COLUMN: Political representation decides womens rights
By KYLIE CHEUNG
February 22, 2017
Last week, Rewire released a report examining who was responsible for the majority of bills infringing on women’s access to abortion and other reproductive healthcare in 2016 and the first month of 2017. In case you’ve heard the lie — often perpetuated by those with the privilege of seeing their own interests advanced within the system — that the representation of women in politics isn’t important, the report serves as a casual reminder that it absolutely is.
In 2016, 90 percent of the 147 anti-abortion bills introduced in state legislatures and Congress were sponsored by white Republicans. And of the 167 anti-abortion bills introduced in January 2017 alone, 71 percent were sponsored by white Republican men, while 25 percent were sponsored by white Republican women.
Men and some women who will never share the stressful and traumatic experience of an unwanted pregnancy while lacking economic resources and support are calling the shots on what people in such situations are allowed to do. Ideally, empathy among grown adults would not require personal experience. But clearly, this isn’t the case with conservative lawmakers, particularly in rural states with unsettlingly repressive policies governing reproductive health care.
The root of the issue is privilege, and those with an excess of it seem to struggle to relate to those who lack it. As a result, they are unable to fully recognize the humanity of and fight for the human rights of the constituents they are supposedly representing. The issue of women’s rights — from our ability to access reproductive health care to our workplace conditions to the rights of sexual assault survivors — and the men in office who consistently fail to advance them, is obviously nuanced. However, as this latest report by Rewire reveals, the heart of the matter is relatively simple.
http://dailytrojan.com/2017/02/22/column-political-representation-decides-womens-rights/
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