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Bush's war against women

March 13, 2006 05:55 PM / Bush Leagues .

By BONNIE ERBE

Now it's official. Many of you have read my detonations during the past year about the fact American women's cultural progress is in a stall, if not in a freefall. I've written that the number of women in Congress has remained relatively stagnant for the past decade. I've reported on data that prove the percentage of women occupying seats in state legislatures (the training ground for national politics) is down for the first time this decade after three decades of rising rapidly. I've written that women's progress toward CEO status in major corporations is edging forward at a molasses-like pace and the same is true for women on corporate boards.

But now it's official. The Associated Press reports from Rome, "Over the last 10 years, more than a dozen countries have made it easier to get abortions, and women from Mexico to Ireland have raised court challenges to get access to the procedure. The trend contrasts sharply with the United States, where this week South Dakota's governor signed legislation that would ban most abortions in the state. The law is intended to set up a direct legal challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal."

Of course, abortion rights are not the "be all" and "end all" of women's progress. But for decades this nation seemed to have settled on middle ground _ abortion should be legal, but with significant restrictions.

Now, we are "exiting right," retreating from that moderate position to one of extreme conservatism. As a result, I'm beginning to think abortion rights are an increasingly important marker of women's advancement.

Let's look back for a moment to get a better fix on their historical import. Women won suffrage on a national scale in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred employment discrimination based on gender. In 1972, President Nixon signed Title IX (which guaranteed equal opportunity for girls in education and sports) and the New York Times stopped running separate "Help Wanted_Male" and "Help Wanted_Female" employment ads. That was, of course, the same year the Supreme Court ruled abortion was a constitutional right available to women on a national scale.

So, Roe was one more drop in the fire-hose of legislative and legal advancements pushed for and enjoyed by American women in the 1960s and 70s.

I remember covering the U.N. Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994 and the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in 1995. American women were the envy of the world, with legal, reproductive, economic and cultural freedoms shared only by women in a handful of other nations _ mostly Scandinavian. That is changing.

In just six years, since evangelical Christians took over the Republican Party and thus dominated this president's legislative agenda, American women's rights moved perilously close to those of women in much less-developed nations. Now those rights are about to trail behind those of other western nations. From the Food and Drug Administration's refusal to approve Emergency Contraception (or E.C.) without a prescription, to this president's Supreme Court picks, to the administration's cryptic effort to unravel Title IX by loosening college reporting requirements, block after building block of women's civil rights have been undermined.

If you believe this to be an exaggeration, consider these other facts as reported by the Associated Press. Nepal, which used to ban abortion altogether, legalized it in 2002 without restrictions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and after that allowing it only to protect a woman's life. In Italy, the Vatican is urging Italians to support antiabortion candidates in that country's general elections next month. But Italian women face no real move to overturn Italy's 1978 law, which allows abortion through the third month of pregnancy. The U.S. is leading the charge, back to the future.

This should not be an issue of national import. This administration has made it one by unraveling decades of momentum. Perhaps after the pendulum swings so far to the right that a 180-degree turn becomes a 360, the revolution back toward progress will ignite.

(Bonnie Erbe is a TV host and columnist. E-mail bonnieerbe(at)CompuServe.com.)

Comments

Erbe's story on the status of women in the USA is pertinent. The status of women in Texas as chattel in the 1970's barely got out of that social morass of inequity before the Bush neocon philosophy took over Texas. Now the nation might be waking up. I doubt women will wake up until its too late because women, especially young women, cannot conceive of fewer rights than what they have now.
If a nation dislikes women and female children to the point it tolerates rape and incest and forces women to have bear the child of such depravity or to die in the process, then we will have laws preventing abortion.
The only solution is to compel every person who votes for a policiian who is anti-abortion to adopt the baby of rape and incest.
I have met only one Republican who adopted a baby from an agency and I am older than dirt. When someone spouts anti-abortion rhetoric I ask, "And how many children have you adopted? That stops them cold.
The other question I ask, "How would you feel if you were the child of rape or incest? With the right to know your medical history a part of the adoption process, I bet you'd wonder about those dark thoughts you have about sex, wouldn't you?"

Posted by gem at March 14, 2006 09:28 AM

This is an full out unvield attack on women. What will happen to women who are denied birth control and the right to a safe and legal abortion? They will do what our grandmothers did, hit the back alley, endangering their lives in the process.

Sexual bigots will never get over the fact that a woman's place is EVERYWHERE.

Posted by Lyssandra at March 14, 2006 11:29 AM

Abortion rights is only a small tip of the iceberg. Women are much farther behind in the U.S. than even women's rights advocates want to admit. Look how far we are from having a female Chief Executive, or even Veep! The last two appointments to the Supreme Court included the mockery of "nominating" a woman who was a caricature of a cartoon of a woman in public life. And the highest-ranking woman now in a cabinet office is mere window-dressing parroting the idiocies of her "man." There is no way Hillary can be elected president in the prevailing atmosphere, even if the Democratic Party gets some balls and nominates her. It is not the fault, exclusively, of this administration that U.S. women are not making any real progress on the national or international scene. We, as a people, simply have not reached the level of maturity to accept a real woman wielding real power. That's still the exclusive purview of the male--however incompetent he may be. Are the women of Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe really that much superior to our own?

Posted by Joe Sexton at March 14, 2006 01:42 PM

Say what you will about George, he has no problem with promoting women.

The abortion issue is sex neutral. Pro-Life fanatics as far as I know are both sexes.

And there are many people who believe the US Constitution gives the Federal Gov't no voice at all on abortion. It is a state matter including forced abortions or no abortions. It is not a Federal matter. Roe vs Wade was a political compromise by judges who thought they were legislators settling a political dispute. They should have told everybody to take a quarter and go call someone else. They had good intentions but they short circuited safety wiring in the structure of our government. So now we have this eternal war without end. As each group alternates power they will simply change things back.

Now if either side can ever muster enough support to amend the US Constitution (they can't) Abortion can become a Federal matter. The whole thing should have remained at the state level until there was enough support in any direction to get an US amendment passed. That goes double for assisted suicide, medical MJ and all the other culture war issues.

I'd be grateful if the Feds could manage the military, the post office, interstate commerce such as the FAA and FCC, without scandal and financial collapse.

The Federal world does not revolve around the interest of women especially the "feminazis". It's the interests of the US as a whole that are the Fed's business and that's sex neutral.

Posted by SET at March 15, 2006 12:29 PM

"The abortion issue is sex neutral"? Huh? While you may point to equally rabid men and women in the anti-abortion movement, the last time I checked, men weren't dying from illegal back alley abortions.

It's also interesting to me how rightwingers enjoy throwing around the term "feminazis" and then get hot under the collar when someone points out the president's fascist tendencies...but I digress. As to the "federal world" not "revolving around" the interests of women, I have noted with dismay how insistent the president has been about sticking his policies into women's personal business, particularly whenever he needs to drum up some partisan excitement in his base. I would agree that he and his administration certainly don't act IN the interests of women - but then he never has been one to pay much attention to the majority of the electorate, has he?

Posted by Call me Ishmaela at March 26, 2006 07:47 AM

Bush's war against women

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