Stand in Solidarity: Stop the War On Women

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Political interests are interfering in discussions about women’s health and health care. First, they tried to punish insurance companies for providing women with safe access to pregnancy prevention. Then, they tried to cut critical funding for cancer screenings and nutritional support for low-income families. Next, major backers of critical services like Planned Parenthood have wavered based on misguided pressure from within their organizations.

Much of this inequality stems from the link between male dominance and political legitimacy. Throughout history, revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries have used the image of women’s power to discredit the regime they sought to overthrow. Once in power themselves, women’s rights are denigrated further. French revolutionaries made Marie Antoinette a symbol of the immorality of the ancien régime, just as Iranian revolutionaries did to Princess Ashraf in their. After toppling the monarchy, the French revolutionaries banned women from holding senior teaching positions and inheriting property. Ayatollah Khamenei made it a crime for women to speak on the radio or appear unveiled in public.

Take for example attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Were this measure rescinded, at least 22 million Americans would lose medical insurance by 2026. These cuts threaten to affect women more than men, whether by removing basic health coverage for thousands, cutting maternity care or sharply limiting reproductive rights2.

Political vanguards have recently been turning back decades of gains in the rights and status of women, including reproductive rights, access to contraceptives and the right to choose to undergo an abortion. These political efforts also attack the changing roles in the workplace, in the family and in government that reproductive rights have helped to allow women to assume3.

Anti-woman proposals that have been percolating in the fringes of Congress for years, such as “personhood” measures, are suddenly supported by mainstream presidential candidates. Rights that women have come to take for granted have suddenly come under attack for the first time in decades.

Women should not suffer because of the inability of our legislators to see past their own stake and work toward the good of the whole. Help stop this War on Women. Sign the pledge below and stand in solidarity for women’s health today.