There is no economic justice without equal rights for women

[BainsBane]

people of color, LGBT, and all Americans. Undermining abortion rights results in sharp increases in poverty for women and children--the vast majority of the population.

If there are no services available (as is the case in parts of the US, typically where legislators have cut funding), or if a low-income woman can’t afford to pay for a procedure or to travel to reach a free service, the repercussions of an unplanned pregnancy can be dire. These include preventing women from furthering their education and careers, with knock-on effects on their income.

Continuing to limit access to birth control would wreak economic havoc.
A major study published recently by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a research group at the University of California, San Francisco, probing the effects on women’s lives of abortion and the consequences of being denied access, reported that there were “profound” connections. Early results indicated that women who carry unwanted pregnancies to term are more likely to live in poverty, while 40% surveyed said they had sought abortions for financial reasons.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/27/contraception-abortion-access-women-poverty

Restricting access to abortion and family planning (which always accompany one another) likewise results in sharp increases in maternity death rates. The example of Texas, which has the highest maternity death rates in the developed world, shows this quite clearly. https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-worst-maternal-mortality-rate-developed-world-lawmakers-priorities/

It is not possible to uphold values of equality and economic justice while undermining the rights and lives of women and the economic survival of them and their children.

"Economic justice" that excludes the majority is not justice at all: It is oppression.

Either you make the rights of all Americans a priority, or you forsake any claims about standing up for government that benefits the many. It is not possible to ignore the survival of 75% of the population and claim to stand for equality and economic justice. To do so is promote the subjugation of the many for the benefit of the few. There is nothing more unjust.

[bettyellen]

1. Fuck yeah.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Do you actually mean

*Without* equal rights?

[BainsBane]

4. yes, and I fixed it before your response posted.

Likely happened simultaneously.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. Must have.

Sorry I was so quick.

[longship]

3. Don't you mean "no economic justice without equal rights..."

You want the double negative there in this case. Otherwise it is an argument against equal rights.

Sorry!

[50 Shades Of Blue]

6. K & R

[Renew Deal]

7. That was the message of the 2016 primary.

And some people struggled with it. Hillary and her campaign were correct on this issue. We have to bring everyone up.

[BainsBane]

8. That's not what you said yesterday

and this isn't about that fucking primary that obsesses you.

No one ran on a position of reducing the majority to second class citizenship and poverty.

This is about an effort NOW to undermine women's rights under the unfounded pretext that it will "win."

[Me.]

9. Precisely

Those favoring Conservadems have been hitting us over the head with the old 'go along to get along...the greater good'. So the Dem gov. of W.Va, who was a Con and became a Dem is now reverting back again. You can bet those type of arguments were used to get him elected. They fall for it every time which is why we can't let their judgment take away our rights.

[Renew Deal]

10. You didn't understand what I said yesterday

That was your choice. You prefer to filter my posts through your bias. I posted what I meant.

The message of the 2016 primary directly applies to your post today. The dispute was social justice vs economic justice. Hillary's view was that social justice leads to economic justice. Opposing views were that economic justice must come before social justice. And that lead to some people believing that other people were intensive to civil inequalities. I believe that Hillary's view is more correct.

When it comes to electoral politics, my view is that we are many different people with many different opinions. The only way to succeed is to get elected. So people can name call all they want and remain out of power or take a mature view of politics and win (see 2006).

We want to get to the same place, just in different ways.

[Me.]

11. Social JUstice Is Economic Justice

The two cannot be divided and that is what most people don't understand.

[Lordquinton]

13. This!

The two go hand in hand. Separating them and saying one is more important, or that one HAS to come first is demonstrating a gross misunderstanding of the situation we're in.

[BainsBane]

22. You are imagining

that arguments are DU were the issues of the Democratic primary. They were not. Hillary never said social justice was necessary to achieve economic justice. She never separated the two. She talked about policies that sought to address inequality in a variety of areas, both social and economic. She developed detailed policies for reform in funding k-12, need-based higher education support, job training, etc, criminal justice reform, economic development, etc...

To this day, there are some who opposed her who insist that focusing resources on the white male upper-middle class rather than the needy should be the priority. Certainly they use language like "economic justice" as an excuse, but when their priorities are on the upper 20%, that rhetoric is exposed as false. The Chapo Trap House crew is a prime example. They have a hell of lot of money and oppose means testing for federal funding for higher education. A system that operates based on need is not acceptable for men in the upper-middle class who expect the Democratic Party to center their demands first and foremost.

There is no such thing as economic justice without equal rights. There is wealth for the few and poverty for the many. By pushing the party to abandon equal rights, the goal is to turn the clock back to a time when being born white and male was a near guarantee of comfort and access to power because the great majority of the population was excluded. That prosperity for the few was made possible by an American empire that ran roughshod through the world overthrowing governments to seize natural resources. Those were the good old days we see demands to return to.

Such efforts to undermine equal rights cannot facilitate economic equality, nor are they intended to. The goal is comfort and power for a minority demographic whose income already is well in excess of the national mean and 7-8x greater than African Americans. The idea that more and more for those who already have more is some sort of "economic justice" is ludicrous. It is the very opposite.

This new-found practicality and penchant for compromise is truly touching. I recall just a few months ago critics insisting they couldn't vote for Hillary because the party didn't give them something to vote for, just against. Now that she has been vanquished, thanks in part to their votes for Trump, Stein, or write ins, they've decided that compromise is necessary. They've directed their attention not on Wall Street or corporations--mantras they mouth constantly--but on undermining equal rights. All this time of proclaiming they needed a reason to vote for Democrats, it turns out that reason was the the subjugation of the majority to second-class citizenship, greatly increased poverty, and higher death rates. Now they have something to rally around, excluding the majority from economic and political participation in the nation, and they pretend that doing so is about "justice."

You're correct that I absolutely filter my reading through a lens. That lens is the belief that all people are created equal, and then no group is superior or deserves more because of a mere accident of birth. It is not a lens that seeks to justify concentration of wealth in the hands of minority demographic as "economic justice." It is not a lens that pretends equality can exist by excluding the majority. It is not a lens that centers the white male self above the rest of humanity.

The other lens I read through is that of a historian. I know, for example, there is nothing new about the argument that women or people of color have to wait their turn for "justice," that theirs will eventually trickle down. I know that's excuse has been used for decades, even centuries, and it has no more benefited the subaltern than has trickle down economics.

[JHan]

23. Exactly. There's some revisionism going on...

The tension between social justice and economic justice didn't originate with Clinton, it emerged in Sanders' rhetoric where abortion rights and other civil rights were deemed to be wedge issues, and as far back as 2014 I believe , I vaguely recall Sanders saying in an interview with Ed Schultz , that the Democratic Party lost touch with whites like him, because of identity politics. He repeated the same spiel in the aftermath of the election.

[brer cat]

12. K&R

[DoodAbides]

14. This makes sense to me. How could it be otherwise? nt

[BainsBane]

15. Very good question

As I said in another thread: all this time that we've been hearing from critics that they needed a reason to vote for Democrats and not just against Trump, it turns out the reason they needed was the subjugation of the majority to second-class citizenship, greatly increases poverty, and higher death rates.

[DoodAbides]

18. That is something to be angry about. Imho. nt

[Hekate]

16. KnR

[leftstreet]

17. DURec

[JI7]

19. the thing about this debate is even if you only talk about economic issues without mentiong social

issues women and minorities are still more likely to support economic justice matters such as rising minimum wage . below is one poll.



http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/04/5-facts-about-the-minimum-wage/

[betsuni]

20. K&R

[Warren DeMontague]

21. Choice is not negotiable.

[maxsolomon]

24. There never has been Economic Justice

and as far as I can tell from history, there never will be.

[BainsBane]

25. No, there hasn't been

But we are seeing people arguing that undermining equal rights is a necessary compromise to win, in pursuit of "economic justice." It seems to be that they are using false rhetoric to justify their own class, race, and gender dominance.