While I am a pro-life woman, I am also a woman who is concerned about rights for the disabled, maternity leave, the death penalty, health care, domestic violence, breastfeeding rights, etc.
The pressures are intense, because the rewards for success and the penalty for failure are more and more.
I could give 48 penalties in every match if I wanted to. It is a question of sometimes choosing what is - in your own mind - of material importance and what isn't, what might be a crucial potential penalty and what might not be.
Personally I am very much against the death penalty for several reasons.
I always, always decide where I'm going with the ball before I take a penalty shot, stare at the ball, follow through, and never look at the place that I'm going to shoot.
I may not have played men's football, but I've been at World Cups as a player. I know the emotions. I've been in quarter finals, a semi-final. I'd been substituted and sat on the bench watching us lose a penalty shoot-out. I know what happens, what you need when the pressure's on.
I don't get wrapped up in the politics of going down to win a penalty or getting an opponent sent off.
No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
People ask me, 'What were you thinking during that game-winning penalty kick in the 2011 World Cup?' I was actually thinking absolutely nothing. I just walked up there and was so inspired by my teammates who rocked all their PKs; they just killed it. I figured I might as well do the same, or they might have my neck.
There's a motherhood penalty because we've been long taught things that are stigmatized about motherhood. As workers, we don't want to talk about our kids at work. We're afraid to, or that when we leave at 5:30 to relieve the sitter we're somehow going to be diminished.
