(NEW YORK) MintPress — As the fierce public debate over contraception and abortion continues, the issue of women’s rights is front and center in the upcoming presidential election.
After a series of controversial Republican-sponsored measures, the most recent being Virginia’s new law mandating abdominal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions, Democrats and women’s rights groups maintain the GOP is waging a so-called “war on women.”
According to former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, now host of “The War Room” on Current TV, after the 2010 election that saw Republicans gain control of state Legislatures across the country, more than 1,100 anti-choice laws were introduced in 2011, a new record. Eighty three measures have been passed into law. And so far in 2012, another 430 have been introduced.
While some Republicans have dismissed women’s concerns, saying they are just a distraction, says Granholm, they are in fact far more than that. “It’s an obsession on the part of de facto Republican Party leaders like (Rush) Limbaugh; Republican Legislatures and governors, and those beholden to the far right in the House.”
Now, women across the board are fighting back.
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Ladies who lunch
In one of the most headline-grabbing moves, the Austin-based Liberal Ladies Who Lunch, whose members say they want to turn “America blue, one plate at a time,” is organizing an event called “Access Denied: Sex Strike” for a week starting on April 28. On its website, the motto, “I our reproductive choices are denied, so are yours,” is emblazoned on a symbolic poster of a woman holding her knees together.
“My husband and I came up with the idea, the group’s founder Annette Maxberry-Carrara tells MintPress. “We’re trying to call attention to the ‘uniting against the war on women’ marches that will going on around the country on April 28, and we thought this is one way to do it.”
It certainly is. Maxberry-Carrara says she is getting a lot of media attention, but also a lot of negative attacks from the right, especially a new group calling itself Conservative Ladies and Gents Against Liberal Ladies Who Lunch.
“But this is not just about contraception or abortion, it is about women’s health care,” maintains Maxberry-Carrara.
She points to a recent decision by Texas Governor Rick Perry and the predominantly male state legislature to forgo $35 million in federal funding to keep Planned Parenthood from getting any of it. Eleven Planned Parenthood clinics have shut down, and it’s estimated the cuts could lead to 400,000 women, many of them low income, losing health care services they can’t otherwise afford.
In May 2011, Perry also signed into law a mandate that women seeking an abortion first have a transvaginal sonogram. “It is an affront to our dignity and privacy,” charges Maxberry-Carrara.
Revenge legislation
A number of female state politicians have joined the battle as well, championing bills that mandate several prerequisites for men who want Viagra pills. These include celibacy lectures, rectal exams, affidavits from former lovers swearing impotence problems, and forced viewing of a video showing the medicine’s side effects.
“We’re talking about it, that’s a start,” said Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, a Democrat, who has just introduced her version of a Viagra bill. Turner says she wants to “protect” Ohio’s men “from the risks of PDE-5 inhibitors, drugs commonly used to treat symptoms of impotence.”
In a press release, she states that Ohio’s male politicians have been so protective of women’s insides that reciprocation is only fair. “If you want to be preoccupied with regulating women’s wombs, we’re going to do the same thing with men,” she challenged. Turner is protesting the “heartbeat” bill, which passed the Ohio state House and forbids abortions of fetuses that have developed beating hearts.
She isn’t alone. Georgia state Rep. Yasmin Neal protested a colleague’s bill to end late-term abortions without exception by introducing a bill on vasectomy regulations. Virginia state Sen. Janet Howell conceived the rectal exam to combat that state’s ultrasound law. And Oklahoma’s state Sen. Constance Johnson, mocking her state’s personhood amendment, proposed an “every sperm is sacred” provision.
“I’ve never seen so many of these at one time,” said Elizabeth Nash, a policy analyst at the Guttmacher Institute, which works to advance reproductive health. “It certainly isn’t serious policy, but they are meant to highlight how divisive legislation has become.”
Source: MintPress