Violence Against Women Act Reauthorized

The House voted today to pass the Senate’s bipartisan version of the Violence Against Women Act which extends coverage to Native American women and members of the LGBT community.

The legislation passed on a vote of 286 to 138, with 199 Democrats joining 87 Republicans to push the reauthorization of the landmark 1994 law.

 

And, here in South Carolina, Rep. Clyburn (D) was the only one of our five current Representatives that voted in favor of the bill.  Representatives Wilson, Duncan, Gowdy, Mulvaney and Rice ( all Republicans) voted No.  And just as a reminder, both SC Senators (Scott & Graham) also voted against this bill.

 

Oh, yeah...it's a great day here in South Carolina.

 

Where Ever Your Conscience May Take You

Lindsey Graham may not care much about gun deaths, but he proudly calls himself a "pro-life Senator."  Where he takes his stand is right smack inside of a woman's body, where he can celebrate all his religious freedoms.

I made the mistake of adding my name to an email petition regarding a woman's right to contraceptive access and the providers' obligation to, well, do their jobs.  I try to avoid this because what happens is I get back, by snail mail, on the taxpayer's dime (more like a dollar given the classy stationery and the cost of stamps), a form letter carefully tailored to say, "I don't agree, I am right, but please always feel free to contact me."

Often I don't bother to open the letter; I can tell you what they all say.  But I had just gotten the same old from Nikki Haley, on even more expensive letterhead, and I thought I'd start a collection.

So what we are struggling against these days, is no longer just the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy (or, as Lindsey might say, "Kill an unborn baby").  These days we are watching our President attempt to move us back to the 20th century, back before President W invented (probably has his science advisers invent) the "conscience clause."

This is one of those right-wing freedoms that started off with the Catholic church, those bastions of morality, all men, who believe that a woman's job is to submit to her husband.  Having no wife, and supposing not to have sex, the Pope and his underlings have nonetheless become the go-to guys when our Congressional leaders need testimony on women's reproductive systems.

Now I think the issue of whether or not an unmarried man should have any say in what happens to a woman, reproductively speaking, is absurd, but let's not dwell on that.

More important is the fact that religious groups enjoy (and I do mean enjoy) tax exempt status and despite their wealth are considered non-profit organizations.  As such they freeload off taxpayers, are allowed to receive government grants, and then dictate terms that fly right in the face of the Constitution.

Remember the Constitution?  All those right-wingers carry a copy of it on their person, I think to protect them from stray bullets when they are out wielding their weapons around town.

I believe that the louder someone talks about "freedom" these days, the more likely they are to dismiss the concept of "equality."  And this is what is wrong with the Catholic church, small businesses, pharmacists, the US Congress AND legislatures like that of our very own state of South Carolina.

You don't get to move the line.  If we've got a law --  if the Supremes have said abortion is legal -- you don't get to decide you don't want to do it.  If you provide insurance coverage, you don't get to decide you don't agree with a certain procedure.  If you operate a pharmacy, you are obligated to do your job, which is not to make moral judgments.

Imagine where this "conscience" silliness can lead.  In fact, you don't have to imagine from whence it came.

A hotel manager could decide his morals were compromised by allowing a couple of mixed race to have a room.

An obstetrician may refuse to care for a pregnant and unmarried teen.

A restaurateur would be free to turn away a gay couple.

And here's one that hasn't happened yet:  a pharmacist could decide not to prescribe erectile dysfunction drugs.

Which might, in fact, be a good thing.  Because on a religious level, one could say that if God wanted a man to have sex he'd have given him that erection.  And for another matter, the day this happens we will have a whole new ballgame.

U.S. House version of VAWA bill

Here we go again.

The U.S. Senate re-authorized the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) earlier this month. (No thanks to SC's two senators.)  Now it's to be taken up by the House of Representatives.

The Republican-controlled House has now come up with their own version of this bill and, no surprise, it removes the protection under the bill for the LGBT community.

" Specifically, the bill removes "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" from the list of underserved populations who face barriers to accessing victim services, thereby disqualifying LGBT victims from a related grant program. The bill also eliminates a requirement in the Senate bill that programs that receive funding under VAWA provide services regardless of a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. Finally, the bill excludes the LGBT community from the STOP program, the largest VAWA grant program, which gives funds to care providers who work with law enforcement officials to address domestic violence."  

The House's rationale for this mean-spirited endeavor is that by enumerating the groups that the bill will cover it is excluding those groups that are not specifically referred to --which would entail "constant updating." of the bill.  Omigod!  I'm trying to imagine what other groups they could be talking about.  Giraffes?  Dust mites? Green creatures from space?

 The House Bill also modifies the provision targeting Native American victims.

 " Under the Senate bill, tribal courts would gain new authority to prosecute non-Native American men who abuse Native American women on reservations. The House bill also grants that new authority -- a major change from the bill House Republicans put forward in the last Congress -- but adds a caveat that would allow those people to move their case to a federal court if they feel their constitutional rights aren't being upheld."  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/22/vawa-2013_n_2742096.html)
 

Here's a link to the bill and a discussion of what it contains:  http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20130225/CPRT-113-RU00-S47_xml.pdf

According to the Huffington Post

"House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) trashed the GOP proposal  altogether."House Republicans just can’t help themselves," Pelosi said in a statement. "Even with a strong, bipartisan bill passed by the Senate for the second Congress in a row, even with countless women in need of support and protection, Republicans are still turning the Violence Against Women Act into a partisan political football."
 

Right on.

A Pro-Choice Governor for South Carolina

You may have heard about all the idiotic anti-abortion bills floating around the SC Statehouse.  Sadly, this is business as usual for many of our legislators.  Bills like "personhood" and "preborn" and commissioning monuments to birth keep popping up, and like whack-a-mole, our good legislators continue to vote no.  But last year, one of the bills passed the House before being rejected by the Senate.  Pure single-mindedness could actually get one of the hair-brained bills turned into law.

Meanwhile, in 2010, Vincent Sheheen ran for Governor against Nikki Haley.  He's a good guy, a loyal Democrat, but talks too long and hard about cooperating, and while he claimed to be pro-choice before the primaries, he became far more wishy-washy before the general election, a fact that Haley was more than willing to use to her advantage.

We don't need a watered down republican in the Governor's mansion; we need someone who will unflinchingly defend a woman's right to reproductive freedom.

Here is a draft of a letter to Senator Sheheen encouraging him to stand up for a woman's right to choose, and vote no on any bill that infringes on that right:

___________, 2013

Senator Vincent Sheheen

504 Gressette Building

Columbia, South Carolina 29201

Dear Senator Sheheen:

I am a Democratic voter in South Carolina who is concerned about bills regarding women – and families – right to reproductive privacy. I am concerned that our state legislature has taken upon itself to redefine “life” to an absurd degree, in order to dictate mores that certain of our legislators believe to be Christian, but which are contemporary inventions.

Here in South Carolina there is much importance placed on “freedom.” Yet there are those elected by us that would vote to impose their presence within the bedroom and the doctor's office. There are bills that seek to determine unreasonable criteria for doctors who might perform abortions, which are legal procedures, and for those clinics that offer that service.

This is not only a travesty of the concept of individual freedoms These bills would jeopardize our right to religious freedom. They presume that our legislators are a religious authority, and not merely people elected to preserve the welfare of the citizens of this state.

Meanwhile, this battle over the control of a woman's reproductive choices is taking place while our quality of life in South Carolina continues to suffer. Poor education, high unemployment and low wages, inadequate health care are all issues that our legislators need to be addressing. Criminalizing a woman's reproductive health choices does in no way improve our quality of living. Rather, it drains our resources.

I understand that you are considering running for governor in 2014. I would be delighted to support someone who truly reflects Democratic values. I believe that a Democrat fights for our freedoms, and that includes the freedom of a woman, and her family, and her doctor, and her religious beliefs, in making her reproductive choices.

I would be unable to support your campaign if you vote for any of the anti-choice legislation that is proposed.

Thank you for your serious consideration of these matters, and I looking forward to your reply.

Very truly yours,

We would like to encourage you to send this letter, or some version of it, or your own original letter, to Senator Sheheen.  Snail mail will have more of an impact, but email will work. The more letters he gets, the more aware he will be of how important this issue is, not just to the women of the state, but to his election campaign.  Now is the time to let him know where we stand.

To paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, if three people did it, he might think it's some kind of an organization, and if 50 people did it, he might think it's a movement.

And it is a movement.

Letters to Lindsey (and Tim)

I just put my letters to Senators Graham and Scott in the mail, asking for their reasons why they voted no on the VAWA.  Can't wait to see if they reply with the same form letter.

SC Senators Vote Against VAWA Reauthorization

Both of South Carolina's esteemed senators voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act on Tuesday.  What were they thinking?  I decided to find out.

Here's the letter I am sending by snail mail to each of them. Feel free to use it, or any part of it, in a letter of your own.

We'll see what kind of response I get.  I'm not hopeful for much more than the standard "I'm busily fighting the War on Terror" from Senator Graham. Who knows what Senator Scott will come up with.  I suspect something like the "Tea Party made me do it."

_____________

The Honorable Lindsey Graham

290 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20501

or 

The Honorable Tim Scott

167 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator _____,

I would be interested in learning why you decided to vote against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act this past week.

This Act, among other things, provides funding for the S.T.O.P. Violence Against Women program in South Carolina. This progran prosecutes domestic violence and sexual assault cases and trains law enforcement, judges, prosecutors and victim advocates throughout the state about the causes, effects and laws pertaining to those crimes.  (http://www.scag.gov/criminal-domestic-violence-in-south-carolina/s-t-o-p-violence-against-women-program)

The VAWA Act and its funds are especially needed in South Carolina. This state, which you were (elected or appointed) to represent, was rated number two in the country in 2010 for the number of  women murdered by men. (Violence Policy Center Report 2012).

So, again, I would be interested in learning why you decided to vote against this important bill.

I look forward to hearing from you,

 Regards,

 

Penny Travis, PhD
 

Reinventing the Sandwich

I got my back up a bit with "this younger generation" yesterday.  It was during Up With Chris Hayes, and the panel discussion was about women's issues, and the current fight for women's reproductive rights.  Gloria Steinem, my hero, was there, and Marlo Thomas, representing my generation, and after a brief interview, they were joined by a couple of youngsters, the ever-self-referential Melissa Harris-Perry, and Serita Gupta.

This discussion was extremely important because in fact we continue to fight the battles over Roe v. Wade, even to the point of fighting for the right to birth control.

What caused me to growl at the panelists was when Gupta referred to herself as a member of the "sandwich generation," and then explained that these are the women who are now responsible for the care of their elderly parents and their young children.

Excu-use me, but when I was too young to recall, my own mother was taking care of her elderly parents, my grandmother a wheelchair bound stroke victim, and a three-year-old me and one-year-old younger sister.

Gloria, in response to that sandwich business, reminded us all that back in her day, women were home, and not considered to be "working."  The care was free, because the women in the household were the unpaid invisible workers.

And I do realize that just as these younger women need to be aware of the battles that came before them, we had warriors fighting before us.  Women were risking their lives so that we could vote and Hollywood was portraying the independent working woman.

And here we are, in the 21st century, our daughters taking up the charge to fight for the human rights that are their due.

Jane Crow

In spite of the majority American support for Roe v. Wade, today at it's 40th anniversary, there are ever more legislative efforts to deny women reproductive free choice.

Bill Moyers and his guests, Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas and Lynn Paltrow talked about why this is so and the consequences of this attack on women.  Paltrow has referred to this era as "the new Jane Crow," where women have lost legal rights, and in effect, personhood.  We have long seen doctors and women harassed, threatened and even murdered by radical enraged antiabortionists.  And as state legislatures continue to attempt to criminalize abortion, we are now facing increasing instances where women's legal rights are denied.  In some instances attorneys have been appointed for a fetus rather than the pregnant woman.  Women risk arrest for miscarriages suspected of being abortions.  The horror stories Paltrow tells leave us wondering how long before we are once again in the back alleys.

The why combines the simple and the complicated.  The legislators are predominantly white males; in an increasingly majority-minority country where there are fewer births of white babies than minority, abortion threatens to further decrease the white population.

And as long as women can be forced to have children they are unable to care for, they will be unable to grow as a powerful voice for change in our society.

Lica Colwell in Statehouse Reports, describes South Carolina's crisis in teen pregnancy.  The future for pregnant teens is grim, more so for their children.  Yet our legislators continue to fight for antiabortion bills rather than education, to reject federal Medicaid funding while increasing penalties for misdemeanor convictions, oppose a worker's right to a living wage.  In other words, a world in which teens see little reason to care for themselves, and ever fewer choices.

And these children, and their children, will be unlikely to learn to make informed decisions, and will be unlikely to vote for their best interests, if at all.

And isn't that just the way it has always worked out for those white men writing those antiabortion bills?