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- G e n d e r G a p p e r s T M
AMERICA'S OLD WAR
 The
Cheney/Bush religious agenda regarding women's reproductive and human rights
is well known. Now they have taken steps that can lead to women's doctors
being arrested as criminals.
They seek to have a FETUS classified as an unborn CHILD. They say this will allow low-income women to have prenatal and delivery care. Again, they lie. They are just trying to criminalize abortion and/or birth control with a back door attack using low-income women as foils. Reclassification is totally unnecessary. Waivers have been, and are, issued to low-income pregnant women so their pregnancy is covered. Read about why the ACLU is so concerned
about this administration's mixing church and state. As the election process creaks into gear for November 2002, our old war has raised its ugly head and taken on new dimensions. Determined to win the deciding votes -- women's, the Repugnants are going all out. Women are their prime targets. Women are their commando army."Feminism meets Terrorism" But they are not using just ordinary women, the kind that we all know and associate with every day, but trained professionals that are paid by the Republican Party to go on radio talk and TV to massacre liberal spokespersons. They have no rules of engagement or any code of ethics. They talk fast and talk over everyone, even the host of a program. Their aim is to get their agenda across over and over, and in the process keep our spokespeople from being heard. They are vicious and they are effective. In many radio markets, new women's talk programs have come into being. They are very hard to listen to because the talk is boilerplate right-wing-nut. Hosts and callers are putting the blame for everything bad that has happened onto the woman who works outside the home. They denigrate every advance toward equality that women have won. "Why," one persistent, constant caller asks, "do we need the Governor's Council on Women? There isn't any Council on Men so it's discriminatory." The talk show host will praise this caller for her insight. Another caller may explain a reason for the Commission; for example, that women are still paid less than men are, and since 9/11 they are slipping further behind in pay. That caller will be told "women should stay home so men can have the jobs." http://www.csmonitor.com/commentary/index.html Citing phony statistics, call-in hosts claim that the increase in neighborhood violence happened because women don't stay home. What they don't blame on women, they blame on the prohibition of prayer and saluting the flag in schools. Prime message = women who work outside their home are evil. Evil -- the battered woman who leaves her husband, puts her children in daycare so she can work, or is on welfare. To make sure you get the point, they tie this all in with "the war against terrorism" and supporting a pResident, who has declared that most of the known world is EVIL. Thus tightly wrapping their agenda in the bible and the flag, they paint any opposing view as un-American or anti-American. They show only one side of human problems -- theirs. "Dissent is futile" and "un-American." This is just the tip of the "Patriot Act" iceberg and it will get worse. Women have advanced, but not far enough to withstand the attacks of a Republican administration that rules the media and flips the bird to our Constitution. As human rights are thrown into the garbage, those rights that most affect women are starting to slip already.
On the TV show, West Wing, a woman activist said, "We get to overthrow the government every 4 years." That is true but we can also slow down a bad government THIS YEAR by electing a Congress that separates church and state and respects the Constitution. We cannot afford complacency. We must turn these Constitution busters out of office. Women, and the men who support women's human rights, have only the ballot box between them and more of the Cheney/Bush juggernaut. 2002-005
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