"American Style Health Care: Helter Skelter Par Excellence"

"Myths and Realities of Apprenticeship in Nursing: Paternalism in Practice"

"Nursing Roots: Impact on Role Change"

"Professionalism and the Law"

"Women and the Political Process: Their Social Influence Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow"

...political freedom is basically intellectual freedom, the freedom to do one's own thinking.  Intellectual freedom and the political and personal power to make a choice among alternatives go hand in hand, thus the importance of information in a free society.  So long as problems and issues are presented in a one-sided fashion where information is distorted by dominant persons or groups, or where information is withheld from individuals, they cannot know their real alternatives or test the results of their own thinking, decisions, and actions.  Freedom on any level of living implies accompanying responsibilities for one's choice of action or even of non-action.   Exercising one's freedom to act entails both psychological and social responsibilities.  And who of us, may I ask, with any sense of an independent spirit in us wants to be responsible for someone else's decisions if we have not actively and knowingly participated in the formulations of these?  Those who negate the necessity of doing their own thinking do often end up accepting the responsibility for the errors growing out of decisions not of their making...

-presented to Zonta International, Aurora Area Zonta Club, Aurora, Illinois, April 17, 1975.  This speech was published in the book, Jo Ann Ashley: Selected Readings, edited by Karen Wolf, 1997.