[Vision2020] The Campaign Against Women

[Art Deco]

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May 19, 2012
The Campaign Against Women

Despite the persistent gender gap in opinion polls and mounting criticism
of their hostility to women’s rights, Republicans are not backing off their
assault on women’s equality and well-being. New laws in some states could
mean a death sentence for a pregnant woman who suffers a life-threatening
condition. But the attack goes well beyond abortion, into birth control,
access to health care, equal pay and domestic violence.

Republicans seem immune to criticism. In an angry speech last month, John
Boehner, the House speaker, said claims that his party was damaging the
welfare of women were “entirely created” by Democrats. Earlier, the
Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, sneered that any
suggestion of a G.O.P. “war on women” was as big a fiction as a “war on
caterpillars.”

But just last Wednesday, Mr. Boehner refuted his own argument by ramming
through the House a bill that seriously weakens the Violence Against Women
Act. That followed the Republican push in Virginia and elsewhere to require
medically unnecessary and physically invasive sonograms before an abortion,
and Senate Republicans’ persistent blocking of a measure to better address
the entrenched problem of sex-based wage discrimination.

On Capitol Hill and in state legislatures, Republicans are attacking
women’s rights in four broad areas.

*ABORTION* On Thursday, a House subcommittee denied the District of
Columbia’s Democratic delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, a chance to testify
at a hearing called to promote a proposed federal ban on nearly all
abortions in the District 20 weeks after fertilization. The bill flouts the
Roe v. Wade standard of fetal viability.

Seven states have enacted similar measures. In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer
signed a law that bans most abortions two weeks earlier. Each measure will
create real hardships for women who will have to decide whether to
terminate a pregnancy before learning of major fetal abnormalities or risks
to their own health.

These laws go a cruel step further than the familiar Republican attacks on
Roe v. Wade. They omit reasonable exceptions for a woman’s health or cases
of rape, incest or grievous fetal impairment. These laws would require a
woman seeking an abortion to be near death, a standard that could easily
delay medical treatment until it is too late.

All contain intimidating criminal penalties, fines and reporting
requirements designed to scare doctors away. Last year, the House passed a
measure that would have allowed hospitals receiving federal money to refuse
to perform an emergency abortion even when a woman’s life was at stake. The
Senate has not taken up that bill, fortunately.

*ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE* Governor Brewer also recently signed a bill
eliminating public funding for Planned Parenthood. Arizona law already
barred spending public money on abortions, which are in any case a small
part of the services that Planned Parenthood provides. The new bill denies
the organization public money for nonabortion services, like cancer
screening and family planning, often the only services of that kind
available to poor women.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature
tried a similar thing in 2011, and were sued in federal court by a group of
clinics. The state argues that it is trying to deny money to organizations
that “promote” abortions. That is nonsense. Texas already did not give
taxpayer money for abortions, and the clinics that sued do not perform
abortions.

Last year, the newly installed House Republican majority rushed to pass
bills (stopped by the Democratic-led Senate) to eliminate funding for
Planned Parenthood and Title X. That federal program provides millions of
women with birth control, lifesaving screening for breast and cervical
cancer, and other preventive care. It is a highly effective way of
preventing the unintended pregnancies and abortions that Republicans claim
to be so worried about.

*EQUAL PAY* Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, the epicenter of all kinds of
punitive and regressive legislation, signed the repeal of a 2009 law that
allowed women and others to bring lawsuits in state courts against pay
discrimination, instead of requiring them to be heard as slower and more
costly federal cases. It also stiffened penalties for employers found
guilty of discrimination.

He defended that bad decision by saying he did not want those suits to
“clog up the legal system.” He turned that power over to his government,
which has a record of hostility toward workers’ rights.

President Obama has been trying for three years to update and bolster the
1963 Equal Pay Act to enhance remedies for victims of gender-based wage
discrimination, shield employees from retaliation for sharing salary
information with co-workers, and mandate that employers show that wage
differences are job-related, not sex-based, and driven by business
necessity.

*DOMESTIC VIOLENCE* Last month, the Senate approved a reauthorization of
the Violence Against Women Act, designed to protect victims of domestic and
sexual abuse and bring their abusers to justice. The disappointing House
bill omits new protections for gay, Indian, student and immigrant abuse
victims that are contained in the bipartisan Senate bill. It also rolls
back protections for immigrant women whose status is dependent on a spouse,
making it more likely that they will stay with their abusers, at real
personal risk, and ends existing protections for undocumented immigrants
who report abuse and cooperate with law enforcement to pursue the abuser.

Whether this pattern of disturbing developments constitutes a war on women
is a political argument. That women’s rights and health are casualties of
Republican policy is indisputable.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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