IN this year’s campaign furor over a supposed “war on women,” involving birth control and abortion, the assumption is that the audience worrying about these issues is just women.
Give us a little credit. We men aren’t mercenaries caring only for Y chromosomes. We have wives and daughters, mothers and sisters, and we have a pretty intimate stake in contraception as well.
Those are the first two paragraphs of
this power column by Nicholas Kristof in the Sunday
New York Times (and don't worry, clicking on that link will not count against your 10 free articles for the month).
One more sentence - from the end of the 3rd paragraph:
Just as civil rights wasn’t just a “black issue,” women’s rights and reproductive health shouldn’t be reduced to a “women’s issue.”
Please keep reading.
Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn, who shared a Pulitzer Prize (he has won another on his own) have written a terrific book and produced a related film on women - go explore Half the Sky to learn about their commitment.
Kristof has written extensively on how women are treated around the world, and on more than one occasion I have found myself posting about those columns.
He is well aware that the "war on women" in this nation pales when compared to what has happened and is unfortunately still happening in places like Congo or Darfur or Afghanistan. Nevertheless, Kristof argues that what is happening in this country
would mark a major setback for American women — and the men who love them.
Let me make a discursus from Kristof's column. I have argued similarly in the past that things like abolishing DADT and achieving marriage equality were not "gay rights" issues,they were issues that clearly affected gays but also were basic rights for all of us, rights upon which all of us should insist. Perhaps I feel that way because as the child of an upper middle class white family I found the civil rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s to be something that concerned me. Perhaps it was my Jewish background, with 2 of my four grandparents born in Europe, one of whom lived through a pogrom, with relatives I never knew killed in the liquidation of the ghetto in Bialystok - if rights could be denied to anyone then they might also be denied to me.
I think of my mother. I think of my sister, my niece, my great-nieces. I think of my wife and her three sisters, of her two nieces. Like our President with his two daughters, I want all of them to have the same opportunities and rights and protections as do I, my male cousins, the nephews my wife and I have, her brother.
These are issues of health. These are issues of choice. These are issues of economics.
Kristof says he has respect for Ryan and those like him even as he disagrees with them,
their position is unpopular and will cost them votes, so it’s probably heartfelt as well as courageous.
To that I cannot agree. I see their position as a willingness to impose their views on others by force of law if necessary even if it violates rights and concience of those imposed upon.
What I can somewhat agree with is the sentence that comes immediately after what I have just quoted:
I have less respect for Romney, whose positions seem based only on political calculations.
Please note - I said "somewhat agree with" because I would say I have no respect for Romney because his position on this, as on so many other things, seems based only a political calculation. The only time Romney strays from a purely political calculation is when he stakes out a position that personally enriches him - as I think is a fair standard to apply to Romney's position on taxation.
But Kristof's column is on how Romney would treat women.
He goes through abortion and Planned Parenthood. But he has a particular focus on contraception, for which he begins by noting Romney's hostility on contraception goes back to his time as governor when he opposed emergency contraception for women who had been raped.
I need to push fair use a bit. Let me quote the rest of this section:
Romney also wants to reinstate the “global gag rule,” which barred family planning money from going to aid organizations that even provided information about abortion. He would cut off money for the United Nations Population Fund, whose work I’ve seen in many countries — supporting contraception, repairing obstetric fistulas, and fighting to save the lives of women dying in childbirth.
There ARE real differences between Romney and Obama, no matter how much Romney tries to blur them during this general election, because he knows that the positions he has taken, even as the supposedly moderate Governor of Massachusetts, would horrify most women in this country.
Electing Romney would represent a major step backward for women in this country.
And it’s not just women who should be offended at the prospect of a major step backward. It’s all of us.
I am offended. If you are as well, we still have more than two days until the polls close to ensure that Mitt Romney does not get elected President.