This Week in Misogyny

This week, news surfaced that a conservative congressional spokesperson called for action against women lawmakers who are fighting the war on women—in particularly inflammatory and violent language. “Let’s hurl some acid at those female Senators who won’t abide the mandates they want to impose on the private sector,” he said in a Facebook post.

It’s clear that our opponents have no shame when it comes to degrading women. Apparently, they will say anything, and stop at nothing, to move their extreme agenda forward. 

The deplorable list goes on and on:

In Georgia, one legislator compared women to farm animals, insisting women should be forced to carry every pregnancy to term, just like pigs and cows do.  

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett said that women who didn’t want to be subject to the requirements of the invasive and unnecessary ultrasound law should just close their eyes.

And in North Carolina, one lawmaker, after voting to reject a state grant that covered family planning services, said “If these young women are being responsible and didn’t have the sex to begin with, we wouldn’t have this problem….”

This systematic and relentless war on women may start with vile rhetoric, but the end goal isn’t about words alone.  Our opponents’ agenda is about rolling back reproductive rights decades, outlawing abortions, blocking access to contraception, and taking constitutional rights away from women permanently.

But the Center for Reproductive Rights is taking the fight straight to the front lines—and winning.

Recently, we won a major victory when the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down a ballot initiative that would have given every fertilized egg the full legal rights of a person. If the measure had passed, it would have outlawed abortion in all cases, banned many forms of birth control, and seriously threatened fertility treatments such as IVF.

Two weeks later, an Oklahoma state judge struck down another challenge to reproductive freedom in a case brought by the Center, finding that a law severely and arbitrarily restricting medical care for women seeking an abortions is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced.

Our opponents are mobilized, well-organized, and well-funded—but they’ve also been dealt stinging defeats at the hands of the Center for Reproductive Rights. 

And we’ll continue to fight these efforts whenever and wherever they arise.