Rolling Back Women's Rights

[Twig]

"Dispensing with legislative niceties like holding hearings or full and open debate, President Bush and the Republican Congress have used the cover of a must-pass spending bill to mount a disgraceful sneak attack on women's health and freedom."

"Tucked into the $388 billion budget measure just approved by the House and Senate is a sweeping provision that has nothing to do with the task Congress had at hand - providing money for the government. In essence, it tells health care companies, hospitals and insurance companies they are free to ignore Roe v. Wade and state and local laws and regulations currently on the books to make certain that women's access to reproductive health services includes access to abortion..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/opinion/23tue2.html?th

This is a disgrace! I just can't believe we cannot stop this administration from doing this!!!! How do we respond to this and how can we help? They hide all this crap in these big bills that no one reads.

TWIG

[classof56]

1. Hang on--it'll doubtless get worse.

I'm sure all the strides we've made in the last 30-40 years will go by the boards. Things like equal pay, equal access to jobs, right to own and inherit property, to vote, practice artificial means of birth control, leave the house without our husband's approval...the list goes on, and I'm only being partly facetious. Look for "Help Wanted: Male" and "Help Wanted: Female" listings in classified ads, like in the old days. And notice the "jobs" we'll be relegated to. I truly believe that many men want nothing more than to control and subject women to their will--it's a fundamentalist belief in many cultures, including the Christian "religion"--and their newly-ordained mandate from the electorate has given them the opening they've been awaiting for many long years. The future is theirs. Unless we rise up in protest (women do comprise over half the US population, last I heard) and beat them back to the caves they came from.

Fight on!

[Twig]

3. Secrecy

Well, now that bush has a Mandate - gawd...It's like the Patriot Bill, it was so huge that no one had the time or interest to read it. This Administration values secrecy over everything else - and it's the men that are doing this - deciding what women can do with our own bodies..

This really scares me. Plus, take a look to see what each state got out of this bill. I'm very glad in a way that those two republicans stopped this bill - although they did it per Chaney - he doesn't want to loose the power/money/budget it gives him. He is the one truly stopping this bill.

TWIG

ps: Sorry about putting this in the Latest Breaking - I really thought it passed the guidelines.

[Marthe48]

2. get the real men on our side!

I know many real men who wouldn't want women's rights demolished. If we really weren't allowed out of the house without permission, think of all the errands, shopping, taxiing, school functions, just all of the things in households with a division of labor that men would have to revert to doing. And many real men, if they want a family, want their beloved wife to remain healthy and fit, and they want the family to be an affordable size, so they would support convenient birth control.

Although this isn't about errands and childbirth, its about control by people who obviously can't develop relationships built on love, trust and commitment. I have often wondered why so many women prefer to rear their children in poverty rather than stay in a relationship with the father of the children??? And so if the women have less choice economically, they'll be forced to stay in an unbearable relationship. That's kind of pathetic, even worse than trying to buy friends.

[Moderator]

4. Same article, altho different sources

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