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human rights
Will We Give Birth to a Loving or Shackled Future?
A tale of two births challenges us to consider what kind of world we want to create.
Nov 17, 2025
It occurs to me that “giving birth to the future” isn’t simply a metaphor.
I say this as I continue wrestling with infinity—that is to say, working on the book project I began a decade ago: a book about creating peace. My exploration into all this goes beyond politics, global or otherwise. There are countless ways that humanity needs to change and, indeed, is changing. For instance:
For much of the 20th century, the childbirth process in this country didn’t invite a lot of active participation from parents. Mothers in labor were given heavy doses of drugs, and fathers were banished to waiting rooms.
So wrote David Colker in the Los Angeles Times in 2015, shortly after the death of Elisabeth Bing (at age at 100!), the German-born woman who cofounded Lamaze International in 1960 and helped profoundly change the way we birth the future. When she was a young woman, Bing, then living in England, began working as a physical therapist in a hospital. This, Colker wrote, was “when she first viewed childbirth. It was being treated more like a disease, she thought, than a joyous occasion.”
I can’t begin to describe how grateful I am that I was present at my daughter’s birth nearly 40 years ago—not just present but, oh God, part of it.
She helped bring caring and sanity—and love—into the birth process for many (though not all) women, and for men as well, for which I cry hallelujah. Suddenly dads could now be part of the birth process beyond passing out cigars. That’s not even a joke anymore; men, if they’re involved in their child’s birth, have a role larger than sitting in a room with the other soon-to-be dads, waiting for the doc to come in and cry, “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy.”
Empowering both women and men—and partnering them—has helped launch a social shift that’s still in progress, bringing men into the core of nurturing, the family’s loving center. I can’t begin to describe how grateful I am that I was present at my daughter’s birth nearly 40 years ago—not just present but, oh God, part of it.
I came home for lunch that day in July and there was Barbara out in the backyard, radiant and excited, weeding the coleus bed. She told me that her water had just broken. She also was feeling slight contractions—light, easy things that mainly seemed to amuse her. They were delightful curiosities. Neither of us was really sure this was true labor, but there was all that fluid leaking all over her panties. We went to the hospital. Almost immediately, Barbara’s contractions turned serious. She went into active labor, and I went into my role as breath-and-contraction helper. Her back pain was severe, but I was always with her, pressing my hand as hard as possible against her back, giving her relief with my counterpressure and breathing—“ahee, ahoo!”—along with her. This lasted about six hours. It was the longest six hours of both our lives.
The only time it got close to desperate was well into the evening. “Talk me out of using drugs,” she begged me. I knew she could make it and gave her all the encouragement I could muster. Turns out she was moving along beautifully. By 8:30 pm she was fully dilated.
Then came the most intense part of the process, the pushing. She was at this for nearly two and a half hours, from 8:30 till the birth at 10:50. In this phase, I added a new duty to the man’s role. I was the guy who counted to 10 during each push. She usually got three pushes in per contraction at this stage. Later—as I saw the hair on the baby’s head appear at the vaginal opening—my role became more than just counter. My encouragement became intense, and linked to the rhythm of Barbara’s pushing. “Come on, Barbara, down and out. Down and out! DOWN AND OUT! COME ON, BARBARA!”
When our daughter finally arrived, I cut the umbilical cord. The nurse put the baby up on Barbara’s stomach, and later I held her, danced around with her. We had brought a radio with us, as our Lamaze teacher had advised: Bring music! As I held Alison Grace, Ravi Shankar began playing the sitar. And our squalling newborn became silent in my arms.
“A gentle birth,” writes Barbara Harper, “takes place when a woman is supported by the people she chooses to be with her during this most intimate time. She needs to be loved and nurtured by those around her.”
But there’s also another type of future we also continue to birth: “My feet were still shackled together, and I couldn’t get my legs apart.”
Beyond the intense torture inflicted on the mother, what in God’s name have we just done to the child?
The words are those of a woman, given the pseudonym Maria Jones, quoted some years ago in an Amnesty International report. She was pregnant and had been arrested for violating a drug law. She was in jail in Cook County, Illinois. When she went into labor, she was handcuffed and shackled to her bed.
“The doctor came and said that yes, this baby is coming right now,” she said, “and started to prepare the bed for delivery. Because I was shackled to the bed, they couldn't remove the lower part of the bed for the delivery, and they couldn't put my feet in the stirrups. My feet were still shackled together, and I couldn't get my legs apart. The doctor called for the officer, but the officer had gone down the hall. No one else could unlock the shackles, and my baby was coming but I couldn't open my legs.”
“Finally, the officer came and unlocked the shackles from my ankles. My baby was born then. I stayed in the delivery room with my baby for a little while, but then the officer put the leg shackles and handcuffs back on me and I was taken out of the delivery room.”
No bonding. No nurturing at the breast. The traumatized infant is whisked off to some antiseptic holding pen to lie alone in its cold new world. This isn’t rational. It’s not even sane. Beyond the intense torture inflicted on the mother, what in God’s name have we just done to the child?
Shackled births were banned in Cook County some years ago, shortly after the Amnesty report was made public. But they were only allowed—indeed, the norm—in the first place because the prisoner-mom, as well as the child, had been dehumanized, in the name of the law, no less. This is the legacy we still must transcend. We owe it to the future.
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Foreign Policy Experts Warn US-Saudi Security Pact Would Be 'Risky' to Middle East Stability and Human Rights
The assumption of US backing allowed the Saudis to wage a brutal war in Yemen that cost close to 400,000 lives without fear of consequences. "Now imagine if Saudi Arabia had an ironclad US security guarantee," wrote one scholar.
Nov 11, 2025
As Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman prepares to meet with US President Donald Trump next week, experts are warning that it could cause even greater instability in the Middle East if the president agrees to the Gulf regime's requests for a defense pact.
On November 18, the crown prince, commonly known as MBS, will be welcomed in Washington for the first time since 2018. That meeting with Trump came just months before the prince signed off on the infamous murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi as part of a brutal crackdown on dissenters in the country.
Trump defended MBS from international outrage and isolation at the time and has continued to sing his praises since returning to office. In May, after inking a record $142 billion weapons sale to the Saudis during a tour of the Middle East, Trump gave a speech, practically salivating over the crown prince.
“We have great partners in the world, but we have none stronger, and nobody like the gentleman that’s right before me, he’s your greatest representative, your greatest representative,” Trump said. “And if I didn’t like him, I would get out of here so fast. You know that, don’t you? He knows me well.”
“I do, I like him a lot. I like him too much, that’s why we give so much, you know?” the president continued. “Too much. I like you too much!”
“Oh, what I do for the crown prince,” he added.
Now, according to a report Tuesday from the Financial Times, the Saudis are coming to Washington seeking a similar security guarantee to the one Trump recently granted Qatar, which one State Department diplomat referred to as "on par with the mutual defense commitments the United States provides its closest allies.”
Trump signed an executive order stating that the US would respond to any attack on Qatar by taking all “lawful and appropriate measures—including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military."
That agreement came weeks after Israel launched an unprecedented assault on Hamas leadership as they met for negotiations in Qatar's capital city of Doha to end the two-year genocide in Gaza. Without the security agreement, the Qataris had threatened to walk away from their role in mediating the talks that ultimately led to October's "ceasefire" agreement.
The deal expected to be reached between Trump and the Saudis has been described as "Qatar-plus," not just pledging defense of the state were it to come under attack, but regarding it as a threat to American “peace and security."
Such an agreement was already underway during the tenure of former President Joe Biden, following the normalization of relations with Israel, but was upended by Hamas's October 7 attacks and two years of indiscriminate slaughter Israel launched in response, which bin Salman referred to as a "genocide."
While MBS has publicly stated that he would not agree to continue normalization with Israel without a Palestinian state, he has not shied away from a separate security deal with the US, which reportedly includes "enhanced military and intelligence cooperation."
According to Christopher Preble and Will Smith, a pair of foreign policy researchers at the Stimson Center's Reimagining US Grand Strategy program, the Trump team hopes that by pursuing a heightened security and financial relationship with the Saudis, they can coax them back towards detente with Israel and bring them back into the US orbit in response to what Trump views as an overly flirtatious posture toward China.
"These developments suggest a troubling belief that handing out security guarantees is a quick, cost-free way to reassure anxious partners and ensure their alignment with US priorities. That belief is mistaken," the researchers wrote in Responsible Statecraft Tuesday. "A US-Saudi defense pact would be unnecessary, risky, and unlikely to achieve its unclear aims. Rather than revive the misguided Biden administration initiative, the Trump administration should shelve the idea once and for all."
They said there are few upsides to the normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and that if it were to occur, it would be little more than a formal recognition of the cooperation between the two nations that already exists in combating Iran's influence.
While a deal would lead to few benefits, they argued it would "come with significant downsides," potentially forcing the US to ride along with "reckless driving" by the Saudis, especially with its neighbors in Yemen.
"Extensive US support emboldened Saudi Arabia to wage a disastrous, failed intervention there that dragged on for seven years, fueling a war that claimed close to 400,000 lives, including nearly 20,000 civilians killed by airstrikes," the researchers said.
International relations scholar Adam Gallagher pointed out that the Saudis did all of this merely "because of what it assumed would be continual US backing."
"Now imagine if Saudi Arabia had an ironclad US security guarantee," he said.
The result, he warned, would be something akin to Israel's sense of total impunity to wage destruction in Gaza.
"When a great power provides a security pledge to a less powerful ally, the weaker state is more willing to take on risk, and the patron often ends up paying the price," he wrote. "There is simply no strategic reason for the United States to imperil its interests or incur costs if Saudi Arabia engaged in renewed adventurism."
Human rights groups have noted that a deal also has massive implications for the Saudi regime's actions at home, where its leaders have faced little accountability for their repression of dissent.
“Saudi Arabia’s crown prince is trying to rebrand himself as a global statesman, but the reality at home is mass repression, record numbers of executions, and zero tolerance for dissent," said Sarah Yager, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch. "US officials should be pressing for change, not posing for photos.”
Matt Wells, the deputy director of Reprieve US, emphasized that outside pressure on the regime has mattered in the past: "In the fallout from Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination, Mohammed bin Salman’s regime felt international pressure to improve its human rights record, and that pressure made a difference. Some child defendants on death row were resentenced and released, and from July 2021 to July 2025, there were no executions for childhood crimes.”
“Beneath Saudi Arabia’s glittering facade, the repression of Saudi citizens and residents continues unabated," said Abdullah Aljuraywi, monitoring and campaigns officer at ALQST for Human Rights. "To avoid emboldening this, the US should use its leverage to secure concrete commitments, including the release of detained activists, lifting of arbitrary travel bans, and an end to politically motivated executions.”
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Blessed Are the Peacemakers. And, No, None of Them Are Trump
People are tired of funding wars instead of aid and basic services that could help millions at home and abroad, but simply dumping on Trump’s peacemaking claims misses the opportunity to reach the many people who are sick of war-making.
Nov 09, 2025
If you want to debunk Trump’s claims to be a “peacemaker,” you’ve got plenty of options. You could name some of his most destructive actions, from authorizing weapons sales to Israel to pursuing the largest military budget ever. You could point to his appetite for flashy summits, which serve more to boost his own media profile than to advance diplomacy. You could reveal all the ways that the latest ceasefire in Gaza—while offering some essential reprieve for Palestinians and Israelis—is built on a faulty foundation that is already coming apart.
Trump hungers to make his mark on history, and if that means making peace, he’ll try for that. But just as easily, he will grab headlines by making war, from bombing Iran to deploying troops on U.S. streets. Now he is threatening direct action against Venezuela.
Yet, ultimately, Trump would not be where he is today without his uncanny ability to grasp what other politicians don’t: there is a strong, determined constituency for peace. People are tired of funding wars instead of aid and basic services that could help millions at home and abroad. Simply dumping on Trump’s peacemaking claims misses the opportunity to reach the many people who are sick of war-making.
So, instead of just rejecting Trump’s grandstanding, here’s a prescription for peacemaking that actually works.
Trump campaigned promising to end endless war, but his base is already fracturing under the pressure of this broken promise.
Luckily, those solutions are readily available, embedded in the work of grassroots, women-led peacebuilding in communities on the frontlines of war. These solutions succeed, where Trump’s ill-conceived methods fail—in three central ways.
The Trump administration’s approach to so-called diplomacy emphasizes personality instead of leadership accountable to war-impacted communities. It seeks to extract profit over providing effective care and aid. And finally, it touts rapid, shallow results for the sake of public relations rather than pursue durable peace policy frameworks informed by local expertise. All of this results in weak, short-lived deals.
Let’s take each in turn. First, Trump’s cult of personality encourages allies and adversaries to feed his vanity to improve their position at the negotiating table. For instance, after an initial visit to the Oval Office went sideways, Ukrainian President Zelensky thanked President Trump nine times during his second visit.
Grassroots women peacebuilders know that legitimacy at the negotiating table should not be about kissing the ring. It is instead rooted in the trust they’ve built among war-impacted communities. Their work—as human rights advocates, as aid providers, as community organizers—gives them actual standing to represent community needs in diplomacy. What’s more, these peacebuilders also possess the networks to exchange information and recommendations between frontline communities and policy spaces. Peace agreements that result from this feedback loop are more sustainable because people see their needs represented within them.
In Colombia, which experienced decades of civil war before a 2016 peace accord, community organizations mobilized for years to gather people’s testimonies of the war’s impacts, to transmit their demands, and to include gender and racial justice provisions in their country’s peace process. These were not only positive contributions to their peace process but also built an activated base of political power that propelled a progressive into Colombia’s presidency.
Second, Trump’s emphasis on profits incentivizes economic extraction. The June 2025 peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda promised the United States access to critical minerals needed for the AI sector, despite public objections to the “minerals for profits” paradigm. National Public Radio reports that this peace agreement resulted in “virtually no change on the ground in eastern Congo, despite President Trump’s frequent claims to the contrary.”
Meanwhile, grassroots peacebuilders prioritize nurturing frontline communities by providing much-needed care and aid, not stripping their resources away. SOFEPADI, a women’s organization in the DRC, has provided medical and counseling care to survivors of sexual violence and documented gender violence to inform more responsive policies. In Sudan, a women farmers union organized by Zenab for Women in Development has provided locally-sourced food aid, even amidst civil war.
Finally, the Trump administration has prioritized public relations over real peace, seeding sensationalist and misleading media stories that often declare peace where there is none. These stories give Trump credit for situations he worsened (such as by striking Iran before calling for an end to that fighting). They congratulate him for peace deals where he played little to no role (such as between India and Pakistan), or which failed to address the root causes of conflict (such as between Thailand and Cambodia).
Often some of the most painstaking, vital work of peacebuilding happens quietly and goes unsung. In Yemen, women worked for years, convening across communities and movements, to build together and regularly update a Feminist Peace Roadmap. It laid out the necessary preconditions and steps to secure durable peace. This is not smoke and mirrors; it’s rooted in hard-won, documented expertise and translated into policy language. Women leaders like these know that the peace they seek will not come overnight, in a fleeting headline, but depends upon this deliberate and detailed work.
Trump campaigned promising to end endless war, but his base is already fracturing under the pressure of this broken promise. Amidst this, progressives and feminist peace advocates have a vital opportunity: to refuse to cede the anti-war mantle to the right, while also inspiring constituents across the political spectrum with a powerful pro-peace message. The expertise and lived experience of grassroots feminist peacebuilders points the way forward to a more just world, without endless war.
Reaching across partisan divides isn’t about platforming public officials who may share an anti-war stance but have otherwise attacked human rights and justice. It’s about building ties of shared strategy and solidarity between organizations focused on policy and on base-building, with a common rights-based and pro-peace orientation. This approach also connects communities directly impacted by war and united by the experience of state-sanctioned violence. (The Feminist Peace Playbook we co-produced lays out many of these strategies, to build power for a peaceful and demilitarized US foreign policy, in more detail.)
Last month marked 25 years since the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325, asserting the critical importance of women’s leadership in advancing peace and security. For decades, the evidence has been clear. Centering the leadership of grassroots feminist leaders makes lasting peace achievable. But it will remain beyond reach as long as the real peacemakers struggle to secure political backing, attention, and resources, while Trump takes the limelight.
Feminist values of care and inclusion can create policies that will be trusted and embraced by local communities, even in times of violence and collapse. That wisdom is sorely needed here in the United States and around the world.
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