Republicans Claim Their War On Women Is Over, But The Facts Say Otherwise
On Monday a group of conservative women came together to form a panel discussion called,”War No More,” hosted by Concerned Women for America, an evangelical Christian woman’s group. The panelists proclaimed the hyped up “war on women” over and gave their ideas about how to woo female voters to the Republican Party.
The women on the panel said that Democrats used a few comments made by Republicans in he 2012 elections to declare that the GOP was waging a war on women. GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway claimed that the war wasn’t actually a war but instead “a few over-the-top comments by a couple of Republicans running for Senate” in 2012. She also said:
What do most women do every week? Do they fill up the gas tank and the grocery cart? Or do they get an abortion?….The notion that we can’t think about anything other than from the waist down is congenitally flawed. [Source]
A few over-the-top comments? Clearly Conway has no idea why we believe there is a war on women, so lets remind her:
- In 2007, North Dakota Republicans tried to make abortion, even in the cases of rape and incest, a Class AA felony with a sentence of life in prison.
- In 2012, Todd Akin said pregnancy that results from rape is “really rare,” because,“if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” while arguing why women who are raped should not get an exemption in his anti-abortion bill.
- When asked about abortion during a 2012 Senate debate, Republican Richard Mourdock said,” Life is that gift from God that I think even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”
- Paul Ryan said rape was just another method of conception.
- Republicans have repeatedly blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act which would close the py gap between men and women.
- New Hampshire state Republican Rep. Steve Vaillancourt said a Democratic Congresswoman would lose her re-election bid because she looked like a “drag queen” and she’s “ugly as sin.”
- Republicans continue to pass bills requiring women to get mandatory ultrasounds before they can receive and abortion.
- Idaho Republican Vito Barbieri wants women to “swallow a camera” to help doctors see what’s going on before prescribing abortion inducing drugs.
- Former Arizona state Senator Russell Pearce said,”You put me in charge of Medicaid, the first thing I’d do is get [female recipients] Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations.”
- 24 anti-abortion bills have been introduced to Congress in 2015. Hundreds have been introduced by state lawmakers.
I didn’t even include the number of times Fox News, the GOP’s media machine, has blamed women for their own rapes, because quite frankly, I don’t have all day. You get the picture though: Conway is delusional.
The panelists, including Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina and the highest-ranking Republican woman in the House, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, incredibly went on to say they need to convince women that increasing the minimum wage, expanding paid sick and family leave, and addressing the pay gap would not make things better for women. That’s right, paying women fairly is somehow bad for them — in Republican land.
It is obvious that these women participated in this panel was so they could continue to perpetuate the lie that the Republican Party cares about women. They claim that they aren’t waging a war on women, but the actions of their own party speak much louder than empty words.
They think that they are going to be able to pull one over on the women in this country, but they won’t. We are not stupid. We have been the target of the GOP for years, and we aren’t going to let a few self-loathing hypocrites convince us otherwise. It is disgusting to see these women turning their backs on their own gender in order to serve a bunch of misogynistic men who want to keep us barefoot and pregnant. A bunch of men who do not want us to succeed. A bunch of men who want to shove their elephant in our uterus and tell us what we can do with our bodies. It is despicable.
Sorry, Republican Party, you’re gonna have to try harder than that if you want to earn our vote.
