Dana Perino Tells Young Women to Take Risks and Leave Room for Romance

There is a common thread connecting women everywhere. Whether you’re a young professional walking to the subway after work—headphones in, keys clenched between your fingers—or a mother finishing a Target run, buckling your toddler into a car seat while scanning the parking lot, there is a shared experience beneath it all. A quiet but constant awareness of your surroundings. An edge that every woman learns to carry.

As America prepares to mark the 250th anniversary of its founding, Memorial Day also presses a deeper question upon the living: Are we preserving a nation worthy of such sacrifice? The men and women buried beneath white headstones died in service to a country ordered by constitutional liberty, civic duty, and the conviction that freedom is worth defending.

To the women of the West, life under the Iranian regime is incomprehensible. In Iran, the legal age of marriage is 13, women are banned from dancing or singing in public, passports can only be obtained with written permission from a man, and of course, the hijab is required to hide their faces from the world.