NYTimes Outlines the War on Women

Posted on 5.21.2012 by Lily

If you haven't seen it yet, yesterday's New York Times editorial summarizes the recent and seemingly endless legislative assaults on women's health and well-being. They divide these attacks into four broad categories of abortion, equal pay, domestic violence, and access to basic preventive health care, showing that the war on women is not imaginary and fetus-loving can't exactly be the motivation for it all. (That last bit may be my own extrapolation.)

Despite the persistent gender gap in opinion polls and mounting criticism of their hostility to women’s rights, Republicans are not backing off their assault on women’s equality and well-being. New laws in some states could mean a death sentence for a pregnant woman who suffers a life-threatening condition. But the attack goes well beyond abortion, into birth control, access to health care, equal pay and domestic violence.

Republicans seem immune to criticism. In an angry speech last month, John Boehner, the House speaker, said claims that his party was damaging the welfare of women were “entirely created” by Democrats. Earlier, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, sneered that any suggestion of a G.O.P. “war on women” was as big a fiction as a “war on caterpillars.”

But just last Wednesday, Mr. Boehner refuted his own argument by ramming through the House a bill that seriously weakens the Violence Against Women Act. [...]

Whether this pattern of disturbing developments constitutes a war on women is a political argument. That women’s rights and health are casualties of Republican policy is indisputable.

Go read it all.