Reign of Contempt Is Almost Over

Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy

January 24, 2007

Decades from now, when this country finally catches up with the rest of the developed world with regard to women's rights, we will look back on the Bush presidency as a temporary detour from our long history of building democracy one right and one freedom at a time. The eight years of mis-rule by this President will be seen as a profound embarrassment that was eventually overcome. I guarantee it. But the past three days will be particularly difficult to reflect upon without shame or woe:

January 21, 2007. The sexist-in-chief designated that date as National Sanctity of Human Life Day, proudly celebrating his vigorous promotion of ineffective and incomplete "abstinence education," fraudulent "crisis pregnancy programs," hazardous "parental notification laws," as well as federal legislation that vitiates the integrity and autonomy of every woman in this country in favor of fetuses. The capper? "[M]y Administration is committed to protecting our society's most vulnerable members." He forgot to add "but only the ones who aren't born."

January 22, 2007. The next day, the 34th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, Bush spoke by telephone loudspeaker to thousands of anti-abortion demonstrators, sharing that he "appreciates so very much [their] work toward building a culture of life." Of course NOW was there with our Keep Abortion Legal signs, predictably enduring a lot of threats and shoving and name-calling from those concerned about life. We stood our ground for women's lives.

January 23, 2007. Bush made another speech yesterday, but this time the anti-woman crowd was in the minority, and first-ever feminist Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sat behind him in the third seat of power. Predictably, the "culture of life" lingo from the previous day was swapped for a different set of euphemisms and lies, this time decorating the state of the U.S. economy and the future of the Iraq war with friendly but inaccurate words like progress, strength, and freedom.

Besides politically spun ambiguity, the State of the Union address and Bush's speech on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade both shared the same reckless disregard for women's rights that we have come to expect from the current administration and its allies in Congress. The PR machine of the right wing, epitomized by Fox News, have anesthetized many people so that they lack the awareness or the information to register this disregard, but history will forever record this era of contempt for women.

The numbers already clearly show how differently U.S. law treats women in the global context: over 70 percent of developed countries have established the right to an abortion without restrictions as to reason (in recognition of the fact that legalization enables women to obtain earlier, safer abortions)and 163 countries offer guaranteed paid leave to women in connection with child birth — the U.S. is one of only two industrialized countries that does not provide for paid maternity leave for women, the other is Australia, which guarantees a full year of unpaid leave.

Seventeen other countries have already reached 30 percent representation by women in their legislatures and parliaments — the U.S. has barely more than half that, and the U.S. is the only industrialized country not to have ratified the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) — the first international treaty to comprehensively address women's fundamental rights. The treaty was never even high enough on the U.S. to-do list to be brought to a full ratification vote in the Senate, despite the fact that it was signed by President Jimmy Carter and most recently was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002.

I could go on and on, listing the facts and statistics detailing the lesser status of women in the U.S. compared to the rest of the developed world. The real fact of the matter is that unless we take every action possible to get this country back on track, future generations of women and girls will continue to suffer gender-based discrimination and violence while the rest of the world advances towards equality. What should be a short detour could well be a serious barrier unless we persevere.

We have the ability to make women's equality a near, rather than a distant, future — but we have got to gear up and act up. We rallied to honor the anniversary of Roe v. Wade on Monday, and we will march against the war this weekend. We need your voices and your actions somewhere, someplace on a regular basis. We're making history and we want to make sure it is recorded that we stood up to tyrants and defended liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Who decides? We the people must decide, and the faux Decider will have to listen

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