On Nov. 8, Boothbay voters will help elect our governor, Congressional representatives, and the state legislature.

Also on this ballot is the matter of fluoride, a chemical that has been added to our water supply since 2004 to help prevent tooth decay. Experts say it is a good thing.

But some local voters, led by women, oppose it, saying it is a matter of personal choice.

I do not have a dog in this fight. I am too old to worry about tooth decay, as my choppers are not very good anyway.

But I am interested in the idea that women seem to be leading the local anti-fluoride campaign.They oppose the idea that someone else is making that decision for them.

A couple of years ago, when we were fighting Mr. COVID, many women (and men) opposed mandatory vaccination orders. When you saw anti-vaccine protesters on TV, you could always see lots of women in the crowd. These women opposed the idea that someone else was making that decision, especially world-renowned experts like Dr. Tony Fauci.

On the other side of the world, women who live in Iran are up in arms. They are protesting in the streets. At issue is a black head scarf called a hijab. Under Iranian religious laws, their government forces women to wear these scarves outside the home. Those laws have become a symbol of the way rulers impose strict control over women. A month ago, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, traveled from her hometown to Tehran. When she got off the subway, she was confronted by the morality police and arrested for allegedly wearing her scarf improperly. That is right, the morality cops hassled and arrested her because they didn't like the way she wore her head scarf. Three days later, she was dead.

Officials said she died of natural causes, but her family and many others didn’t believe it. Her death triggered widespread and violent national protests that continue to this day. In truth, the death of a woman killed while in the custody of the morality police was not the only cause of the protests. The New York Times put it this way: “Beyond the anger over Ms. Amini's death lies a range of grievances: a collapsing economy, brazen corruption, suffocating repression, and social restrictions handed down by a handful of elderly clerics.” But the trigger for widespread anger is opposition to the handful of elderly clerics who ordered women to wear scarves and used the morality police to enforce their edicts. In this case, this enforcement included the death penalty. Once again, the women stood up after the government imposed an edict upon them. The women did not have a say in the matter.

My late bride loved scarves. She had lots of them and wore them with pride, especially in her last years before cancer took her away from us. But I can guarantee you I would have been in the dog house if I even attempted to order her to wear a scarf and told her she must wear it in a certain way.

A few months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned 50 years of set law and decided that states had the right to regulate the practice of abortion. As we all know, that decision has migrated into our local political discourse as our TV screens are choked with nasty commercials plugging both sides of the question. The issue has infected our politics like kryptonite as candidates try to tip-toe around it so as not to anger one side or another.

The women in my life do not favor abortion. They love the idea of babies, bore them, and spent the rest of their lives caring for them in one way or another. But, and you knew there would be a but, they hated the idea that someone else dared to tell them what they should do with their bodies. They especially hated the self-righteous politicians (on both sides) and others who put down women because they demanded the right to make their own decisions.

In recent years, from fluoride to vaccines to head scarves, we have watched women from Boothbay to Tehran stand up demanding personal rights. A hundred years ago, men finally agreed to permit women to vote. Has it been only in the last few decades that male American political leaders figured out that they should hear and listen to the ideas and demands of their wives, daughters and granddaughters?

This time, no matter what the TV pundits, expensive consultants and special interest groups want us to believe, control of Congress may be determined by our wives, daughters and granddaughters.