When a few women attended the New Politics conference in Chicago in the ‘60s, they presented a resolution calling for equal pay for equal work and abortion on demand. The resolutions committee refused to bring the resolution to the floor for a vote. When one of the women, Shulamith Firestone, went to the podium to protest, the conference chairman patted her on the head and said, “Cool down, little girl. We have more important things to talk about than women’s problems,” according to Collins.

One would think, given all that has changed since the 1960s, women’s issues would also have taken on more significance. Nowadays, many women work at jobs that were once male-only territory. Women work as engineers, CEOs, school administrators, doctors, attorneys, judges, pharmacists, legislators, welders, truck drivers, construction workers, fire fighters, police officers, and soldiers. In fact, women are free to enter any field men enter as long as they meet the same requirements men have to meet.

Women now have it all—and more. One thing women can do that men can’t do is give birth. It’s not that men can’t become parents. They do and most of them make excellent parents. It’s still the case, though, that most women have the major responsibility for child rearing. Granted, the situation in that area has changed somewhat for the better since the ‘60s. Even so, most families in which both parents work outside the home still struggle to find adequate child care. Single women who are the sole support of their children have an even harder time, with the mother juggling work and home duties with little or no break.

It doesn’t take much imagination, given the demands of child-rearing, to extrapolate that for women who want a career outside of the home one of the most important elements of gaining that career is for women to have control over their reproduction.

Since the early ‘60s, when the Pill first came on the market, many women have had the freedom to have sex without getting pregnant. Women also have available many other forms of birth control. The fact is, though, even the most careful women can end up with unwanted pregnancies. While the anti-choice crowd bemoans the number of abortions that have taken place since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, data from the World Health Organization (pdf) show that women have always used abortion, legal or illegal, to control their reproduction.

The number of women who choose to have abortions also shows that women consider controlling their reproduction an important element in controlling their lives. Yet, in the current climate, even the most liberal of men don’t consider reproductive rights an important part of progressive politics.

This fact has been brought home to liberal women activists in many ways. A male political strategist recently said that women pro-choice activists shouldn’t make an issue out of abortion in the state legislature because it takes the focus off more important issues.

Then there’s the member of progressive political group, a man, who when faced with the suggestion that abortion rights should be one of the issues the group worked on, asked how abortion rights was a progressive issue. This man obviously never had to hold down a full time job while raising children as a single parent.

Most mind-boggling is the attitude of many male Democratic office holders, some of whom even claim to be pro-choice, but who won’t touch the issue of abortion rights unless they are forced to. Then there are the Democratic politicians who make no bones about the fact that they’re anti-choice and if they had their way, women would be plunged once again into a pre-Roe world. These politicians aren’t shy about legislating away women’s abortion rights. Oh, yes, they believe in equal rights and all that other good stuff, but they don’t give a hang about what women have to go through to control their fertility.

We are far, far from the ‘60s. The songs that moved us so during that era are now used in TV ads to move products. War protests warrant only slight coverage from mainstream media focused on a few noisy Tea Party activists on the Washington Mall or in Town Hall meetings. And when a million people came to Washington in 2004 to protest George W. Bush’s anti-choice policies, the march was barely mentioned anywhere.

In the meantime, male-led state legislators around the country are taking reproductive rights away from women as fast as they can. They are defunding Planned Parenthood and making so many restrictive abortion laws that women in some states may find themselves traveling long distances to find an abortion provider. Or they could find one hidden away somewhere around town to get an abortion, just as they had to do in the ‘60s.

Women’s control over their reproduction is definitely a progressive issue. It relates to a woman’s ability to work, to have a family when she decides is the best time to do so, to earn money to support her family, and to find and keep jobs that pay equally with the jobs men get. No issue is more progressive and right now no issue is more pressing for women. The hope is that women in 2011 won’t settle for a pat on the head, a “cool down, little girl.” They didn’t in the ‘60s and they shouldn’t now.