Me and My Vagina.
When my friend of over 40 years, a woman supporting Sanders, accused me of voting with my vagina because I support Hillary Clinton, I was offended that I had been reduced to a body part by someone I thought of as a sister.
Now I embrace the accusation – because Hillary Clinton has been working to protect the rights of women, their vaginas, and the children born from those vaginas, for her entire career in public service.
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1972 – Hillary Rodham worked for The Children’s Defense Fund, an American child advocacy and research group, founded by Marian Wright Edelman.
...Mrs. Clinton was one of a handful of young researchers and interns who worked in Washington reviewing documents, looking into the schools that had been granted tax exemptions, and coordinating with activists and lawyers in the South who had been at the forefront of integration efforts.
www.nytimes.com/...
1973 – Hillary Rodham wrote an article for the Harvard Educational Review (which the GOP later attacked her about):
“…Adult Americans enjoy the legal rights set forth in the Constitution, statutes, regulations, and the common law of the federal and state governments. Child citizens, although their needs and interests may be greater than those of adults, have far fewer legal rights (and duties). Indeed, the special needs and interests which distinguish them from adults have served as the basis for not granting them rights and duties, and for entrusting enforcement of the few rights they have to institutional decision-makers.” Source.
1995 – United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton:
“As an American, I want to speak up for women in my own country—women who are raising children on the minimum wage, women who can’t afford healthcare or childcare, women whose lives are threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes.”
“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls,” she continued, or “when women and girls are sold into slavery or prostitution for human greed. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small,” she said, or “when thousands of women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.”
(This famous speech almost didn’t happen because advisors in the Clinton Administration didn’t want the First Lady to ruffle feathers in China. )
“It made people nervous,” muses Ginger Lew, who has advised the Obama administration on economics and attended the conference in Beijing. “There was a lot of pressure on her not to go. ... But I don’t think there was any question in her mind. She was very clear. She was going.” Clinton, Verveer says, “knew that this could make a difference. She wanted to push the envelope on behalf of women and girls around the world, and, throughout that up and down, she just focused on the speech.”
…Though it was a trailblazing development and groundbreaking for its forcefulness, Clinton had already started to focus on gender issues. Earlier that year, Clinton had traveled to Copenhagen for the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, and she had toured innovative projects and programs for women in South Asia. “By the time she had gotten to Beijing,” Verveer points out, “she had an awful lot under her belt—certainly as First Lady, working in the United States, and increasingly on the world stage.” www.elle.com/…
In 2005, Hillary Clinton, along with U.S. Senator Patty Murray, place a "hold" on the nomination of Lester Crawford to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until a decision is made on the over-the-counter approval status of Plan B emergency contraceptives.
"We appreciate Dr. Crawford coming in to meet with us today, but the bottom line is that the FDA has had the Plan B application for years and the American people simply need an answer yes or no. Science should never take a back seat to politics and ideology," Clinton said.
The FDA finally decided in 2006 that it would allow women age 18 and over to buy the pill without a prescription. In 2009, that floor was lowered to 17, after a judge ordered the agency to ease access to the drug, after determining the Bush administration's decision had been driven by politics, not science. www.huffingtonpost.com/...
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Other highlights of Hillary Clinton’s progressive work:
- She graduated from Wellesley College in 1969, majoring in political science. She was involved in student government and elected president of the college's student government associations.
- While she was at Wellesley in 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. In response, she worked with the college's African-American students to organize a peaceful two-day strike, avoiding the sometimes violent student disruptions rocking other American colleges in this era.
- Hillary became the first student in Wellesley's history to offer its commencement address, and received a 7 minute standing ovation. As a part of her speech, she criticized Senator Edward Brooke, who had spoken before.
- Hillary Rodham was on the editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action. She worked with the Yale Child Study Center.
- During the Watergate scandal, she served as a member of the Nixon impeachment inquiry staff, advising the House Judiciary committee.
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Hillary researched issues affecting migrant workers for Walter Mondale's congressional subcommittee on Migratory Labor.
- Hillary joined the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas. She pursued patent infringement and intellectual property law, working pro bono for child advocacy. She became a partner in 1979, the first woman to do so.
- She co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 1977. She continued to publish scholarly articles in the field of children's law.
- From 1978 through 1981, Hillary served on the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation, a nonprofit designed to ensure equal access to legal justice for all Americans.
- Hillary Clinton served as First Lady of Arkansas from 1979-1981, and 1983-1992. As First Lady, she served as chair of the Arkansas Education Standards Committee. While chair, she implemented stand standards for curriculum and mandatory teacher testing.
- She served on the board of nonprofits: The Arkansas Children's Hospital, The Children's Defense Fund, The American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession.
In total, Hillary Clinton sponsored 417 progressive bills on a range of issues during her tenure as Senator.
Highlighted here are just a few of the bills specific to protecting the rights and health of women and children sponsored by Senator Clinton:
S. 1240 (110th): Compassionate Assistance for Rape Emergencies Act of 2007
S. 1075 (110th): Unintended Pregnancy Reduction Act of 2007 A bill to expand access to contraceptive services for women and men under the Medicaid program, help low income women and couples prevent unintended pregnancies and reduce abortion.
S. 907 (110th): GEDI Act – a bill to establish an Advisory Committee on Gestational Diabetes, to provide grants to better understand and reduce gestational diabetes.
S.Res. 6S.Res. 542 (110th): A resolution designating April 2008 as “National STD Awareness Month”.06 (110th): A resolution designating June 27, 2008, as National HIV Testing Day.
S. 2415 (110th): Protection Against Transmission of HIV for Women and Youth Act of 2007
S. 3541 (110th): Iraqi Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement, and Security Act of 2008
S. 2244 (110th): Lead Elimination, Abatement, and Poisoning Prevention Act of 2007
S. 2175 (110th): Family Asthma Act
S. 2005 (110th): Secondhand Smoke Education and Outreach Act of 2007
S. 895 (110th): Children’s Health First Act
S.Res. 485 (109th): A resolution to express the sense of the Senate concerning the value of family planning for American women.
S. 1911 (110th): TCE Reduction Act of 2008 A bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to protect the health of susceptible populations, including pregnant women, infants, and children, by requiring a health advisory, drinking water standard, and reference concentration for trichloroethylene vapor intrusion, and for other purposes.
S. 3609 (110th): Lead-Safe Housing for Kids Act of 2008
S. 2877 (110th): Pediatric, Adolescent, and Young Adult Cancer Survivorship Research and Quality of Life Act of 2008
S. 1712 (110th): Screening for Health of Infants and Newborns Act
S. 766 (110th): Paycheck Fairness Act A bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide more effective remedies of victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex, and for other purposes.
S. 3706 (110th): Elimination of the Single Parent Tax Act of 2008 To prohibit States from charging child support recipients for the collection of child support.
S. 3502 (110th): Children’s Environmental Health and Safety Risk Reduction Act
S. 993 (110th): Pediatric Research Improvement Act
S. 1063 (110th): Protecting Military Family Financial Benefits Act of 2007
S. 1065 (110th): Heroes at Home Act of 2007
S. 1898 (110th): Military Family and Medical Leave Act
S. 968 (109th): Federal Public Safety Officer Surviving Spouse Protection Act of 2005 A bill to provide that spouses of Federal public safety officers who are killed in the line of duty, may remarry and continue to receive a survivor annuity.
S. 820 (110th): Choices in Child Care Act
S. 661 (110th): Kinship Caregiver Support Act
S.Res. 566 (109th): A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate concerning the importance of preventing child abuse and neglect before they occur and achieving permanency and stability for children who must experience foster care.
S.Res. 345 (108th): A resolution expressing the Sense of the Senate that Congress should expand the supports and services available to grandparents and other relatives who are raising children when their biological parents have died or can no longer take care of them.
S. 2053 (109th): Home Lead Safety Tax Credit Act of 2005
S. 1757 (109th): A bill to amend the Internal Revenue code of 1986 to make residents of Puerto Rico eligible for the refundable portion of the child tax credit.
S. 802 (108th): Code Adam Act A bill to establish procedures in public buildings regarding missing or lost children.
S. 1539 (107th): Protecting America’s Children Against Terrorism Act
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Secretary Clinton — me and my vagina thank you.
Addendum
Additions suggested by DKos members:
From phenry - Don’t forget It Takes a Village, which Rush Limbaugh and his cavemates took as proof positive that Hillary was a Marxist Pied Piper coming to take away everyone’s children and raise them in state-owned communal indoctrination centers. Or something like that.
From Tamar - Want to add also that she was involved in the report “Children Out of School” written by the Children’s Defense Fund which helped create the Individuals with Disability Education Act. The IDEA has stopped school systems from excluding children with disabilities from getting an education. Children’s Defense Fund workers went door-to-door to get information on children, barred from attending public schools.
People like my son (who is no longer with us) would have been refused an education and we, his parents, would have had even more hardship (and we had plenty) than we did in trying to help him have at least some kind of life.
From Tamar - Want to add also that she was involved in the report “Children Out of School” written by the Children’s Defense Fund which helped create the Individuals with Disability Education Act. The IDEA has stopped school systems from excluding children with disabilities from getting an education. Children’s Defense Fund workers went door-to-door to get information on children, barred from attending public schools.
People like my son (who is no longer with us) would have been refused an education and we, his parents, would have had even more hardship (and we had plenty) than we did in trying to help him have at least some kind of life.