Republicans had scarcely declared victory on Election Night when the National Organization for Women warned of dire consequences for women across the country.
“The Bush agenda for 2003 is no secret: further decreases in women’s reproductive health options, more reductions in the already limited safety net for the poor, restrictions on civil rights and liberties . . . [and] more lifetime appointments of religious and political extremists to the federal courts,” NOW President Kim Gandy declared on Nov. 6. “Opportunities for advances in Congress are limited. So NOW and hundreds of thousands of advocates will organize, organize, organize cities and towns and communities across the nation” by petitioning senators to preserve Roe vs. Wade and by crafting an early strategy for the 2004 elections.
With Republicans controlling the House, Senate and the presidency, women’s groups are scrambling to mobilize grass-roots support to stem moves they see as anathema to women’s rights.
But social conservatives, energized by their Nov. 5 successes, are pressing forward just as quickly to enact their programs. They are eager to ban late-term abortion procedures, to prohibit human cloning–even for medical research–to confirm judges sympathetic to conservative causes, and to promote sexual abstinence and marriage through a revised welfare law.
“Obstacles remain,” Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council and a prominent social conservative, declared two days after the election. “Yet President Bush, having achieved a historic victory, is in a very strong position to advance his conservative agenda.”
Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who ranks third in the Senate Republican leadership, said, “There’s no question that these issues will come up where they did not have a chance to come up” when Democrats controlled the Senate. “We have an important opportunity here to air these issues and make the public aware of just how extreme the other side is.”
Even before the election, women’s groups had assailed several actions by the Bush administration: its issuing rules making fetuses eligible for health coverage under the government’s Children’s Health Insurance Program and directing the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections to consider embryos as “human subjects.”
Women’s groups also expressed objection to the administration’s consideration of Dr. W. David Hager for membership on the Food and Drug Administration’s advisory committee on reproductive health drugs, which oversees approval of birth control and fertility drugs.
Hager, a Kentucky obstetrician-gynecologist, opposes emergency contraception and has pushed the FDA to ban the abortion pill RU-486. Time magazine described him as a “scantily credentialed” doctor who refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women and recommends prayers to help treat premenstrual syndrome.
“The minute someone like Dr. Hager is appointed there, the panel becomes a political body expressing society’s debate about whether abortion and birth control should be available,” said Cynthia Pearson, executive director of the National Women’s Health Network. “It won’t be about whether a particular drug is safe and effective.”
But Brad Stone, an FDA spokesman, responded that the committee’s recommendations are non-binding and that the administration is required by law to ensure a diversity of viewpoints on various issues.
Yet another action that has stirred resentment among women’s groups is the administration’s review of Title IX, the landmark 1972 law signed by President Richard Nixon that prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally financed education.
In June, Education Secretary Rod Paige convened the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics to study enforcement issues surrounding Title IX and directed it to submit a report by Jan. 31.
“It’s [a disingenous] effort,” said Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation. Lopiano says the commission has been stacked with people who oppose Title IX and fears its formation was “a holding action until after the election [that would] then let the Department of Education do what it intended to do in the first place, which is to weaken Title IX.”
The Republican takeover in Congress also means that women’s groups no longer can count on Senate Democrats to block the GOP’s agenda.
“There’s been a little bit of a check and balance system,” said Pearson of the women’s health network. “Now it’s going to be gone.”
Added Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League: “We’re going to have to be smart about how we do this. We’ve never faced this situation since Roe vs. Wade before, where all three institutions of the federal government are controlled by anti-choice forces.”
And Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, who led the Democrats’ efforts to keep Senate control, asked: “Will [Republicans] take their time on the economy, the war on terror and Iraq, or will they take their time to erode women’s rights? … If this Republican majority squanders its leadership on attacking women’s rights, they will pay for it, I believe, in the future.”
Republican feminism
Political analysts predict Republicans will refrain from a direct legislative attack on Roe vs. Wade, and instead use their power to tighten the parameters of legal abortions and to define fetuses as human beings with rights.
“We might see some action at the margins, for instance, votes on partial-birth abortion,” said John Pitney, a political analyst at Claremont McKenna College in California. “But Roe v. Wade will stand. Over the years, Republicans have come to the realization that while Americans favor certain regulations and restrictions on abortion, it would be suicidal to basically make a frontal assault on the legality of abortion itself.”
Republicans, he added, probably will recast traditional “women’s issues” by focusing more on economic initiatives such as tax cuts and highlighting their impact on families and women business owners.
“Republicans will probably call it dollars-and-sense feminism,” he said.
Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster in Washington, is doing just that. She derided women’s groups such as NOW for their “sound bite” and “single issue” politics.
“These scare tactics cannot overcome what is the dominant theme for women today: security,” Conway said. “That can include economic security, bread-and-butter, kitchen-table concerns and freedom from physical harm.”
Nevertheless, conservative and liberal advocacy groups are signaling that abortion politics will remain a primary battleground.
Abortion rights are “on everybody’s radar,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority.
Conservatives hope to enact a ban on the late-term abortion procedure that they call “partial-birth” abortion and bestow legal status on a fetus injured or killed during a federal crime committed against a pregnant woman. They also want to prohibit people from taking minors across state lines for abortions in violation of state laws requiring parental notification.
The Christian Coalition and the Family Research Council scored an early post-election success on Nov. 14 by persuading allies to buck GOP House leadership and defeat a bankruptcy bill. It contained a provision barring abortion protesters from declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying court-ordered fines.
“We feel we had a pretty big victory,” said Jim Backlin, chief lobbyist of the Christian Coalition of America. “Because of that victory and the grass-roots effort in defeating that, the congressional leadership and the White House should press forward” with anti-cloning and anti-abortion measures. “I would love to see [the partial-birth abortion bill] signed on the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade” on Jan 22.
Connor of the Family Research Council added, “We will press hard because we believe that the legislative proposals we have are eminently reasonable and will resonate with the American people.”
But Connor expects some resistance even within the Republican Party. He said he was disappointed by the House leadership’s stance on the bankruptcy bill, especially so soon after the elections.
“Arguably the Republican leadership said, `Thank you for your vote. Now drop dead,'” Connor said. “There’s a terrible tendency on the part of Republican political operatives to take the pro-life votes for granted.”
So far, though, conservatives’ plans are drawing mixed reviews from ordinary women.
“I’m not for abortion so I strongly approve of what they’re going to do,” said Emma Mullaney, a Maryland resident and retired elementary school teacher in her mid-60s. Mullaney described late-term abortions as “horrible.”
Her friend Catherine Wojciak, also in her 60s, said the GOP congressional gains are “wonderful because I think Bush is doing a good job.”
Jane Avery, 49, runs the Community Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Indiana in Ft. Wayne. She said abortion politics should not be a major priority, given the widespread economic hardships across the country.
“Those particular things right now … I’m sorry, but I’m dealing with people who are having trouble putting food on the table,” Avery said.
She said her major concerns are jobs, education and reducing teen pregnancy. “I’m hoping that maybe without the [split between the] White House and the Congress, maybe we can get some things done that are going to help people — all people.”
Avery doesn’t view the Bush administration as “anti-woman,” particularly because the president’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is a powerful woman. “I can’t really say that here in the Midwest, my experience is that [the Republican takeover] is going to have any dramatic impact” on women’s issues, she said.
Agenda fears grow
But other women were less enthusiastic about the Republican victories.
“I’m very worried,” said Jeannette Herrick, 79, a sculptor and retired psychologist who lives in upstate New York near Albany. “I think their agenda is to roll back a lot of the gains that were made under Clinton and to go back to a very right-wing, conservative approach to women’s choices, women’s rights. I don’t trust them at all.”
Erica Greenstein, 25, said her biggest concern is Roe vs. Wade’s survival.
“I feel like for the first time in my life, there is an actual threat,” said Greenstein, who lives in Washington, D.C., and works for an organization that promotes adolescent health issues. She says the Republican victories have increased the urgency for her and other women to give money to women’s groups and attend rallies.
Greenstein is not alone in that view.
“I’ve already been out on the road since the election and the audience size is bigger,” said the Feminist Majority’s Smeal, who gave speeches before the election and right after it. “The intensity is up, and people feel, `Oh, my God, this is terrible.'”
Smeal’s organization has launched a campaign called Never Go Back to educate women about Senate Democrats’ ability to filibuster to avoid a vote on any Supreme Court nominee who opposes abortion rights.
Elizabeth Parks, 26, a marketing director who lives in Dallas, said: “As long as the Supreme Court doesn’t overrule things like Roe vs. Wade, I’m OK. My only concern, I think, would be women’s rights issues. And I’m actually not even that concerned about it. I don’t think that would ever happen. If it did, I think there would be huge riots or something.”
Some political observers say the vocal concerns of leaders at women’s organizations–and the clear range of Republican targets–could galvanize grass-roots participation and financial contributions.
“It will help fundraising for women’s groups because they have a real demon, or at least a perceived demon,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.
For women’s groups, visible GOP congressional “demons” include Tom DeLay of Texas, the new House majority leader nicknamed The Hammer for his aggressive and effective tactics. DeLay wants to prohibit late-term abortions and human cloning. In the Senate, Republican Trent Lott of Mississippi has a rare second chance as majority leader and has promised to pass a ban on late-term abortions.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) may prove a less successful target for women’s groups. Attacking the affable Hastert, a former history teacher and wrestling coach, is “like shooting bullets at the Pillsbury Doughboy,” analyst Pitney said.
Women’s groups also will target their rhetoric against Bush.
NOW’s Gandy and others contend that while Bush “wasn’t very forthcoming” about his conservative agenda during his campaign for president, he will use the Republican advantage in Congress to “stack” the courts with judges who oppose reproductive rights.
“If this isn’t a wake-up call,” Gandy said, “I don’t know what is.”
