Listen Up Dems: Repressive Societies Prioritize Controlling Women's Reproduction
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Anne of Carversville has tracked the Republican War on Women in-depth since 2007. The assault on women has gained huge momentum under Trump, and this 2007 essay written by Steven Conn, now the W.E Smith Professor of History at Miami University, is more relevant today than ever.
Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico lit a bonfire among Democrats when he said earlier in August that abortion rights shouldn't be a "litmus test" for Democrats.
Abortion rights activists including myself erupted, imploring leaders like Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, to remain defiant with the Democratic Party. Richards couldn’t be clearer on how wrong she thinks Luján is, telling Politico. “It’s a shocking sort of misunderstanding of actually where the country is … which is overwhelmingly supportive of abortion rights and also, who are the ground troops that kind of fuel the election of candidates.”
“Fundamentally, perhaps [what] he’s missing is, people can distinguish between their own personal feelings and what they believe government or politicians should do. And people even in some of the most conservative areas of the country who may themselves personally say, ‘I would never choose to have an abortion,’ or, ‘That’s not something that’s right for me,’ also, absolutely do not believe politicians should be making decisions about pregnancy for women,” Richards argues. “I think he’s totally wrong and I’ll use every opportunity to convince him of that.”
The truth is that Trump and conservative Republicans are coming at women's body autonomy with a torch -- the same torches that burned in Charlottesville. The alt-right believes that women's essential purpose is to breed. The white supremacists want white babies and they are poised to insist Handmaiden style that they -- THE MEN -- have control over women's bodies. It's positively disgusting to understand that in the aftermath of Hillary's defeat, Democratic men want to bring the Blue Dog Southern Democrats back into the party -- when they would be far more conservative today than 50 years ago.
