Debbie Wasserman Schultz Under Fire for Comments About Young Women - ABCNews

[WillyT]

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Under Fire for Comments About Young Women
By BENJAMIN SIEGEL - ABCNews
Jan 7, 2016, 10:56 AM ET

<snip>

Progressives and pro-choice activists are criticizing Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for saying she's seen "complacency" among young women born after the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling, a landmark decision that established the right to an abortion.

"Here’s what I see: a complacency among the generation of young women whose entire lives have been lived after Roe v. Wade was decided," she told The New York Times in an interview.

The abortion rights group Reproaction encouraged supporters to use the hashtag "DearDebbie" to respond to Wasserman Schultz's comments.

Tell Rep. @DWStweets to stop blaming young women for the abortion access crisis. https://t.co/gtMhT3IKx4 pic.twitter.com/8UJBqlqRFZ
— reproaction (@reproaction) January 6, 2016


#DearDebbie, pls stop treating us like fools. Btw, young & unmarried women were key in 2012. Does the DNC want our vote in 2016? @DWStweets
— Oryza Astari (@astaristarry) January 7, 2016


#DearDebbie as a young woman surrounded by forms of student activism I find it disappointing that you feel young women are complacent. 1/2
— Rosie Driscoll (@_rosiedriscoll) January 7, 2016

Kierra Johnson, the executive director of Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity, an abortion rights group, suggested young people view women's health issues from a different perspective.

"There is energy among young people around these issues -- it just may not be happening in the way that Rep. Wasserman Shultz is used to seeing," she said in a statement. "The young people that are drawn into this movement today don't see reproductive justice as wholly separate from LGBTQ equality or from racial justice or economic justice or a host of other issues."

Some progressives, unhappy with Wasserman Schultz's leadership of the DNC, used the controversy to call for her resignation...

<snip>

Link: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/debbie-wasserman-schultz-fire-comments-young-women/story?id=36141971

[Punkingal]

1. She's a real piece of work.

[roguevalley]

13. she's a dino and a fool

[WillyT]

2. And...

DNC Chair Should Not Criticize Young Feminists

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-noehren/dnc-chair-wrong-about-you_b_8924970.html



And...

#DearDebbie, Millennial Women Aren't 'Complacent' About Reproductive Rights
"Does waking up at 5 AM to clinic escort make me complacent?"

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dear-debbie-millennial-women-arent-complacent-about-reproductive-rights_568e83ebe4b0c8beacf5de15

[restorefreedom]

3. wow, she really can't help herself.

then again, its who she is....ll.

[Ken Burch]

4. Like most other big HRC backers and most Beltway Dems, DWS despises young voters.

The party has kept young people totally out in the cold since 1972, even though the Nixon landslide was solely due to the Dirty Tricks squad and the China trip.

We will lose in the fall if we once again campaign like voters over 55 are the only ones we should care about. And I say that as a 55 year old.

[Duval]

6. I'm with you, Ken Burch, and I'm 76.

Thank heavens my granddaughters and their friends are savvy and are voting for Bernie.

[daleanime]

7. This 55 year old....

agrees with you.

[Hekate]

27. Sorry, that is just bull and has no basis in historical fact. I was young in 1972...

My first presidential vote was 1968.

The "young people" of 1972 are grandparents now, and we have not lost our memory. The "young people" of today have no direct memory of those times because it was before they were even thought of.

I have done enough voter registration at protest actions to recognize complacency when I see it. "No I won't register to vote because I don't want to feed the beast." "I'm not a feminist, because we have everything we want now and feminists are harsh and bitter and don't shave their legs, and I'm not that." "I won't vaccinate my baby because polio has disappeared and there's no harm in measles." "America is post-racial. Having a black president is all the proof we need."

Young voters aren't being shut out or ignored by Democrats -- but if you want your voice to be heard, you have to show up.

[abelenkpe]

5. Calling young voters complacent is probably

Not a good strategy for getting them to turn out to vote.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. Going on with inane reefer madness anti-legalization tropes isn't a way to win in Colorado, either.

Which happens to be a swing state.

[Punx]

15. Or Oregon

Or Washington for that matter.

[Warren DeMontague]

16. Yeah, and California is likely to vote for legalization this November as well. Pop 34 Million.

Still, going by electoral college logic, they can probably take the West Coast for granted (not that they should).. CO, not so much.

[Punx]

18. Agreed on the EC logic

But I for one am tired of being taken for granted. I'm furious at my local Democratic Rep for voting for TPA. Being liberal here on social issues is easy, standing up to money and power, and being for the little guy, not so much. I expect more.

DWS is a great example of this, and can't even get the social part right.

[Warren DeMontague]

19. I hear that.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Obviously ABC news is just a bunch of "unhinged" berniebros.

[pnwmom]

10. The Director of Planned Parenthood has said that they no longer use the term "pro-choice"

because young women don't respond to it.

I think that IS a sign of complacency -- that they can't imagine the idea of a world where they have no choice. Where abortions are legal nowhere, and even birth control is hard to obtain.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/us/politics/advocates-shun-pro-choice-to-expand-message.html

Nor, they add, does it speak to a new generation of young women, who tell pollsters that they reject political labels — not least one that dates back four decades, to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of an anti-abortion group that hosts boot camps on talking about abortion. “Two sentences is really the goal,” she advises. “Then stop talking.”

Theresa Gorey, 70, handed a woman anti-abortion literature outside a Boston clinic on Friday. The Supreme Court struck down a law creating no-protest buffer zones near abortion clinics.

“The labels we’ve always used about pro-choice and pro-life — they’re outdated and they don’t mean anything,” said Janet Colm, 62, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Central North Carolina, as she prepared to take several younger women to a summer protest at the legislature in Raleigh. “I used to be a one-issue voter” — pro-choice — “but I think most younger people today aren’t.”

No pithy phrase has replaced pro-choice. Activists talk mainly of “women’s health” and “economic security,” usually with policy specifics.

SNIP

[senz]

22. Yes, I saw that. Pro-choice is the perfect term.

Several decades ago I argued this point with fellow NOW members. Pro-choice means the decision to take a pregnancy to term, or not, is entirely up to the pregnant woman. It is HER choice, no one else's. That is the crux of the matter, afaic.

A nice twist on it that I used to use with the antichoice crowd at abortion rights rallies: they'd start one of their little stories about a woman pregnant in bad circumstances with a fetus that might have birth defects, and then they'd ask me if I thought the woman should have an abortion. Of course they expected me to say "yes," after which they could inform me that the fetus turned out to be some illustrious person from history. However, I always told them that it was entirely up to the woman. If she wanted the baby, regardless of birth defects, etc., then she should have it. If not, not. Because that is what pro-choice means.

[chervilant]

11. I wonder if DWS realizes

that she's richly deserving of the nickname "Debbie Downer"?

And, she seems totally out of touch--likely too focused on being a Clinton sycophant. I hope she's gone soon. She is NOT helping our party.

[raindaddy]

12. Where's the President on this? What does it take to fire her?

Surprised she was appointed in the first place.. The current leadership in the Dem party expects liberals to shell out donations and and show up at the polls but when is the last time we got a liberal appointment?

[CharlotteVale]

14. Hilarious to see her accuse anyone else of complacency.

[WillyT]

17. That's A Great Point...

[senz]

20. Well shoot. Can't stand DWS but agree with her on this point.

As an old lady, I remember clearly what it was like for young women before Roe v. Wade. It was scary. Girls and women had to secretly get names of individuals (most not doctors) who would perform an abortion -- usually in very unprofessional, often unclean, locations. They had to bring cash. They had no guarantee of a good outcome. Some hemorrhaged and went to emergency rooms -- or just died. Some went got very ill with infections. Many were maimed and unable to bear children after the abortion. Too many died.

Some women tried to abort themselves with long thin metal objects such as wire coat hangers, or they threw themselves downstairs, rode a horse at a gallop for hours, took poisonous potions, etc. They were desperate. They knew they might die. It was a helpless, scary feeling.

It was scary.

If you can stand to look at it, here is an iconic photo that most of us have seen of a young woman, mother of two, who died in a motel room of a self-induced abortion (click on the blank frame to see the iconic image)

https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/gerri-santoros-abortion/

Many of us heard about girls who died from it. A few qualified for a "therapeutic abortion" but the process could take so long that the pregnancy was far more advanced by the time they had it, which also makes a physical and emotional difference.

It was a scary time to be a woman.

Few if any of us remember the Great Depression, but the children and grandchildren of those who went through it went on spending sprees the 1980s and 90s like there's no tomorrow. Young women today do not know how serious and frightening it is to live in a time when abortion is illegal. How can they? It's just not real to them.

[pnwmom]

25. Did you read the NYTimes article about the Richard's interview?

She said that she'd talk to women who said they were "pro life" but when she questioned further found they were definitely pro-choice. But their feeling is they wouldn't want an abortion themselves. (Of course no one knows exactly how she'll feel about it until she finds herself in an unplanned or otherwise unfortunate pregnancy.)

But these women are lining up with the pro-life people, with no apparent awareness that they're helping others who want to take their own future choice away.

It's scary.

[Hekate]

28. Thank you, senz. Just thanks. If we don't remember, who will?

[MeNMyVolt]

21. So what do you think Willy, my man.

Let's hear you thoughts on the matter. Politics aside.

[senz]

23. Willy has the right to post a news item as an OP

without having to answer questions if he doesn't feel like it.

[MeNMyVolt]

24. OK. n/t

[Hekate]

26. Uncomfortable truths, people. "I'm not a feminist" = "I wasn't born when things were bad."

"America is now a post-racial society" = "Black people aren't being attacked with fire-hoses en masse and shaming the rest of us, but being killed one by one."

It goes on. "I don't want those poisons injected into my baby's body" = "I've never even seen a child crippled from polio, much less one blinded by complications from mumps."

And yes, I've met some of each, and yes, they tend to be young.

[Scuba]

30. She's setting up young voters to take the blame for Hillary's loss next November.