Public Employee Press

Republicans trample women's rights

By JANE LaTOUR

In her 1996 book, Tanya Melich documents "The Republican War Against Women," that eroded the national commitment to gender equality as the country turned right during the misogynist reigns of presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Since then, the Republicans have pushed even harder to deprive women of health care, equal rights and equal pay.

Equal pay: Two years ago, Republicans defeated the Equal Pay Act to strengthen the remedies available to victims of sex discrimination. Senate Democrats are now pushing for the bill, which requires employers to show that wage differences are job-related, not based on sex, and protects employees from retaliation for sharing salary information. Women in full-time jobs still earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Cutting essential screenings

Job and health cuts: Shrinking revenue has eliminated millions of public service jobs. Because women and African Americans are concentrated in the public sector, state and local workforce cuts have hit them disproportionately. Republican moves to chop federal spending have targeted low-income Americans, focusing their harm on women and children.

Republicans in the House of Representatives approved the budget proposal of Wisconsin's Paul Ryan to shred $3.3 trillion of low-income programs over the next 10 years, destroy Medicare as we know it and make its deepest cuts in Medicaid, which funds health care for low-income people. The Ryan budget would also eliminate basic women's health services and President Obama's health-care reform.

Birth control and cancer: Republican proposals on women's health care would cut off funds for mammograms and Pap smears, eliminating screening for breast and cervical cancer, curtail access to birth control and primary reproductive health care, and continue attacks on the constitutionally protected right to abortion.

In Texas, where over one-quarter of women are uninsured, 40 percent of those who get health care through the state Women's Health Program rely on Planned Parenthood, yet Republicans are trying to defund Planned Parenthood. A federal judge is currently blocking this attack.

Equality at stake: The fight for gender equality continues, but the Republicans are on the wrong side, trying to turn the clock back to the dark ages for women, while President Barack Obama champions women's rights.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney believes states should ban birth control and opposes the president's health-care reforms. Symbolically, the first law Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which corrected a conservative Supreme Court ruling that made it harder for victims to fight pay discrimination.