Give This a Title

Less than three years ago, when Barack Obama was on his presidential campaign, Carlos Fresneda and I drove on the legendary Route 66, from Chicago to Los Angeles, to feel the political pulse of the nation. In Clinton, Okla., we met Hilary, who sold fireworks to raise funds for her church. She made it very clear to us that she wasn’t going to vote for Obama. Would she vote Democratic if Hillary Clinton had won the primaries? “No, a president’s work is too complicated for a woman,” she said in a sharp tone of voice. We don’t know if Hilary didn’t want to vote altogether after Sarah Palin was picked by John McCain as his candidate for vice president.

If Hilary had lived 100 years ago she wouldn’t have had to worry about a woman being president. She couldn’t have voted either. She might have celebrated the first Woman’s Day. A few days later she might have heard about the fire at the sweatshop of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, where 156 workers, mainly women between 16 and 25 years old, died. Most of them preferred to die jumping from the ninth floor than die burning in flames.

Since then many glass ceilings have been broken that have benefitted Hilary and many other women. Let’s say that the invisible masculine box that tries to stop the momentum of women momentum looms even larger now. There’s still a long road ahead, not only in Third World countries, but also in the U.S., where a woman’s average wage is 75 percent of a man’s.

Since Republican John Boehner became speaker of the House, men have gained the capacity to express themselves even more, perhaps by indulging in their feminine side, and can now cry in public. Thanks, Boehner. Unfortunately, in their rush to change the world for what they see as a better society, Abraham Lincoln’s party might end up setting the clock of feminist progress backwards. The Unites States has done a lot for women’s rights, but some politicians seem to think that too much has been done.

First, they tried unsuccessfully to change the legal definition of rape at the federal level. Under the excuse of saving money, only forced rape would count as rape. Last year, Bobby Franklin, a congressman from the state of Georgia, presented a bill that would have made a “victim” of rape termed an “accuser” of rape. Some will say it makes sense; most likely, those who have never been a rape victim and don’t know how hard it can be to even admit that you’re a victim. It is calculated that only one of every 16 rapes ends with the rapist behind bars because many “victims” fear retaliation and don’t even become “accusers.”

If a woman wants to abort a pregnancy that resulted from a rape, it will become harder for her thanks to the Republicans’ budget, which forbids state funds from being given to the birth control agency, Planned Parenthood, if they aid any abortions. At present, abortions only represent three percent of the budget of said agency, and they are not funded by the government. Most of the expenses incurred by Planned Parenthood go to medical care, contraceptives, cancer screenings and tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

The same Bobby Franklin recently presented a bill to criminalize abortion in Georgia, even if it wasn’t voluntary. The mother would be guilty unless it’s proven that “there is no human involvement whatsoever in the causation of such event.” Franklin wants women to be responsible for protecting the fetus from “the moment of conception.” According to the bill, abortions can’t be legislated by the Supreme Court, an abortion is considered a murder and zygotes and embryos are considered unborn children.

In South Dakota, Republicans wanted to change a law so that doctors who conduct abortions would be considered murderers, even if they’re abiding by federal law. They gave up in the end. Instead, the state legislature approved a law that states that a woman has to go to a crisis pregnancy center with the purpose “to help them maintain and keep their relationship with their unborn children” before actually being able to go to a clinic to get an abortion. The bill is now in the state senate.

The budget cuts would also come from food aid given to pregnant women or women who have recently given birth who live in poverty, from the Head Start program, which pays for child care so mothers can work and earn a living, and from aid to senior citizens, of which 75 percent are women. Maybe you think I’m exaggerating, but some Republicans would actually justify this to me. In Maryland, for example, members of the elephant’s party defended the cuts in funding for child care, arguing that children should be at home with their mothers, which is where women should be.

Note: I would have liked to write a more positive article on this special day. International Women’s Day is celebrated with events in different countries all over the world, part of an initiative by Women for Women International, a non-governmental organization created by Zainab Salbi, who I wrote about in this blog last year.