On July 4, 2026, the United States commemorated the 250th anniversary of its birth. At that most consequential moment in 1776, a visionary people founded a new nation. Informed by the past and trusting in a providential future, they recognized an ennobling truth—that we are all created equal. The founding generation set forth a new paradigm of legitimate governance, built upon an understanding of the interdependence of rights and responsibilities and the need for human law to be grounded in eternal truths. 

 

Though they themselves fell short of these noble ambitions, they acknowledged that our share in equal dignity makes us responsible to one another and for one another. Our destinies, as individuals, as men and women, as people of varying abilities and vulnerabilities, are necessarily and beautifully intertwined. This noble inheritance is one which every generation must strive continually to honor and preserve.

 

AS ADVOCATES FOR WOMEN in our day, we honor the women of the past who, at a historic meeting in Seneca Falls in 1848, and at national, state and regional conventions in the decades that followed, sought the complete expression of the Declaration's lofty commitments. These American women urged their countrymen to extend to them, the female citizens of the United States, the protections and freedoms promised in the nation's founding documents. 

 

Gradually, over the course of more than a century, their demands were heeded. Women came to enjoy a greatly expanded range of rights and freedoms, facilitating remarkable civic contributions at all levels of society. 

 

ON THIS 250th anniversary, another consequential moment presents itself. America has obscured its founding truth: that our natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are intrinsic to human existence and interwoven with our responsibilities. Radical autonomy has come to be regarded by many as life's highest good, as though our obligations to one another ought not order our lives. This has left women and children vulnerable to new forms of exploitation.

 

Just as the Declaration's promise ennobled all of humanity, its inversion degrades us. As our commitment to these ennobling truths recedes, authentic human flourishing and true justice for all is put out of reach.

 

THEREFORE, in conjunction with this historic national milestone, we, the undersigned, proclaim in one voice the founding of A NEW WOMEN’S MOVEMENT, one built upon the reality of interdependence among women, men and children and responsive to the moral and technological challenges of our times. 

 

FOR WE KNOW:

 

It is unjust for women to bear all responsibility for pregnancy and child rearing, or for society to champion those who are unencumbered by familial responsibilities as the standard bearers of equality and civic and economic participation.

 

It is unjust for women to be subject to sexual violence, or for children to grow up in a pornographic panopticon, where sexual objectification is taken for granted and artificial intelligence can be used to undress women and children without real consequence. 

 

It is unjust for women’s bodies to be trafficked and sold through prostitution and pornography, their gametes to pay for living expenses, or their wombs to gestate children who are bought and sold.

 

It is unjust for children in utero to be willfully destroyed as they develop in the safety of their mothers' wombs; for children to be chemically or surgically sterilized in their formative years; or for adults to place their own desires ahead of the needs of children.

 

It is unjust for women to be imprisoned with men, to be expected to compete against them on sports teams, or to surrender those spaces designed for the privacy and safety of women and children to the desires of the opposite sex.

 

It is unjust to limit women's civic participation, educational and professional opportunities or electoral representation on the basis of sex, or to deprive the world of the fullness of women's capacities by unduly limiting the legitimate horizon of their flourishing to paid work, on the one hand, or the care of family, on the other.

 

It is unjust to compel anyone to deny the biological reality of sexual differentiation, to forbid an individual to speak on that basis, or to characterize as violence words of inquiry or disagreement.

 

It is unjust for the state to replace the decision-making authority of the family or for the market to engulf it.

 

TO PROCLAIM a noble vision of human flourishing, WE MUST ACT NOW. 

 

Increasingly sophisticated technology is accelerating human degradation, both globally and personally. Warfare kills the innocent with callous efficiency; artificial intelligence tempts us to neglect the distinctively human capacity to reason; and reproductive technologies threaten to supplant the female body altogether.

 

THEREFORE, WE SEEK a movement that is authentically diverse, confident in the knowledge that true equality lies in our inherent, irreducible value as human beings, both embodied and transcendent, each with unique gifts which flourish in the service of the common good. 

 

We strive to rebuild an alliance of trust between the sexes, which in the words of the First National Women’s Convention in Worcester of 1850, represents a reciprocity of love and duty.

 

We wish to foster relationships and craft institutions that cultivate true human virtues, that protect the vulnerable, and that shape the next 250 years and beyond.

 

We give voice to a movement that values human life as good, children as good, men and women as good, friendship as good, and marriage as good. We invite all people of goodwill to support our cause. 

 

AND SO WE JOIN TOGETHER to proclaim these resolutions ----- 

 

Resolved, as interdependent human beings defined by our relationships with and obligations to others, we are specially endowed by our Creator with the rational capacity to come to know and to do the good that we ought to do. 

 

Resolved, as rational creatures who mature more slowly and require more care than any other mammal, each girl or boy deserves to grow up within a stable family; and each family needs support from the larger community to accomplish its essential, nurturing, formative work. 

 

Resolved, as individual persons with unique physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs, each of us requires love and attention to thrive, and ought to be guided and formed by our families and communities to become trustworthy, responsible, attentive and caring members of families and communities of our own.

 

Resolved, as unrepeatable human persons whose souls inform our sexually differentiated bodies, every child deserves to be taught that his or her male or female body is good and ought to be encouraged to develop his or her unique talents for the good of all.

 

Resolved, as daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, friends, and citizens, women have a major stake in—and so must always have a substantive voice in—their households; communities; houses of worship; educational institutions; places of paid employment; local, state and national governments; and international decision-making bodies.

 

Resolved, as each child who has ever lived was carried by and is born of a woman, women are entrusted with special responsibilities for the care, nurture, and protection of human beings at the earliest stages of their lives. Society should never sanction or facilitate the wanton destruction of the vulnerable, including those not yet born, or the casting off of parental obligations to the young or filial obligations to the old. 

 

Resolved, as equal to men in our common human capacities and responsibilities, while also privileged by our distinctive capacities for pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, women need the fathers of their children, with their own distinctive responsibilities, to share fully in the great duty and mission of rearing them. 

 

Resolved, as beings with transcendent destinies and innate human dignity, women’s life-giving bodies should not be subject to violence, nor should they be instrumentalized by reducing them to images for consumption, raw material for use, or commodities for sale. 

 

Resolved, as uniquely vulnerable by virtue of our physical difference, women must have access to female-only space—places to mature, develop, compete, and rehabilitate; women also require the dedicated protection of the state from men who would rape, abuse or otherwise violate them, especially from those who have already committed such crimes. 

 

Resolved, as members of the human race, whose rational capacity is ordered to truth, no one should be compelled to affirm statements that contradict their convictions about the nature of reality. Rather than enforcing strict ideological conformity, academic and political institutions should welcome and encourage open inquiry and spirited debate about the weightiest and most controversial issues of our day, emphasizing that disagreement does not constitute violence, nor is want of affirmation tantamount to erasure. 

 

WE PROPOSE a just, humane, and life-giving approach to interdependence, one which honors the full humanity of all involved and recognizes the distinctive contributions of women and men. Without denying our unique differences, the role of conscience, or personal agency, we propose a rich awareness of—and relationship to—the past, present, and future, understanding our interconnectedness across time and space. We wish to transcend the limited political horizons of our time, to learn from what has come before, and to continue to forge, with humility, hope, and friendship, a revolution of the heart: a new way forward for women.