“A Major Step Backwards”: How Mitt Romney Would Treat Women
In this year’s campaign furor over a supposed “war on women,” involving birth control and abortion, the assumption is that the audience worrying about these issues is just women.
Give us a little credit. We men aren’t mercenaries caring only for Y chromosomes. We have wives and daughters, mothers and sisters, and we have a pretty intimate stake in contraception as well.
This isn’t like a tampon commercial on television, leaving men awkwardly examining their fingernails. When it comes to women’s health, men as well as women need to pay attention. Just as civil rights wasn’t just a “black issue,” women’s rights and reproductive health shouldn’t be reduced to a “women’s issue.”
To me, actually, talk about a “war on women” in the United States seems a bit hyperbolic: in Congo or Darfur or Afghanistan, I’ve seen brutal wars on women, involving policies of rape or denial of girls’ education. But whatever we call it, something real is going on here at home that would mark a major setback for American women — and the men who love them.
On these issues, Mitt Romney is no moderate. On the contrary, he is considerably more extreme than President George W. Bush was. He insists, for example, on cutting off money for cancer screenings conducted by Planned Parenthood.
The most toxic issue is abortion, and what matters most for that is Supreme Court appointments. The oldest justice is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a 79-year-old liberal, and if she were replaced by a younger Antonin Scalia, the balance might shift on many issues, including abortion.
One result might be the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which for nearly four decades has guaranteed abortion rights. If it is overturned, abortion will be left to the states — and in Mississippi or Kansas, women might end up being arrested for obtaining abortions.
Frankly, I respect politicians like Paul Ryan who are consistently anti-abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. I disagree with them, but their position is unpopular and will cost them votes, so it’s probably heartfelt as well as courageous. I have less respect for Romney, whose positions seem based only on political calculations.
Romney’s campaign Web site takes a hard line. It says that life begins at conception, and it gives no hint of exceptions in which he would permit abortion. The Republican Party platform likewise offers no exceptions. Romney says now that his policy is to oppose abortion with three exceptions: rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at stake.
If you can figure out Romney’s position on abortion with confidence, tell him: at times it seems he can’t remember it. In August, he abruptly added an exception for the health of the mother as well as her life, and then he backed away again.
Romney has also endorsed a “personhood” initiative treating a fertilized egg as a legal person. That could lead to murder charges for an abortion, even to save the life of a mother.
In effect, Romney seems to have jumped on board a Republican bandwagon to tighten access to abortion across the board. States passed a record number of restrictions on abortion in the last two years. In four states, even a woman who is seeking an abortion after a rape may be legally required to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound.
If politicians want to reduce the number of abortions, they should promote family planning and comprehensive sex education. After all, about half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research on reproductive health.
Yet Romney seems determined to curb access to contraceptives. His campaign Web site says he would “eliminate Title X family planning funding,” a program created in large part by two Republicans, George H. W. Bush and Richard Nixon.
Romney has boasted that he would cut off all money for Planned Parenthood — even though federal assistance for the organization has nothing to do with abortions. It pays for such things as screenings to reduce breast cancer and cervical cancer.
Romney’s suspicion of contraception goes way back. As governor of Massachusetts, he vetoed a bill that would have given women who were raped access to emergency contraception.
Romney also wants to reinstate the “global gag rule,” which barred family planning money from going to aid organizations that even provided information about abortion. He would cut off money for the United Nations Population Fund, whose work I’ve seen in many countries — supporting contraception, repairing obstetric fistulas, and fighting to save the lives of women dying in childbirth.
So when you hear people scoff that there’s no real difference between Obama and Romney, don’t believe them.
And it’s not just women who should be offended at the prospect of a major step backward. It’s all of us.
By: Nicholas D. Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, November 3, 2012
“A Gift From God”: Richard Mourdock Collapses In Polls In Indiana Senate Race
According to a new Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground poll, Republican Richard Mourdock’s infamous remarks about rape have doomed his chances of winning Indiana’s Senate election.
The poll shows Democrat Joe Donnelly leading Mourdock by a 47 to 36 percent margin. 11 percent are undecided, and 6 percent support Libertarian Andrew Horning.
Mourdock and Donnelly were statistically tied in nearly every survey of the race, until the candidates met for a debate on October 23rd. There, Mourdock explained his total opposition to abortion by saying “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape… it is something that God intended to happen.”
According to the Howey/DePauw poll, those fateful words all but ended Mourdock’s campaign, as 87 percent of respondents were aware of Mourdock’s remark, and 40 percent said that it made them less likely to vote for the Republican state treasurer. Additionally, Mourdock’s favorable/unfavorable rating has cratered to 30/49 percent, down from 26/32 in Howey/DePauw’s previous survey in September. And among the crucial independent vote, his favorable/unfavorable numbers stand at a distinctly unimpressive 12/48 with women and 23/51with men.
The poll, which was conducted by Democratic pollster Fred Yang and Republican pollster Christine Matthews, surveyed 800 likely voters with a partisan split of 45 percent Republican, 34 percent Democrat, and 21 percent independent.
If these results hold, then the Republican Party would essentially have no hope of winning a Senate majority. The GOP needs to gain a net of four seats to claim control of Congress’ upper chamber, a challenge that has become much more difficult due Republican candidates’ inability to stop talking about rape. In Missouri, Senator Claire McCaskill — who was once considered to be the most vulnerable incumbent Democrat — is on track to win re-election with the help of Rep. Todd Akin’s startling comments that a woman cannot become pregnant as a result of a “legitimate rape.” Now Mourdock’s “gift from God” comments appear likely to cost Republicans a seat in Indiana. Depending on how competitive races play out in Arizona, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Virginia, and Wisconsin, the Democrats may actually increase their Senate majority — something that seemed impossible just a few months ago.
If Mourdock and Akin lose, then this would be the second straight election cycle in which erratic candidates cost the GOP a chance at a majority. In 2010, right-wing candidates Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, and Christine O’Donnell defeated more mainstream opponents, and went on to lose to vulnerable Democrats.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, November 2, 2012
“Until The Umbilical Cord Is Cut”: In GOP View, Life Is Sacred, Except When It’s Not
“… And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”
— Richard Mourdock, GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate
Life is sacred.
That, Mourdock would later insist, was what he was trying to say last week during a debate with his opponents. Instead, he became the latest in a growing list of conservatives to trip over women’s bodies. The Indiana Republican said he didn’t mean it the way it sounded, i.e., that rape is something God intends or approves. Rather, his point was that “Life is precious. I believe (that) to the very marrow of my bones.” His party agrees.
This year, the GOP adopted — again — a platform under which no woman could ever legally have an abortion. Not if she was impregnated by her own father. Not if she was raped. Not if the abortion were needed to save her life. Never. Because life is sacred.
And that leaves you wondering: what about the 12-year-old girl who has grown up dreading the midnight creak of her bedroom door, the weight settling above her, the whispered assurances that “This is our secret.”
What about the sixth-grader whose barely adolescent breasts are suddenly swollen and who wakes up racing for the toilet every morning, sick to her stomach? Is her life sacred?
What about the co-ed who can still feel the stranger’s hands forcing her knees apart, still feel his hot breath on her cheek, the lashing whip of his curses, that terrible moment of penetration, invasion, violation and bitter, impotent rage?
What about the student who now holds the home pregnancy test strip in her hand, watches it change colors and feels, as she slips to her knees on the bathroom floor with that hateful seed growing in her womb, as if she was just raped all over again? Is her life sacred?
What about the mother of three, just diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, the woman whose doctor says she needs chemotherapy immediately if she is to have any hope of survival? What about the agonizing decision she must now make, to refuse chemo, knowing it will mean dying and abandoning her existing children, or to take the drug, knowing it will kill the child she carries inside? Is her life not sacred?
It doesn’t seem to be, at least, not in the formulation embraced by the Grand Old Party. In that formulation, women are bystanders to their own existence, their individual situations subordinate to a one-size-fits-all morality, their very selves unimportant, except as vessels bearing children.
For that matter, the children themselves, once born, are not particularly sacred, especially if they have the misfortune to be born into less-than-ideal circumstances, situations where they might need help from the rest of us. But you see, “life” is not just the fact of existence. The term refers also to the nature and quality of that existence. So if we truly hold life sacred, we do not balance budgets by denying funding to programs that feed hungry children. We do not look the other way when kids have no access to health care. We do not countenance easy gun availability that makes the playground a war zone. We do not put up with child welfare agencies where tragedies routinely befall children who are always said to have “fallen between the cracks.”
Mourdock and other conservatives frequently tout the sacredness of life, but they seem to have a rather narrow definition thereof. They seem to consider life sacred only until the umbilical cord is cut. So for all its moral earnestness, their argument against abortion rights always manages to go too far and yet, not nearly far enough. If life is sacred when it is in the womb, well, it is also sacred when it is not.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., The National Memo, October 31, 2012
“It’s Not Flexibility”: What Women Really Want In The Workplace
What do women want? And why do they act the way they do?
These are not difficult or rational questions. The true question is, why is it that we’re in the 21st century and politicians and so-called scientific researchers are still pondering these questions as though women are some exotic, mute species that must be diagnosed?
The most recent offense comes from a CNN story—quickly scrubbed—reporting on a University of Texas San Antonio study on how women’s menstrual cycles affect the way they vote. Said the now-removed CNN post:
While the campaigns eagerly pursue female voters, there’s something that may raise the chances for both presidential candidates that’s totally out of their control: women’s ovulation cycles. Here’s how [researcher] Durante explains this: When women are ovulating, they “feel sexier,” and therefore lean more toward liberal attitudes on abortion and marriage equality. Married women have the same hormones firing, but tend to take the opposite viewpoint on these issues, she says.
It’s absurd to think that women universally “feel sexier” during ovulation (and if they do, it’s probably more because that’s the point where most women feel thinnest), but even more ridiculous to suggest this has anything to do with voting. Even if the statistics were true, there’s no cause-and-effect relationship established. If anything, it’s a mere statistical correlation, and one driven by a (wrong and offensive) default view that men are the control group of rationality, and whatever women do that deviates from that must be explained away as some sort of irrational deviation. The underlying assumption in many of these so-called studies—including all the ones about how women dress more attractively during ovulation to attract a mate during peak baby-making time (again, gentlemen, not so much—women I know dress for the occasion, for themselves, and for other women before they dress for men)—is that a woman’s real job is to find a mate and produce children. How convenient that the insulting thesis supports de facto policies that keep women in less prestigious jobs, paying them less for their work.
Then we have Mitt Romney, observing during a debate that one of the things he learned when he was staffing his gubernatorial office was that he needed to be “flexible” for the females. Said Romney:
I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school.
She said, I can’t be here until 7 or 8 o’clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o’clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said fine. Let’s have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.
This is what Romney thinks women want in the workplace—”flexibility?” We all want flexibility—men and women—but it obscures an important point. Here’s what women want first in the workplace: money and power. The same as the men. Really, it’s a pretty simple equation. Opining that women are some special class needing “flexibility” so they can be home in time to make dinner for their husbands and kids is just another way of saying that home-making is a woman’s real job, even if it’s another thing she does in addition to working. It puts her husband’s job above hers, and gives license to every employer to treat women as less valuable—and thus, less compensated and promoted—in the workforce. And what about all those women who aren’t married and presumably don’t have wifely tasks? Well, they’re ruled by their hormones instead, if we are to believe the utter piece of garbage produced by the University of Texas.
It’s been quite some time since one of the original misogynist scientists, Sigmund Freud, asked, “What do women want?” It’s the 21st century. Candidates and researchers could just ask—and maybe listen to the answer.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World report, October 29, 2012
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