Women Have Been The Fueling Energy Of Christian Right Demands For Decades

Women Have Been The Fueling Energy Of Christian Right Demands For Decades

By Emily Suzanne Johnson, Assistant Professor of History, Ball State University. First published on The Conversation

Alabama’s new abortion restrictions were signed into law by Gov. Kay Ivey. But more has been said recently about the fact that the bill was passed by 25 white men in the state Senate. Media reports have pointed to how this law will disproportionately affect black and poor women.

Only four women currently serve in Alabama’s state Senate. Three voted against the bill, while one abstained.

In response to the Alabama vote, Democratic State Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison compared men’s votes on abortion legislation to “a dentist making a decision about heart surgery.”

“That’s why we need more women in office,” Coleman-Madison said.

Across the country, women are underrepresented in legislatures. But the question is: Would voting more women into office necessarily shift the politics of abortion?

Pro Planned Parenthood Counter Protests Dwarf Anti-Forces | New York State Moves To Codify Roe v. Wade In State Constitution

Pro Planned Parenthood Counter Protests Dwarf Anti-Forces | New York State Moves To Codify Roe v. Wade In State Constitution

Abortion rights are front and center on Saturday as pro-life activists launch protests across America. Waiting for them were supporters of Planned Parenthood -- and it seems the pro-Planned Parenthood forces dominated. 

In St. Paul, Minnesota, a "dozen feet of empty street separated a police-estimated 6,000 pro-Planned Parenthood protesters from an opposing, defund PP group of 250-500 people. 

Redtracker | TIME Remembers 50,000 People In New York City Demanding Women's Equality

Women's News Headlines August 26, 2016

Second-wave feminism flexed its mighty muscle on Aug. 26, 1970, as 50,000 women marched down New York City’s Fifth Avenue. Joined by a coterie of men and anti-war protesters, the marchers were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, giving American women the vote. They were also demanding changes to the policies that affected women's lives: childcare and abortion policies, education and employment opportunities. Many women abandoned their usual duties for the day, joining with spiritual sisters across the country staging sit-ins and takeovers of all-male bars.

One year to the day after the Women’s Strike for Equality March, Congress passed a resolution designating Aug. 26 as Women’s Equality Day, and 45 years later, the day continues to be a moment to reflect on exactly what has been achieves in the arena of women's rights. 

With no Equal Rights Amendment in place for American women, and with the latest research from PEW affirming that over 70% of Republican men and 40% of Democrats believing that sexism is dead in America, older women are challenging younger ones to get real about deep refusal among American men to give women more rights. Particularly precarious for women are the Personhood bills littering state legislatures: Republican-sponsored laws that equates the rights of women with those of a fertilized embryo. 

Related:  AOC Channels the History of America's Equal Rights Amendment

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Read On: Women's News Headlines August 26. 2016

Phyllis Schlafly's Fear of Bathrooms Has Long Stopped Gay + Women's Rights Progress in America

Phyllis Schlafly's Fear of Bathrooms Has Long Stopped Gay & Women's Rights Progress in America

Eye | Meryl Streep Launches ERA Campaign | Michelle Obama Guest Edits More | Arianna Huffington In The Spotlight

Anne is reading …

Arianna at the Huff Post Helm

Arianna Huffington’s Improbable, Insatiable Content MachineNYTimes Magazine

Today, The Huffington Post employs an armada of young editors, writers and video producers: 850 in all, many toiling at an exhausting pace. It publishes 13 editions across the globe, including sites in India, Germany and Brazil. Its properties collectively push out about 1,900 posts per day. In 2013, Digiday estimated that BuzzFeed, by contrast, was putting out 373 posts per day, The Times 350 per day and Slate 60 per day. (At the time, The Huffington Post was publishing 1,200 posts per day.) Four more editions are in the works — The Huffington Post China among them — and a franchising model will soon take the brand to small and midsize markets, according to an internal memo Huffington sent in late May.

Since its founding, Huff Po has depended on free labor, understanding that if you give bloggers a big enough platform, you don’t need to pay them.

Audrey Hepburn in London

Audrey Hepburn photographed wearing Givenchy by Norman Parkinson, 1955. © Norman Parkinson Ltd./Courtesy of Norman Parkinson Archive.This Audrey Hepburn Exhibition Is Like Pinterest In Real LifeVanity Fair

Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon’ is now open through October 18 at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Some of the biggest names in photography lensed Audrey Hepburn: Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Angus McBean, Irving Penn and Norman Parkinson. Mark Shaw was asked to shoot a photo essay about Hepburn for Life Magazine in 1953, was granted unprecedented access to Hepburn, who was filming Sabrina at the time. Exhibition portraits show her in many of her most famous roles – another cover for Life magazine, swathed in Givenchy as Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon

While Hepburn took up humanitarian work during the 1950s, she became a global ambassador for UNICEF in the 80s. Naturally bilingual in English and Dutch, Hepburn also spoke fluent French, Italian, Spanish, and German as she travelled to the poorest and most disadvantaged areas of the world to support aid projects. Hepburn was one of the first mega celebrities to leverage her fame and following on behalf of the UN.

Meryl Streep Petitions Congress for ERA

Meryl Streep receiving Medal of Freedom award from President Barack Obama in 2014.Hollywood mega actor Meryl Streep sent letters to all 535 members of Congress in late June, petitioning them to revive the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

“I am writing to ask you to stand up for equality – for your mother, your daughter, your sister, your wife or yourself – by actively supporting the Equal Rights Amendment,” Streep wrote in the letter.

Each letter was accompanied by a copy of ‘Equal Means Equal’, a book by president of the ERA Coalition Jessica Neuwirth.

The essence of the ERA is simple, written in 1920, is simple: “Equality rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

It took over 50 years for Congress to finally ratify the ERA in 1972. As the amendment moved towards final passage — passing in 35 of the required 38 states, the infamous Phyllis Schlafly hit the road to stop its final passage.

The actress also noted that the United States has encouraged countries like Afghanistan to include women’s rights into their constitutions, yet America doesn’t “have it in our own,” according to The Washington Post

“For the first time, we have the expectation that we can have a broad array of choices, that we could lead in almost any part of society,” said Streep, who we spotted in DC last February. “And yet we face resistance. … How can we lift and defuse it, how do we make it so our equality is not so threatening?”

First Lady Michelle Obama is interviewed by Meryl Streep in the July/August issue of More magazine. Streep is attached to an in development anti-NRA movie with producer Harvey Weinstein called ‘The Senators’ Wife’ — a clear reason for the actor to be in DC.

It’s equally likely that she was in town to interview First Lady Michelle Obama for the July/August issue of MORE Magazine, with FLOTUS serving as guest editor.

MORE highlights the critical role that mothering played in unleashing the skills of both women by reminding them constantly that they could be whatever they chose to be in life.

AOC has long stood for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Read on:

Sign Our Petition in Support of an Equal Rights Amendment AOC Salon

Surveys suggest that the vast majority of Americans aren’t refusing to accept the ERA — no matter what right-wing zealots tell us. If reality, most United States citizens believe that women do have equal protection under the law. Boy are they wrong!!! Not only do women NOT have equal protection under the law, but Republicans in Congress are hell-bent on turning back the rights that women have won in the last 40 years.

Nomi Leasure On Why America Needs An Equal Rights AmendmentAOC Salon

Sign Our Petition in Support of an Equal Rights Amendment for American Women

Sign Our Petition in Support of an Equal Rights Amendment for American Women