Is the 'War on Women' Rhetoric Demeaning to Women?

By Mary C. Tillotson

As I’ve written before, I really can’t stand the “women’s issues” and “war on women” rhetoric in American politics. So when I saw Make Love, Not War (On Women) by Brenda Zurita at Concerned Women for America, I thought: I need to talk to her.

So I did.

When we think of “women’s issues,” we usually mean abortion, contraception, sex, etc. But regardless of what you think on those issues, the “war on women” rhetoric is degrading.

Here’s Brenda:

There are polls out showing that the majority of women are pro-life, so the mainstream media just perpetuates this myth that all women think exactly alike. It’s insulting. They don’t group men that way. I don’t know if you’ve seen those bro-choice commercials – they’re ridiculous, but do we think all men are like that? No, I don’t, and the media doesn’t portray all men as being like that, and yet we’re all supposed to say, “Well, if Planned Parenthood thinks it’s a good idea, of course I support that.” 

The power is if you repeat it enough, people will believe it and not really research what it means.

I think it’s offensive that people wouldn’t understand that women are different – we don’t all hold the same positions – or the fact that because I’m a woman, I’m going to believe these things means you don’t think I’m up to researching an issue and deciding for myself. That’s why Concerned Women for America was started. We got fed up with hearing feminists on TV defending their position and saying this is how all women think, and wait a second, there’s a whole contingent of women that don’t think that way.

How often do you see the president and CEO of Concerned Women for America on TV? You see Nancy Pelosi and Planned Parenthood representatives constantly, but there’s a conservative voice out there.

Whatever individual women think about abortion and contraception, those often are not their top issues when voting, she told me. When Americans lose their jobs or safety or financial security because of a bad policy decision, many of those Americans affected are women.

I don’t think “women’s issues” are as important to women as economic issues and national security issues, but every time a Democrat wins, it seems like they say, ‘Oh, war on women, women agree with us on freedom of choice issues,’ but women, most women take care of household finances and they have to balance the budget and they understand those things. The government today is running willy-nilly. If only we could all live like that: we don’t have the money, we’ll just spend anyway!

Frustrating, right? Rather than wallow in how horrible it all is (which is what I’d really like to do), Brenda offered a suggestion for bucking the bandwagon. (I know. Fixing the problem. Totally men’s work.)

Contact your local representatives and senators and tell them what you think about the issues that matter to you. I found this piece really helpful – it’s written by a former congressman about how to get your message to your congressman most effectively. If you don’t remember everyone’s names, try this -- you just plug in your zip code, and your national and state officials pop up.

Because, look. The "War on Women" isn't a war and it isn't against women, any more than any other policy idea is against women. It's against the liberal, pro-abortion agenda pushed by some men and some women but not all men and not all women.

If women are going to be in politics -- whether it's voting, writing, or running for office -- it's only fair to be fair and remember that we have just as much right to disagree with each other as men do. One more word from Brenda:

[The media] denigrate conservative women. Look how they attacked Sarah Palin. The attacks against her were so file. If they'd been perpetuated against Nancy Pelosi or Michelle Obama or any Democrat leading lady, they never would have tolerated that.

Brenda Zurita is a research fellow for the Beverly LaHaye Institute, at Concerned Women for America. To get involved with CWFA, visit cwfa.org.

Obamacare attacks religion, but hurts women

By Helen Alvare
Women Speak for Themselves

The Supreme Court yesterday agreed to hear two important cases about whether women and men who own businesses are protected by civil rights laws against religious discrimination. The Obama Administration says it can ignore religious freedom laws when regulating businesses and their owners because it believes earning money is inconsistent with exercising religion.

Reacting to the news that the Supreme Court will consider this important issue, the White House struck its typical pose as the one and only protector of, and voice for, "women and families." The president assures us that he is pressing these cases so that "women and families -- not their bosses or corporate CEOs" make decisions about whether to use abortion-inducing drugs and devices.

The White House stance assumes that women care far more about free access to contraceptives, or their sex lives, than about religious freedom, or allowing businesses to have a conscience. This view of women is degrading. It treats women as one-dimensional victims needing the protection of government-as-big-brother.

Moreover, the government misjudges women at every turn. First, the idea that service to "women and families" requires crushing these businesses with fines is absurd because the businesses at issue are actually owned by . . . women and families. While it may have escaped White House notice, the plaintiffs in the two cases include women owners and operators of the relevant businesses. This should not be so surprising: there are more than ten million women-owned businesses in this country. And here in the 21st century, many women are the "bosses and corporate CEOs" the White House criticizes. Crushing businesses with fines-particularly businesses with women owners-hurts women, rather than helping them.

Second, the White House view ignores the fact that women benefit -- indeed, everyone benefits -- from having a job market in which people of all different faiths are able to create jobs. Hobby Lobby, for example, employs more than 13,000 people, and actually provides free contraceptives to its employees-- just not the small handful that can cause abortions. There are thousands of women whose lives are better and whose families are stronger and more secure because of those jobs. Crushing Hobby Lobby just because of its owners religious beliefs would hurt these women, not help them. The last thing our economy needs, and the last thing American families need, is the government shrinking the already too-small pool of available jobs.

Third, women actually tend to practice religion more than men. For this reason too, the government's attack on religious freedom rights hurts women more than men.

The White House insists that its heavy-handed approach is needed to protect women because it thinks contraceptives are "essential to women's health." That is, to say the least, a highly dubious claim. Women get sick and die, for the most part, of things like heart attacks, strokes and cancer. Their long list of ailments rarely calls for free contraceptives to solve a health problem. In fact, as Judge Janice Rogers Brown recently noted, there are credible medical sources (like the World Health Organization) who now classify some hormonal contraceptives as carcinogens. Americans spend millions of dollars a year to buy chicken and meat that have not been pumped full of synthetic hormones-precisely because they fear the associated medical risks.

But even if the government is right about how we all need easy access to contraceptives all the time, there can be no serious argument that the only way to provide us with our pills is to force unwilling employers to pay for them. Contraceptives are widely available and cheap. And for those who cannot afford them, the government already spends millions of dollars per year providing them for free. With the Obamacare exchanges now open, if the federal government thinks more women need or want this insurance coverage, it now runs a marketplace in which they can get it.

Women do not need big brother steamrolling religious liberty to make their lives better. They would prefer to hold onto religious liberty itself.


Helen Alvare is a law professor at George Mason University and the founder of Women Speak for Themselves. This article was originally published at USA Today and is used with permission.

Apparently, Baby Bunching Is a Thing

By Joy Pullmann

I had no idea there was a name for our inability to schedule conception, which has resulted in three babies in four years. But, apparently, there is. It's even trademarked, and there's a book coming. It's called "baby bunching."

According to other women I chat with, older women will often go deliberately for baby bunching because they have fewer good years of fertility left and they want to get kids in while they can. Some want to get the birthing years over with, which I am quite sympathetic to (I'm playing with the idea of "four by 30" but I hate pregnancy so much we'll see if we make it...or, which is more likely, if we continue to have children constantly despite my hoped-for 30-year cutoff). Other, less-organized people like me, keep having these kids during what are obviously highly fertile years, and we won't kill them, so we love them instead.

Combating forced abortion and gendercide in China

By Mary C. Tillotson

Reggie Littlejohn, Women's Rights Without Frontiers

Today is the 33rd anniversary of China's one-child policy, which has been devastating for Chinese women and girls. I just got off the phone with Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, an organization dedicated to stopping forced abortions and gendercide in China. Reggie has testified with governments around the world, and her organization is running the Save a Girl Campaign, helping families on the grassroots level.

I'm going to let Reggie take it from here.

Tell me about the one-child policy in China.

Reggie: Some in the Chinese Communist Party want you to believe it's entirely voluntary. That is not true. Women are forcibly aborted up to the ninth month of pregnancy, and also forcibly sterilized. Some of these forced abortions are so violent that the women themselves die with their full-term babies.

The coercion gives rise to gendercide. Because of the coercive low birth limit, most families want to make sure they have a boy. Sex selective abortion is practiced, and up to 200 million women are missing in the world today due to sex-selective abortion. There are 37 million more men than women living in China.

What that gender imbalance is doing is it's driving human trafficking and sexual slavery, not only in China but in the surrounding countries as well.

Why do they have a preference for boys?

Reggie: Preference for boys is something that's centuries or possibly millennia old. It's prominent in Asia, but especially in China and India.

In both Indian culture and Chinese culture, when a couple gets married, the girl goes over to the boy's family, and the young woman and young man together support the young man's parents in their old age. If you give birth to a son, you know that when he marries, you will be gaining a daughter-in-law, so you're getting an addition to your family, whereas if you give birth to a daughter, you're not getting a son-in-law, you're losing your daughter also.

If you can only have one kid and it's a girl, you don't have anybody to support you in your old age. [Parents often have to choose between] sex-selective abortion or facing poverty in old age.

What is Women's Rights Without Frontiers doing about it?

Reggie met Pope Francis last week.

Reggie: We are doing two things. Number one, we've been called the leading voice in the world to expose and oppose forced abortions in China - forced abortion, gendercide, and sexual slavery in China. We gather documentation and go around and sound the alarm all over the world about what's going on in China.

Most people understand China has a one-child policy. They don't understand the brutality of the way it's enforced.

We gather documentation from China about forced abortion, forced sterilization, human trafficking, murder, all these things that are committed in connection with the one-child policy, and we testify.

We have credibility and a voice in informing government bodies about the truth about what's going on in China, concerning the one-child policy.

Reggie has testified six times at the United States Congress and three times at the European Parliament; she's also testified to the British, Irish, and Canadian Parliaments. She's briefed White House officials, the U.S. Department of State, the United Nations, and the Vatican. She's also spoken multiple times at the United Nations Commission on the Status of women, an annual convention in New York; the commission made a statement condemning forced abortion, forced sterilization, and forced contraception.

The other thing we do, we have a Save a Girl campaign.

Tell me about the Save a Girl Campaign.

Reggie: We've got workers on the ground in China who identify women who are pregnant with girls who are planning to have an abortion, or who have just given birth to a girl and are planning to abandon her. They say, 'Please don't abort or abandon your baby because she's a girl. We'll give you a monthly stipend for a year to help support this girl.'

I understand, from my network, we have a 95 percent success rate. We're saving lives in China.

We also help women who are fleeing forced abortion. We are stopping gendercide in China one baby girl at a time.

The Save a Girl Campaign was launched last year on October 11, the International Day of the Girl Child.

What can regular people do to help?

Reggie: If people want to do something to help these girls, we have petitions to stop forced abortion, and they can also donate toward the Save a Girl Campaign. It's amazing how little it takes to save a life in China.

So much of our effort has to do with getting the word out, and people help get the word out by liking the article you write, posting it on Facebook, tweeting it - that's huge for us. It's the only way we can turn political opinion to understand what's going on and oppose the violence against women.

People are listening to us, listening to our message.

Women Speak (Calmly!) For Themselves

By Emma Smith
PaxEtLumen

Standing in the East Falls Church metro station waiting for our a couple of weeks ago, a woman approached us and asked “are you going to the Women Speak for Themselves rally?” We affirmed that we were, and she replied “I thought so, when I saw your Pro-Life signs!” and gestured at our “Mothers should be respected and babies protected!!!” sign. Turns out, she and 4 of her friends were also going to the rally, so when the train arrived we climbed aboard with our 5 new friends and headed off to DC.

Holding Pro-Life signs on a DC metro is an interesting experience. We got a lot of looks, though no one engaged with us and, despite some of the glares, a surprising amount of support came from those around us. We got surreptitious thumbs up, smiles, winks, or the occasional nod. The city was alive with Pro-Lifers, going about their daily business, supportive of our work, anxious for justice, just as we are.

This energy came into the open in Lafayette Park. About 100 – 150 people – students, professors, nurses, mothers, children, corporate assistants, lawyers, and lobbyists – gathered under the trees to witness to life and freedom. The thing about this rally was that it was no different than any other Pro-Life rally. I mean that in a good way. The people there merely gathered to affirm their beliefs, to love those around them, and to peacefully petition that their rights be respected. The people there gathered to witness to the beauty of life, and in that sense, it was like any other Pro-Life rally. It affirmed life by respecting life – all of it. Even those who disagree with what Pro-Lifers believe in. While Pro-Lifers made strong arguments concerning the evil of ObamaCare and the HHS Mandate, while they cheered at sayings they liked, and applauded passionate speakers, the entire rally was part of a greater movement – a movement of love and respect.

Not a War on Women, but a War on Mothers

By Joy Pullmann

An extremely well-spoken coalition of women descended on the U.S. Capitol Thursday to make some incisive statements. The contraceptive mandate that forces businesses and health insurers to pay for every woman's contraception and sterilization choices was the reason they showed up, but their comments touched on other things that matter to women, as well. For one (from World Magazine's coverage of the event):

“There’s no war on women, there’s a war on mothers,” said Washington attorney Cynthia Wood in fiery remarks that sparked cheers from the crowd.

And

“I’m tired of our government making it very difficult to stand up for the things that are good and true,” said Mary Ellen Barringer, a consultant for non-profit groups from Maryland. “I can’t send my son on a field trip without filling out all kinds of paperwork, yet teens have access to products and services that lead to all kinds of risky behavior—with no parental consent.”

"Women's Issues" and the Conservative "Woman Problem"

By Mary C. Tillotson

Can we do it all?

Joy opened a really interesting conversation last week about whether women and men should be addressed differently. She linked to a Forbes article by Sabrina Schaeffer noting “the odd contradiction that liberals proclaim men and women are essentially the same but target women as women aggressively … and conservatives typically will say men and women are different, but are reluctant to target women as a special interest group.” (Joy’s words.) I want to talk more specifically about the conservative “woman problem.”

“Women’s issues,” it seems, revolve around our childbearing capacity: abortion, contraception, flexible work hours. The so-called “war on women” initially rose over contraception (or, more specifically, the government requiring people to provide contraception free and ignoring their constitutionally-guaranteed religious freedom). It was further fueled by some stupid comments (“legitimate rape,” anyone?) that got more attention than they were worth. When it comes down to it, if we didn’t have wombs, there would be no such thing as “women’s issues.”

NFP and teamwork

not empowering

By Mary C. Tillotson

It always surprises me when I find yet another person who is totally shocked to find out that there’s some actual science behind Natural Family Planning. Women bleed for a few days every month for most of their adult life and nobody bothered to wonder why? The article I saw most recently insisted that, while there was legitimate science to NFP, “The Catholic Church’s official stance condemning contraception is, in my view, dubious and disempowering to women.”

Taken out of context, NFP is disempowering. I’m envisioning college parties where women only attend if they’re in Phase 3 (infertile), high school girls encouraged to keep track of their physical symptoms, and, when they’re fertile, say “catch me next week!” to their teenage boyfriends. Despite being way more fertile than women (compare the number of gametes average men and women produce), men get to have sex whenever they can find a phase 3 woman; women are confined to certain days out of their cycle. Disempowering to women? Absolutely. Men obviously have the upper hand.

But NFP isn’t just another form of birth control.