This morning my roommate and I dragged myself out of bed to attend the Walk for Women's Lives, an event put on by the Feminist Majority and designed to raise money to fund clinical trials for cancer research. Specifically, reproductive cancers. I seem to be doing chick stuff a lot lately.

Actually it's an incredible story. Talk about watching people sacrificing their own time and money to work for something they believe in. Essentially, this is the deal: mifepristone is a drug that has shown signs that it might be useful in fighting reproductive cancers, especially ovarian and uterine cancers. Mifepristone is not the most politically friendly drug. Mifepristone is half of the equation (the other drug's name escapes me) more commonly known as the "abortion pill." In fact, I attended a briefing about mifepristone about a month ago, and so I was already versed in the uses for the drug and the uproar surrounding it when I went to the walk this morning. This use, however, was not one I was aware of. Not many people are, and that's the point. The Feminist Majority has taken it upon themselves to not only gather the money, but the legal power, to make clinical cancer trials using mifepristone a reality. It is a daunting task. At the event were the presidents of NOW and the Feminist Majority, and they gave thanks to the team of lawyers that has spent thousands of hours working out the legal kinks surrounding the trials - for free. Nothing has a ring of sincerity like pro bono work. Several of the speakers had lost family members to reproductive cancer, one only two weeks ago. This is the first time the Feminist Majority has put on a walk like this in years, and it showed. The event could have been better publicized, and organized. But on the other hand, it was great to be part of something that was happening for the first time. It was less polished than other events of a similar nature, and though that revealed more mistakes, it also revealed the raw effort everyone put into it.

So, we took a little walk. It was supposed to be a 5k though I have a sneaking suspicion it was shorter due to some confusion regarding the route. It started at the Women's Memorial in Arlington Cemetery and wound around the tidal basin before returning to the cemetery. I got a t-shirt. Good deal, even though it was purple and generally shaped like a lumpy grocery bag. I went with friends. It was a nice day.