The law has the same problem as the manuals. In England and Wales, the Infanticide Act of 1938 recognizes that childbirth-related mental illness can extend through a child's first year.

The lesson works. America does not merely permit ambition. It trains it, early and thoroughly, until wanting something better becomes less a choice than a reflex.

Before I understood politics or human rights as fields of study, I understood that ideas have consequences.

Afterward, several people told us we were brave. Brave for choosing it. Brave for standing up there. What they said, more than once, was that we were brave little girls.