In Texas, Arizona and everywhere, fighting back against anti-women forces isn't optional

[ProSense]

In Texas, Arizona and everywhere, fighting back against anti-women forces isn't optional

by Meteor Blades

Some people who should know better say the fight for women's health, for reproductive choice and privacy, is a distraction from "real issues." That too much time and energy is being spent on a peripheral concern. It's certainly true that this matter ought not to be up for debate. It ought to have been settled long ago. It's true that progressives and the nation as a whole should be spending all our time dealing with public policy on the economy, on the environmental crisis and energy, on foreign affairs, on education, on the bloated military-industrial complex, on taxes and spending, on keeping right-wingers and moderate enablers of right-wingers out of office from the city council level all the way to the White House.

But our enemies give us no choice. Presidential candidates, congresspeople, state legislators and assorted censorious private-sector busybodies empowered by the Vatican or Rush Limbaugh or their own twisted view that everybody should be beholden to their assessment of what's right for every woman to do with her own body have ramped up their crusade in the past couple of years. What had been a steady nibbling away at women's legal right to abortion has become a full-blown assault that has spilled over into promoting controls on who can use contraception and for what purpose.

We can discuss all day long the origins and hypocritical, double-standard, patriarchal and parochial underpinnings of those who are carrying out this assault. But that takes time away from putting a stop to it, from fighting it head-on and from moving from self-defense to offense. Besides making things tougher to pass the worst such laws, as happened with Virginia's transvaginal ultrasound bill, turning the tables on these benighted reactionaries is what liberals/progressives/leftists ought to be doing.

In the battles we've had pushing back against these reactionary attacks, some hard-to-ignore allies have joined us. They oppose what we oppose and/or support what we support and we can make gains by getting others to do likewise. For instance, the Pennsylvania Medical Society, as Joan McCarter points out in her diary, opposes requiring ultrasounds before abortions. You can sign a petition asking the American Medical Association to add their opposition to forced ultrasounds here.

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/16/1074985/-In-Texas-Arizona-and-elsewhere-fighting-back-against-anti-women-forces-isn-t-optional

[malthaussen]

1. "Peripheral issue" my left foot

Seems to me reproduction is the central issue. Mind you, I'm willing to entertain the suggestion that the Republicans have launched this war on women to distract us from their sneaky attacks elsewhere. But to imply that the attack on women is a "distraction" from "real issues" is like saying that in a duel you can just ignore that sword-thrust to your heart.

-- Mal

[ProSense]

2. Exactly.

In fact, the GOP's war on women is multi-faceted. They're attacking reproductive rights, the Violence Against Women's Act and a host of other very "real issues" related to women's rights.