Address, Mrs. Bush delivered a scathing condemnation of the brutal oppression of women in Afghanistan.
Mrs. Bush has continued to support the women in this region through her work with coalitions who are determined to address oppression, education, and women’s health in the Middle East. She serves as the Honorary Chair of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council, created by Presidents Bush and Karzai in 2002. The Council’s goal is to promote both private and public partnerships between U.S. and Afghan institutions, and to mobilize private resources to ensure Afghan women have opportunities to gain the skills and education they were deprived of under the Taliban. To date, the Council has implemented over 30 initiatives in support of Afghan women in the areas of economic empowerment, education, political participation, health, and children’s issues totaling approximately $70 million. Fewer than a million Afghan children attended school in 2001, and all of them were boys. Today, more than six million Afghan children are enrolled in school, and a third of them are girls. Mrs. Bush is committed to continuing as an advocate for these women after President Bush leaves office by routinely meeting with students, teachers, parliamentarians, lawyers, and judges during their visits to the United States for education and training.
Laura Bush has often spoken about the importance of women’s education in countries around the world. The Ambassadors Girls Scholarship Program, part of the President’s Africa Education Initiative, has awarded 375,000 scholarships in 40 countries, totaling $46 million. These funds are used to support girls in both primary and secondary school allowing them to develop into educated members of their societies. During five visits to Africa, Mrs. Bush has met with many recipients of the Ambassadors Girls Scholarship Program. These girls, as the future of women’s leadership in the region, will play positive roles in the education, political, and economic sectors of their countries. We salute Laura Bush as a Woman helping Women.
This is a pharmaceutical industry paid patronage appointment; to get women on deadly heart drugs which have no evidence in medical literature of benefit for women. It’s inception is pharma, and they actively sought her as their spokeswoman.
I can’t say about the rest of her work, but this is bogus, and not FOR WOMEN. It’s for the drug industry, backed by pharma, and littered with astro-turf “patient group” back-up. Not to forget, the Bush family cleaned and laundered Fargen (who made the gas for the gas chambers) to rename themselves as Bayer, and come into North America. Bush grandfather, and father, sat on the boards of a couple pharma until very recently.
Sorry I forgot to include the name of the org she represents, which is a pharma created and backed astro-turf.
“The Heart Truth”
Sorry again. That would be FARBEN.
I’m just going to go back to stuffing my face and stop posting.
Thanks, Thia. That’s a very inspirational post.
Thanks for writing this Thia.
Isn’t it sad that one has few places to find “positive press” about women in public life.l
Welcome to The New Agenda!
Hey Thia – Have you thought of submitting your piece to some conservative on line publications like American Thinker or Pajamas Media? It’s so well written it’d be great if it could have a larger audience. And, it would be a way to feature women’s accomplishments without making a big issue about the gender, it would just be what it is. The piece could be pitched/titled about an homage to our outgoing First Lady or something like that. I bet you could get it published elsewhere.
Thia – This piece is great! It is very educational for those of us not familiar with the First Lady’s work at home and around the world, particularly as it pertains to women’s issues. The list of accomplishments is truly impressive and the fact that she has acted without making big announcements about what she’s up to (at least as far as I know or perhaps the press has simply ignored her) makes it all the more moving. Your writing is also incredibly beautiful. I don’t know what you do for a living, but I hope writing is involved. I hope you will try to get this piece published elsewhere. It deserves a wider audience and is a wonderful reminder to those of us advocating for women that Democrats and so-called liberals don’t have a monopoly of doing great things on behalf of women’s rights.
Just great!
Thank you!
Great work, Thia!
Laura is great. I like these sorts of articles.
anybody has action ideas in regards to have Laura Bush’s memories find a publisher?
Laura Bush has been one of the most useless First Ladies in modern times.
For one thing, she was touted to us as a “former librarian’ yet she said nothing to stop her husband (President Bush) when — as one of his first acts as president — he CUT $40 million from the funding for public libraries.
Public libraries may not be important to rich people who have access to all the books they want or need to read, but they are critically important to the poor who need to have free access to books.
We are told by all that Laura and George Bush have a very close and supportive relationship, so she COULD have had an effect on him, but she apparently has chosen not to.
When — again, as one of his first acts as president — Bush issued a decree prohibiting foreign countries that receive financial health aid from us from discussing abortion as an option for pregnant women, Laura did not talk him out of doing so.
Yes, considering the huge staff Laura Bush has available to do the research and leg work for her, she has done precious little to help the nation’s (and the world’s) most vulnerable or to protect them from her husband’s policies.
Thank you for this piece on Laura Bush.
I think she’s a decent soul who has, unfortunately, been treated like nothing more than an appendage of her husband by the msm and Bush-haters. While I cannot count myself as a George Bush fan, I appreciate that you have treated Laura like an individual – like a human in her own right.
This is yet one more aspect of TNA that I appreciate.
lightacandle
There’s always a continuum and perhaps Laura Bush falls on it somewhere father down than one might like for a First Lady, but it’s not black and white, all or nothing. It appears she has done some wonderful things and why shouldn’t they be noted?
Also, to state that “Laura did not talk him out of doing so,” is a bit much since 1) we have no idea what Laura Bush said to her husband behind closed doors about anything, and 2) she doesn’t have the power to talk her husband into our out of anything and shouldn’t be held responsible for his policies.
I’m not a huge fan of the Bush’s, but I found this piece illuminating. I also appreciated your post as a great blog wouldn’t be great if it didn’t have people challenging each other and offering opposing perspectives.
I do appreciate seeing these articles on women here. Yes–it’s a good suggestion to send your article, Thia, to other blogs. I think Mrs. Bush has been a lovely First Lady, and I like reading about her accomplishments.
I remember seeing something like this about Sarah and Hillary here a few months ago. I think it pertains to this situation as well.
Hillary
Laura
She should not have stood by her man.
She should not stand behind her man.
She has too many opinions about everything.
She has no opinion about anything.
She is too power hungry.
She has done nothing with her life.
She is too loud.
She is too quiet.
She is too hard.
She is too soft.
She is a Bitch.
She is a Ninny.
She is too masculine.
She is too feminine.
Look at that cleavage, she dresses like a whore.
She dresses like my Grandma.
Since we didn’t elect her, she should stop trying to have influence over the President.
She didn’t try hard enough to influence the President.
They are a political partnership and she probably doesn’t even love him.
She is a Stepford wife and she loves him too much.
She is a man hating feminist.
She should be more of a feminist.
She is not a woman we can be proud of.
She is not a woman we can be proud of.
Thia – Yes! (Btw, I hope you will submit your piece to other venues. It deserves a wider audience and that will be my last comment about that as I don’t want to pressure you….just gentle encouragement.)
Anna-I’ve been so busy with family I have barely had time to read the comments. (hiding in the bathroom with my laptop
) Thank you so much for your comments and your support!
Thanks to all who liked the article. We need more press about what women do right instead of the constant stream about what is wrong with us.
Thia,
I liked the article as well and Anna’s idea for posting it on some conservative blogs. It could be a way to get some more visitors to the TNA site and maybe even some more members. I like the idea of conservatives and Republicans reading about the benefits of getting women elected and maybe even applying the “vote for women” rule. I’d like to see more women Republicans holding office.
Thia – Sorry, I’m breaking my own rule. It’s so easy to submit to American Thinker or Pajamas Media. All you need to do is send you piece as an e-mail attachment to the editor which is posted on their web site. If they like it, they’ll e-mail you back and that’s pretty much all there is to it. Because you wrote it as an educational piece for TNA, you may want to rework it ever so slightly to have an angle for one of those publications. I think something as simple as “An Homage to our Outgoing First Lady” could work. Or, if you have info about her having difficulty finding a publisher, the piece could be framed and titled so that it’s anchored to highlighting the good Laura Bush has done and the press’s unfair stereotype of her as a woman and perhaps as a conservative, as well.
OK. That’s it. I’ll shut up about it (unless you want to talk about it or want any help. I’ll be your short term literary agent if you want!)
Thia with all due respect to you, and to Madame Bush: I very much respect your right to your point of view, and even, in certain areas, Laura Bush’s deserving of all our respect. I could list several ways I respect her. But aligning factual negative comment about FL Laura Bush’s activities with misogynistic hate speech against women (the list you’ve posted above) is off base.
First Lady Laura Bush does what she does not for women’s health, but as a representative of a marketing firm for Merck and some other pharmaceutical companies in order to ‘sell’ their drugs, with which she and her husband, and other members of her family have ties. Drugs which have no evidence of benefit for women, but evidence of harm. The beneficiary of her work in that arena is for profit and stockholers, not women’s health.
You know who Pam Martens is? I think so. Read here:
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/.....nd_24.html
You may disagree, but I think it has to be said, and here.
Thia,
I totally agree – we should post it on conservative blogs. So many of our members fit that bill – and yes, it would be a great way to spread the word.
I want to also add for our members – if any of you have women that have touched your lives and served as a mentor to other women, please write us a blog piece and we will post it.
If someone would like to take on writing about Sarah Palin and how she has promoted women, that would be terrific!
Sis-
The list was not directed at you.
The link you posted is about Gardasil. Laura Bush is not a spokesperson for that vaccine that I could find although she has spoken about it. Gardasil is the vaccine that is used to reduce the incidences of cervical cancer by preventing HPV. It has nothing to do with The Heart Truth or any of the other organizations I mentioned. The only work she does for them is to raise awareness of the importance of women getting checkups and preventing heart disease. Historically, many women died because routine heart health exams weren’t done. These issues were thought to mostly affect men so women weren’t screened at all. If you will click on the link in the article you can read all about it.
As to the second statement “First Lady Laura Bush does what she does not for women’s health…” If you truly believe that, then nothing I could ever say would change your mind.
Anna-
Email me at newagendateamcaptain@yahoo.com and I’ll get some of your blog info.
Well, I will tell who MY idea of a great First Lady is — it is Eleanor Roosevelt, who despite being born into the aristocratic class in America (her uncle was President Teddy Roosevelt), worked tirelessly all her adult life to make life better for the most vulnerable in our nation: the poor, the black Americans, the laborers, the elderly, the ill.
I would also list Hillary Clinton as an important First Lady who used her “bully pulpit” to improve the lives of Americans and used her influence with her husband, President Clinton, to encourage policies that brought peace, prosperity and world respect to this country.
First Ladies in America live better than Marie Antoinette ever did. They don’t have to life a finger to put food on the table, have a clean house, or provide an income to the family. They don’t make beds, cook meals, dust, vacuum, do laundry, iron their clothes, drive the children to school. They have huge staffs that will investigate any idea put forth by the First Lady, do the required research, bring in the experts to advise on any idea or project and, in general, carry out any First Lady’s every order or wish.
The LEAST our American First Ladies can do is devote themselves to some worthy cause for the vulnerable people who need help in this country — especially women, single working mothers, children, the elderly and the ill.
- – - – - -
Just for the record:
“This is the seventh consecutive year that Hillary Clinton has secured top billing as Americans’ Most Admired Woman — and the 13th year she has made the top ten since her first appearance on the list in 1993.”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113.....lling.aspx
lightacandle,
Eleanor is a personal hero of mine as well. I have a quote of hers sitting right next to me here on my desk that reads: “do one thing every day that scares you.”
Judith Hope who I featured above named her organization after Eleanor. Would you have interest in writing a blog piece for us about Eleanor that we could post?
Oops.
correction:
Clearly, I had intended to write: “They don’t have to lift a finger to put food on the table…”
Eleanor Roosevelt first took Franklin D. Roosevelt down to see the gut-wrenching poverty and suffering on New York’s lower East Side BEFORE she and Franklin were even married. (Yes, she was already Eleanor Roosevelt, as her father was the younger brother of President Teddy Roosevelt.) Franklin had never, until then, even been aware that people had to live the way those poor souls lived; he was shaken and horrified at the conditions he saw.
For the rest of their lives, Eleanor was tireless and relentless in calling to Franklin’s attention situations that he, first as New York’s governor and later as president of the United States (for 12 years), needed to know about. But Eleanor did not rest with alerting Franklin to the issues of poverty, discrimination and general unfairness; she hounded him to address the issues and devise solutions that at the very least alleviated the suffering. During FDR’s presidential years, Eleanor traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, looking at all parts of American life so she could report back to FDR on how well (or not) his programs were working, so that he could make adjustments if necessary. During the war (WWII), Eleanor traveled overseas to visit and cheer the troops, talk individually to the wounded by the thousands, and bring reports back to FDR.
She enraged the white supremacists in the South to such an extent that they threatened to kill her. Nevertheless, in the years after FDR’s death when she went on to become the First Lady of the world, she would NOT back down in the face of the KKK’s threats to kill her. On one such occasion when the KKK threatened to kill her, she drove her own car, with one elderly woman friend as her sole companion — and a gun on the seat of the car — to a remote black church in southern back woods to give a talk and rally blacks to continue their fight for equal treatment under the law. She was their friend and they knew it. She was the friend of all who suffered, and most knew it.
Eleanor Roosevelt transformed America’s idea of what a first Lady COULD be and SHOULD be. She was and is Hillary Clinton’s hero and mine as well.
Wow. Where’s the movie about her life? Madame Roosevelt was brave, but by the way, so was the elderly lady who entrusted her life to Eleanor’s aim.
I watched Iron Jawed Angels the other evening. I was disappointed. It was hard to know what was truth. The director seemed to think he/she was making a cartoon.
Eleanor Roosevelt had had to overcome an almost paralyzing shyness, but she did overcome and went on to become a powerhouse among the women in the Democratic Party and among reformers in general.
Women sought Eleanor out for her advice on issues, her fundraising ability, her great organizational skills, and just because she was a warm, vibrant and nice person who was unflinching in her efforts to bring about fairness and human decency.
Thia we can’t discuss this here. Briefly, the link in the article is pharma spam, pharma written by pharma marketing departments. FL Laura Bush is being used as an influential spokesperson to sell Gardasil (which does not prevent cervical cancer) and heart drugs to women, which do not prevent heart disease. There is no evidence in the medical literature for prescribing to women, for the major drugs used to “prevent” heart disease, which is where FL Laura Bush’s urging leads. There is no evidence for statin drugs, stents, angiograms, or bypasses, except in a minor segment of the population of middle aged men who have already have had a cardio event. The Bush’s are tied in with pharma. That’s why they use her.
Evidence for Caution: Women and Statin Use
http://www.whp-apsf.ca/
Pam Martens on just one of several instances where FL Laura Bush touts Gardasil. She and Gupta both *work* for the same pharma marketing funded astro turf. Gupta is part owner.
##
http://www.rawfoodinfo.com/art.....henews.htm
“GUPTA: Now there is a way to prevent the virus from ever taking hold in the first place. It’s a vaccine. Typically, you think of vaccines for the measles or chicken pox. But Gardasil protects you against cancer. Trials showed the vaccine could lower cervical cancer rates by 70 percent.” (5)
The clinical trials for Gardasil showed no such thing. (6) Even Merck is not making this wild and unsupported claim.
On May 17, 2007, CNN aired an interview between Dr. Gupta and First Lady Laura Bush. (7) Video Clip. The First Lady endorses mass inoculations of children with Gardasil on the basis that it will protect them later in life against cervical cancer. Gupta does not challenge her on the fact that there is zero evidence that the vaccine provides such long-term protection. The vaccine’s own researcher acknowledges this. (8)
##
The vaccine’s own researcher, to whom Martens refers, is Gardasil and Cerverix scientist Dr. Diane Harper. Now there’s a woman you should bio. She stood up against Merck, risking them withdrawing their funding of her lab, to tell the truth about Gardasil. They tried to silence her. They threatened her. Major media would not listen to her. A small mid-western newspaper broke her story. She’s a true whistleblower hero, fighting for women’s health.
Interview with Dr. Diane Harper on Gardasil:
http://groups.google.ca/group/.....c146137cd6
##
Gardasil: Dr. Abby Lippman, Dept. of Epidemiology, McGill University:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/177/5/484
I won’t continue here. And I do not dispute, because I do not know, about FL Laura Bush’s good works. But this, yes, I think women need to know the difference, those who don’t already, between research, and marketing. FL Laura Bush is being used to market something we really know nothing about. Her statements claim otherwise.
Sis-
My article had nothing to do with Gardasil. (which many experts have various opinions on.)
My article had nothing to do with “the Bush’s,” it was about LAURA who is an individual person by the way.
I don’t buy into any of the conspiracy theories about either the “evil Bush’s” or the “evil Clintons” These are just people, they aren’t perfect. We could find something negative to say about ANY woman we write an article about if we try hard enough. If there is NOTHING you can find admirable about Laura Bush I just don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you could write an article about someone you do like?
Thia, I have explicitly said I admire much about Laura Bush. This is The New Agenda for women, no? Then women need to know there is no new agenda in pushing untested drgus on women, which is what she is doing, or being used to do. HRT? HT? Been there, done that.
I believe I gave you links to the science. Not marketing, not opinion, science.
So that’s all I wanted to do.
I don’t have the budget to interview Diane Harper, Gardasil researcher. I’m a senior on a senior’s pension, which even with my work, doesn’t come up to the official Canadian government poverty level for a single person. But I would if I could. I bet there’s someone on The New Agenda who works in healthcare, medical research, or is a working journalist, who could do it.
Until then, I urge women reading here who wnat to know the truth about women’s health, not the marketing, to read the link I gave where a New Hampshire television reporter interviewed her about Gardasil, as part of the tv stations in-depth, and very accurate series about Gardasil.
You shouldn’t try to denigrate what I write by calling it conspiracy theory. It’s beneath you, and a variation on name-calling.
I work in health policy advocacy.
Sis- The conspiracy theory was in reference to the implication the she could only be interested in promoting something there is profit in for her or pharma. I’m not trying to denigrate your opinion, just asking you not to denigrate mine. I will add Diane Harper to my list of women to research for potential articles.
lightacandle
Thanks for that link. It was interesting to see that in the most admired man category, no one was even a close second, but in the most admired woman category, Palin, though still far behind Clinton, closed a tighter gap than among the men.
I happen to think the public is often quite fickle and go with what’s in front of their face at the time, often due to how the media prioritizes things. So, for example, some amazing woman who’s a chemist or someone doing top level research in cancer would have a hard time making it to the number one slot (or even the number 3 slot, as Oprah Winfrey did this year – ugh) because that’s not what’s on the front page. There are so many amazing people working quietyly, tirelessly behind the scenes doing extraordinary things.
All of that said, it was great to see Clinton’s name up there, especially in light of what the media put her through this year.
I am sure FL Laura Bush believes she is doing the right thing, (Gupta, on the other hand, knows better).
I’m just as sure Laura Bush’s information comes from the pharmacuetical industry.
HELP NEEDED!!!! (sorry, off topic)
We need to get over to the Huff Post and respond. It would be a great place to make a comment and a link to the video “Where’s the Line?”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....53394.html
http://thenewagenda.net/2008/1.....-campaign/
(hat tip: Thia)
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