Bastard is a slur on motherhood

The skeptics call it a new age gimmick, but honestly I love all the hype and hoopla surrounding it! Of all the commercial ploys in the world this one I submit to with great alacrity. I love my mother and being the rather expressive kinds, make sure to remind her of it at regular intervals. However, the whole idea of one day dedicated solely to going all mushy about your mom is so worth it. She might call it childish on the face of it but will be sniffing into her handkerchief when nobody's looking.
As I hip hip hurray my mother's remarkable love, patience, support, sacrifice and extraordinary culinary skills today, I feel a pressing need to be true to the spirit of the day and pay a tribute to mums the world over. So, I resolve to purge my vocabulary of the expressions 'illegitimate' and 'bastard' as used to describe or abuse those born of a woman out of wedlock. The expressions are a slur on the dignity and self-respect of every mother. While I have nothing against the institution of marriage and am a proponent of humanism rather than feminism, the above expressions are deterimental to woman empowerment.
Cursing the womb that is the cradle of mankind for lack of male willingness to shoulder the responsibilities of fatherhood, for varying reasons, tantamounts to blatantly negating social equality between the sexes. A woman who loves and nurtures her offspring, doesn't need a male endorsement to lend legitimacy to her child.
Mexican actor Barbara Mori observed in an interview that "In India a child born out of wedlock is a problem, but in my country you would find a number of single mothers. I have a child though I am not married, which is not a problem for me." The question, however, is not of the problem of social acceptance of single mothers alone, but the centuries of deep prejudice against children born of such mothers. Language mirrors the cultural, social and economic evolution of a people. Thus on the social front the advertant or inadvertant use of 'bastard' and 'illegitimate child', reeks of disrepect and bias against women who don't enjoy matrimonial permissibility to bear children.
From the so called progressive to orthodox societies, this language skew against women is very pronounced. I would rather that every woman earns for herself a financial and social stature which equips her to nurture well the life she desires to bring forth into this world. On no account do I mean to dismiss men and fathers as inconsequential, all I seek is a true tribute to mothers who bear children they love, never 'bastards' or illegitimate offsprings'.