The 2017 Women’s March may have been the largest single protest in history, but women have been marching literally and virtually for 200 years. And for 200 years, the march, the campaign for women’s rights has been shorthand for voting, education, health care, equal pay, workers rights, civil rights, environmental justice, gun safety.
Yes, there was that period when temperance was a priority, as well. But it has only been in the 1970s, that Feminism – the fight for women’s equality – took hold, and with it, the fight for the essential right: reproductive freedom.
The new exhibit at the New York Historical Society, simply called “Women March,” is part of The Women’s Suffrage NYC Centennial Consortium, and traces this long arc which has not always moved toward justice or equality. Indeed, progress, on just about every front, has been in brief spurts of enlightenment. In reality, that long arc is more zig-zags and brick walls.
The Trump Administration’s obsession with dismantling Obamacare has been a direct assault on women’s health and the ability to protect their children. Essentially, it would return to the days when just being a woman was a “pre-existing condition” that added to the premium cost and unaffordability of health care. Now, Trump, actually violating the spirit if not the letter of the law has eliminated provisions that require coverage for contraceptives – but not Viagra – and is supporting the third Supreme Court challenge of its constitutionality based on the 2017 Tax law that zeroed out the penalty.
Roll-backs of environmental protections – clean air and water – directly jeopardize the health of women and children, hurt productivity at work and success in school. Environmental justice, climate justice are among the focuses of today’s women’s movement.
“Women are on the frontlines of the climate crisis and experiencing some of its worst impacts,” said Maria Ezpeleta, Oxfam America’s senior gender advisor with Extractive Industries. “Worse yet, drought, hunger, and other impacts tend to magnify existing gender inequalities. Despite these challenges women are often the key agents of change in their communities. They are at the center of efforts to increase food production, ensure good nutrition for their family, and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Right now, they are fighting back—and we must join their fight. Our global response to the climate crisis must be gender-responsive and address the needs of everyone, including by carrying the voices of women at its core. There are too few women at the decision-making table on issues across the board, including the climate crisis. We must push for a new climate change agenda that is gender-just and driven by a more representative and inclusive system than the one that got us here in the first place.”
Oxfam is convening a discussion, “When Women Lead: Feminist Action for Climate Justice” on Thursday, March 19 at 6:30 p.m. at The Flat NYC. For more information visit oxfamamerica.org.
Despite the massive marches for climate action, gun safety, to stop the criminal separation of families at the border, lawmakers seem to have become inoculated against needing to act in face of massive majorities. Indeed, it is an echo of the 1820s when women used their Constitutional right to petition. They may not have had the vote, but they could still petition. Congress simply decided to ignore, invalidate, dismiss the women’s petitions. That seems to be what is happening now.
Indeed, there have been four major marches during the Trump era, including the 2017 Women’s March, the largest single day of protest in history, but lawmakers seem emboldened to roll back women’s rights.
And that chance comes this week as the radical activist right-wing majority on the Supreme Court takes up June Medical Services LLC. v. Gee, which – just like the Texas law which the court overturned in 2016 – could give states the power to effectively ban abortion without actually repealing Roe v. Wade, by simply shutting down every abortion clinic in Louisiana, ergo, every other state.
There have been some 450 proposed laws to chip away at a woman’s right to choose, going so far as banning abortions from the moment a fetal heartbeat can be detected, no matter the health or well-being of the mother or fetus, or whether the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. Proposed laws have gone so far as to prohibit pregnant women from crossing state lines to places where abortions are more accessible, and to criminally punish doctors.
Like other attempts, which have been rejected by the court before Kavanaugh and Gorsuch joined, this law would effectively impose unrealistic requirements that effectively shut down clinics or put up unreasonable hurdles that prevent women who cannot afford the money or time to travel, force women to endure unnecessary invasive medical procedures, then being forced to watch ultrasound and listen to detailed description of the fetus.
In reaction, an Alabama state legislator proposed mandating a man over 50 years old or after his third child has a vasectomy and be required to pay for it. The bill prompted Senator Ted Cruz, an avid advocate of denying women reproductive rights, to declare, “Yikes. A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take everything… literally!”
Let’s be clear, all these laws impose religion on others, contradicting the Constitution’s bar against the “establishment” of religion. But the impact is to render women less than men in their ability to use their own judgment, make their own choices, determine their own destiny. In effect, the woman becomes a vassal of the state, returning to the time not that long ago when women did not own their own property, could not get a mortgage or loan on their own, were considered the property of their husbands, who could beat them to death without penalty.
As we learn in the New York Historical Society “Women March” exhibit, though women were considered citizens, the High Court found that citizenship did not automatically incur rights, like the right to vote.
That is why in this Centennial Year of Women’s Suffrage, we need the Equal Rights Amendment.
And vote.
