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How Obama Sold Women Out
Jose Luis Magana / AP Photo
The heath-care abortion mess is just the latest example of how Barack Obama took women’s votes—then let the country’s majority constituency down.
We knew it would end eventually. Just like a Hollywood romance, great love affairs just don't seem to stand the test of time. As the Obama administration began, we were gleefully informed by a leading lady feminist that President Obama was Christmas and Hannukah and New Years all rolled into one when it came to women’s issues. Turns out, it's a bit more like April Fools.
For the millions of women who voted for Obama on his promise to protect their reproductive rights, this past weekend's whipsaw on abortion funding is just the latest example of a president who frankly could care less about women beyond their votes. Ladies, we were sold a political brand name that touted diversity. But we were delivered a president with a woman problem. Now it’s time to do something about it.
He appointed fewer women into his cabinet than President Bill Clinton. He surrounded himself with czars, more than 90% of whom are male. He appointed Larry Summers, of "girls are inferior in math and science" fame, to a key economic post. And he played basketball with men and men only.
Women's love affair with Obama started in 2007. Some loved the idea of him—while not questioning his ideas. So when some women leaders heard the candidate say things like "sweetie" or "you're likable enough," or saw Obama's speechwriter Jon Favreau groping the breast of a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton on Facebook (no comment), these leaders ignored the signs of subtle misogyny. The National Organization for Women (under its former leader) endorsed its first all-male ticket. And NARAL endorsed Obama over Sen. Clinton, even though she had a proven track record on reproductive rights. In January 2009, Ms. Magazine’s cover featured a now-infamous image of Obama in a superman pose sporting a t-shirt that reads: This is What a Feminist Looks Like.
With these women leaders behind him, President Obama felt he could be himself. He appointed fewer women into his cabinet than President Bill Clinton. He surrounded himself with czars, more than 90% of whom are male. He appointed Larry Summers, of "girls are inferior in math and science" fame, to a key economic post. He played basketball, golfed and fished with men and men only. He had beers with Skip Gates, but ignored it when Rihanna was almost strangled to death. And so on.
The love affair started to fade with Obama's off-handed response during an MSNBC interview questioning his all-male outings: "I think this is bunk." That remark gave women a reason to take a closer look at the inner workings of Obama and his ideas. And just as Betty Friedan described the subtlety of sexism as "the problem that has no name," “bunk” revealed that the boys club was still alive and well at the White House.
• Peter Beinart: Why Democrats Were Smart to Bail on Abortion
• Dana Goldstein: How Abortion Splits the Reform Coalition
• Paul Begala: Forget BipartisanshipAnd then came the Stupak Amendment. There were signs that Obama was agnostic on choice, but this sealed the deal. Analyst Taylor Marsh sums it up most eloquently: "It was Pres. Obama who opened the door to sell us out when he decided to put the Hyde Amendment in the budget, something Bill Clinton never did. But Mr. Obama didn't stop there. During the stimulus fight, at the first sign of displeasure, our president personally asked that contraceptives be taken out. Now the president seems ready to finish the job, with Democrats in the House helping him do it."
But did women let this pass? Not this time. The sleeping giant—America’s majority constituency—is awakening. Note how few men are speaking out about the fact that a major issue for women was thrown under the bus to get a deal done: That women were not valued. It is the women leaders doing the talking and the typing.
Women's organization such as Emily's List, NOW, Planned Parenthood and The New Agenda spoke out—each with its own message and solutions—loud and clear. Women on Capitol Hill, led by vocal heroines like Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, built a coalition unwilling to sign a bill including the Stupak Amendment. Passionate women advocates such as Phyllis Chesler and Jane Hamsher among countless others penned their displeasure.
And it stuck. By midday Monday, the story line in the media had shifted from the public option to abortion funding. And just as women's love affair with Obama came careening to a end, the president noticed—and very publicly tried to distance himself from what went down over at Pelosi's house. In an act of pure politics, Obama chose to equivocate.
What lessons have we learned?
Lesson one—we need more women in leadership roles. Women's organizations need to drop partisanship and work together to get more women into public office for both parties. Sisters, we cannot count on either party to represent our interests; we can only count on ourselves. (And when our women leaders do, on occasion, get it wrong—as Speaker Pelosi did this past weekend—we need an ample bench of women politicians surrounding her, and strong advocacy groups to steer her right).
Lesson two—with this awakening, there will be a quest to get a woman into the White House in 2012. Find us a woman leader who might have her personal beliefs, but will agree to keep them as just that, and you might just have a deal!
Amy Siskind is the President and Co-Founder of The New Agenda, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls. Ms. Siskind has appeared on CNN, Fox, and PBS. Ms. Siskind also writes for HuffPo and MORE.
For more of The Daily Beast, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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How Rich People Smoke Pot
Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
Justice Clinton?
As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono. McKinnon is co-chair of Arts & Labs, a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today's rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products to consumers.
smartsmartwoman
It's nice to see women unite. Let's use our muscle!! Together we can create the biggest voting bloc ever----and finally get things done instead of begging others to do them for us. Great article!!!
Veronicaxy
Funny, I thought men had as much at stake in this.
cbeenthere
You are in the land of misandry Veronicaxy.
Veronicaxy
@cbeen: No, the opposite actually. I'm not being flip. Men have a vested interest in abortion being legal.
Smart, smart women actually leverage their full base of support to get things done.
No matter what side anyone is on the issue, it's not a men vs. women issue.
case1234
The ONLY reason Obama is even in this article is to get Press. Pelosi made the deal. Obama wasn't even apart of the negotiations. Amy Siskind knows that, she just isn't letting the facts get in the way of good story.
newswoman
You would think so, but they have never really supported women's right to choose, for instance. Even the President talks gingerly about abortion. Yet, on the fundamentalist side, the men talk endlessly about how abortion 'kills babies'. I am waiting for someone to openly speak up for abortion as an important medical choice for women, not just for incest or rape! I am thankful that the women in the House are openly fighting against the Stupak amendment. And if the administration wants a healthcare bill this year, then they better support women's rights or it just may be defeated.
truthhammerhand777
How utterly selfish, You would use your special intrest and put it above the the health care bill.
BullMoose
Why do women have to tell us how smart they are? Insecurity has to be the answer.
Killing babies and letting their boyfriends kill what might slip through is all they know.
Smart my #$$
cmhandy
WHOA! HOLD ON! Daily Beast runs competing stories! Another Let Down by Amy Siskind or The Dem's Smart Abortion Move...which way is it going to be guys? Is Daily Beast FOR or AGAINST???
sonofloud
maybe they are trying to be "fair and balanced" ?
bobvious
Oh my, are we confusing opinion and editorial for reporting and news? An opinion portal like Daily Beast should, what, align all of its writers with agendas and political beliefs?
If so, I'll be the first to delete the bookmark.
sonofloud
"confusing opinion and editorial for reporting and news"...... I assume you are referring to Fox and the rest of the "mainstream media"?
bobvious
"I assume you are referring to Fox and the rest of the "mainstream media"?
Well that's a clear case of shoe-horning an agenda into an unrelated comment. Thank you for illustrating what it means to be totally off the point.
KofTX1
Are you serious?!?
President Obama had noothing to do with the house speaker cutting a deal with the conservaDems. All of this rage against men and you let the undeniable fact that A WOMAN made the deal to get the bill passed.
President Obama even said afterwards that he wants the amendment out of the final draft. Liberals aren't happy until they can blame someone for something!
External
D--n right and this is the proof:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/abc-news-exclusive-obama-jobs-health-care -ft/Story?id=9033559&page=1
Obama: 'This is a Health Care Bill, Not an Abortion Bill'
and we call this journalism - give us a break - can't she differentiate the Executive branch from the legislative branch
sadie101
r u kidding. abortion is not a health care issue? what planet do you live on? abortion is the surgical procedure women under the age of 40 are most likely to undergo and a third of all women will undergo an abortion during their lifetimes.
not a heathcare issue? that comment doesn't even rise to the level of ignorant. it requires more than an absence of facts: it requires real stupidity!
sadie101
Obama cut this deal with Cardinal Sean O'Malley on the day of Kennedy's funeral. O'Malley said as much on his blog and Newsweek's Alter admitted this yesterday on MSNBC.
The New York Times reported this as well yesterday.
Obama spent the day twisting arms of dems to get them to vote for the House bill with the amendment attached.
MrsPolly
This is not true. O'Malley only spoke to Obama. The Times simply reports that they met, and Obama listened to O'Malley talk. He could hardly turn the Archbishop away, and the Archbishop was hardly going to trumpet himself as an ineffective spokesman on his own blog.
As a pro-choice woman, I would naturally prefer the amendment not be in the bill, and hope it will be knocked out in conference. But if it isn't, I still want this bill. Medicare and Social Security have been continually adjusted since their institution, and there's no reason to think this bill would not be as well. In the meantime, people without any insurance have conditions that would preclude them from coverage. This isn't a theoretical fight for them.
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin gave a rabidly anti-abortion speech in Milwaukee, to a Right-to-Life group. And Siskind, whose group announced at its inception that it was eschewing the "divisive" topics of LGBT rights and abortion, has found the Stupak amendment a convenient bandwagon to climb on, the better to advance her own agenda, which isn't so much new as the 2008 agenda.
williams1977
That makes the assumption that Ms. Siskind is a liberal, which she absolutely is not.
crypto
hold it, Hold It,....HOLD IT!!!!! You women had a chance to put a woman in the white house and you blew it. Yeh, you were in control for awhile and you threw it away. So don't come screaming now 'cause you aren't in control anymore. I imagine Hillary is getting a kick outta hearing you gripe after the way you sold her out.
newswoman
What makes you think even Hillary could get this bill passed with abortion rights in it??? It is the Congress who makes and passes bills and the President can only twist an arm here and there to get his/her agenda passed.
newswoman
Oh blow it out your nose, Koftxi. Liberals are finally in the majority, or at least Dems, so it is time we get what we want. We are a little disappointed that Pelosi and the President are willing to cut a deal with conservatives to get the bill passed. And by doing so, screw the women's view again.
farkennel
Do the ten`s of million`s of women who oppose abortion count as women?Suskind says "lets down women",because obama didnt fall into the feminist line. What do the pro-life women have to say?
StealthBoy
While I can understand the feelings of the author of being "sold out" because her position has been left behind in the overall health care debate, I feel that she over extends herself by stating that Obama has let "the country's major constituency down".
The reason why there is partisanship amongst women groups is because women, like all groups, are no monolithic, and not all women will agree to support the same position, no matter how basic it may seem to women's rights.
In the end the point is confused, you want more female representation, which is noble goal that many people, including men, can, and should get behind. In this way, if there are signals from the White House that suggest that women, or any group, is getting marginalized, then this is something to react to. However, the goal of that female representation is to make sure certain political goals are made, those goals being the one that this author dictates as being right for all women without exception.
sonofloud
As a gay man who has already been sold out by Obama, welcome pro choicers.....unions, environmentalists, and civil libertarians will be with us shortly.
sadie101
change you can Xerox sounds about right now, doesn't it!
MrsPolly
Quoting one of Hillary's cheaper and most obviously ghostwritten lines from the primary only cheapens your argument. Hillary and Bill are supporting this bill, flat-out, full-on, totally, with Stupak amendment and all. That is because they are, like Obama, centrists who must work with the reality given them, not some fantasy where President Hillary Wellstone Clinton waves her hand, heavenly choirs sing, and bills promising single-payer ponies fly through the houses of Congress without opposition.
sundevil
Too many promises to too many groups of people with competing interests. It made for a great campaign, but it doesn't seem to be making great governance.
sonofloud
All of those groups used to belong to the democratic party, but Obama has sold them all out to the religious right......and his doomed pursuit of "bipartisanship".
newswoman
While I sympathize with the gay agenda, surely you must know that the American people are just not 'ready' to accept gay marriage, and it would be political suicide for the President to push for this. Wait until his second term, if there is one, then push for your rights. He won't have to worry about re-election then.
sadie101
Obama cut this deal with the Cardinal at Ted Kennedy's funeral. The Cardinal wrote as much in his blog: the chruch would back O's reform if he would sell out women on abortion.
Newsweek's Alter reported this as did the Times.
Obama spent all day twisting the arms of democrats to accept this deal that sold women out!
oblomova
Mrs. Polly already dispatched this lie of yours upthread, Sadie (it's kind of a pathological condition with you, isn't it?) but I'll just point out that taking what the archbishop (or any interested party) promotes on their blog at face value is like believing the Iraqi minister of propaganda when he said things like "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!" But then, I suppose you still believe that Hillary Clinton was under sniper fire in Bosnia.
bob808
Oh, puleeze. Still on the Larry Summers thing. He only noted that women cluster more toward the center of the bell curve in math ability, while more men show up at both the top and bottom ends. This is only relevant because college faculties skim off the top end. And it was only one cause of disparity of three he mentioned. And it was only presented as a hypothetical suggestion. And it was based on actual research results. Results that he hoped would be proven wrong.
----This raises the question of what his real offense was. Did he mention a political unmentionable? Is it an unwritten rule of feminism that any male claiming to support women can't raise questions or mention data that might be contrary to feminism's agenda? I don't see a lot of feminists arguing with the idea that higher levels of testosterone correlate with higher levels of violence. So the biological determinisms that disparage men are OK, but not the ones that disparage women.
----This kind of solipsism is what happens when the gender discourse is owned by feminists, who then get to select the criteria and methods and assumptions by which the conventional academic wisdom regarding gender is determined. Outsiders in other fields may come up with data that ruffle feathers, but feminists consider it OK to suppress them through political intimidation. A lack of numerical parity is a result of discrimination when it suits feminists' argument, as in faculty positions, but when it shows a female advantage, as in life-expectancies or gender-specific cancer funding, well, that's just the way things are.
-----Fruitful inquiry requires an ability to listen to evidence that ruffles feathers and calls assumptions into question. It requires open mindedness, not political censorship. Larry Summers didn't make up the aptitude data out of whole cloth, and he qualified it in several ways. So if mention that some sociologist noted that inner-city blacks have a higher rate of out-of-wedlock births than average, and that this might be a factor in the rates of black incarceration, along with discrimination, does that make me a racist? The message is pretty clear-- many feminists do not want open inquiry in matters of gender. They want to hear what supports their political sentiments, and when they hear suggestions to the contrary, they will hound the speaker out of the academic arena. (To be fair, a few women in Summers' audience were more circumspect about his comments, and a lot of the hype came from the media.)
----This incident doesn't shine a very flattering light on feminists. If one doesn't account for their bad behavior as a function of feminists' ability to engage in inquiry or reason, it comes down to a free choice, and the morality of this kind of political censorship is even more damning. Perhaps feminism attracts a particular demographic that is intolerant of dissent or cognitive dissonance. Any way one looks at it, it's ugly.
Wayfarin
this comment is so refreshing i almost cried. thank you whoever you are.
sadie101
Wayfarin, to you the same. There is no evidence that women are innately less able in math and science. innately being the key word. but i am sure you hold that blacks are innately less able than whites because of gaps in graduation rates.
go sell ur sexism somewhere else, we are full up on misogyny here!@
sadie101
what is sad here is that you don't understand the word innately.
Fionavar108
No, what is sad is your inability to accept that no, we are not all created equal. Nobody would argue that men are "innately" more suited to being NFL linebackers than women. Yes, it's possible that with a lot of hard work, a genetically predispositioned woman could be a linebacker.
Yet someone suggests that we INVESTIGATE the possibility that a similar innate talent related to brainpower exists, and close-minded feminists go up in arms. Medical science has already demonstrated that women have different brain chemistries; isn't it possible that this could lead to talents in one area and not another? Summers never said he actually believed that women are less talented in math and the sciences -- he just said it's worth doing some research to verify. You're right that there's no evidence to support the idea that females are innately less likely to be talented in math or science. But that's only because nobody ever did the research to look into it one way or another.
Are you opposed to doing the research because you're afraid it's true?
And mind you, even if the research shows that women as an entire gender tend to be less talented in science or mathematics, it doesn't mean anyone is advocating that a woman who happens to buck the trend and be qualified for a math or science-related opportunity should the discriminated against. This isn't social policy we're debating here.
It's a purely scientific question. Or do you not understand those?
bob808
The problem with the notion of innateness is that few innate tendencies are immune to environmental modification. Humans have an innate tendency toward violence when angry or threatened, but this is modified by socialization. That something inborn can be modified by socialization doesn't negate its innateness, and the issues are rarely black-&-white, except, perhaps in cases like our innate lack of wings and feathers, or skin and eye coloring.
---One should be careful about claims that women are innately more or less able then men, because in the case of bell-curve clustering, it's not about all members of either sex, or about the average, or even the aggregate, but the clustering at the extremes. Some research reports that men are more subject to extremes in the range, and as stated above, this is relevant only because college faculties select from the upper extreme. Statements like "There is no evidence that women are innately less able in math and science," don't speak to the issue at hand, but are phrased to address averages or categorical judgments, not the matter of clustering.
---One might also consider how much attention society wants to devote to achieving parity when it might require unequal educational resources devoted to women. Like most interesting problems, there are moral trade offs here, though conventional wisdom doesn't like to recognize all of them.
-----Even before the 1992 AAUW report on middle school girls getting "shortchanged" by "obstreperous" boys, boys were doing worse in terms of dropout rates, suicide, failure to continue to higher levels of education, incarceration, drug involvement, and as victims of murders. As it is, America's college students are about 60% female, and few seem to be complaining about the unfairness of any of this. Innateness is fine for feminists, as long as it's men who can be called innately troubled or violent. but when it comes to any potential innate downside of being female, it's all socialization and discrimination.
sadie101
let us turn to Merriam, shall we, BOB boy:
existing in, belonging to, or determined by factors present in an individual from birth, native, inborn. originating in or derived from the mind or the constitution of the intellect rather than from experience.
What Boob boy is trying to do is defend Larry by saying that Larry did not mean that women are born stupid, when in fact that is exactly what Larry said. Words count.
Boob boy you can try to change the lingua franca of the word but Larry used a innately and meant
manticore1223
Sadie, just so you know, from an outside perspective you look really dumb arguing with him. Your counterargument is extremely crude.
manticore1223
I thank you, for being more articulate and informed than the writer of the article in question. Thank you for your enlightening post.
newswoman
I think what Larry Summers meant is that women are not as interested in science and math as are men, and, as a mother, it is obvious when raising children that girls are interested in people things and boys are interested in mechanical things. It has nothing to do with intelligence. It's just the way it is. Now, there are also some girls who ARE interested in science and math, but they are not in the majority, from my experience.
AdrienneGrey
Absolutely right. While we're mentioning unmentionables, I wonder what Professor Summers thinks about where AAs cluster on the bell curve. I understand a couple of guys wrote a whole book on it.
*****A
indieinva
Oh, please. Ms. Suskind sold out women a long time ago. Her brand of old-fashioned, "we are always victims," bitter feminism makes all modern women look bad. As a woman, I am sick of voices like her's trying to speak for me.
This Sarah Palin cheerleader's criticism of Obama is as meaningful and well thought out as Glenn Beck's or Sean Hannity's diatribes against the President.
Can the Daily Beast please find a more credible voice for modern feminism?
bettycracker
Amen, sister.
Siskind is a Hillary Clinton-dead-ender who demonstrated the completely superficial nature of her support for Secretary Clinton by transferring her loyalty to Sarah Palin when Obama won the primaries. Siskind's own organization is supposedly agnostic on the choice question for reasons of political expediency.
Siskind is in no way an honest broker on women's issues, and it's an insult to readers to pretend that she is.
sadie101
Any woman who supports women is not an honest broker, right?
bettycracker
Wrong, Sadie. Any woman who would betray all the issues she supposedly stood for as a Democrat in a fit of pique because her candidate didn't win the primaries is not an honest broker. Any woman who would constantly flog Obama about the gender balance in his pick-up basketball games and an under-construction bill in the House while publishing fluff pieces about right-wing loons like Palin and Bachmann is not an honest broker for women.
Siskind founded The New Agenda with a motly assortment of disgruntled PUMAs (including Harriet "Inadequate Black Male" Christian of YouTube fame) for the sole purpose of continuing the proud PUMA tradition of cutting off noses to spite faces under a false flag. Anyone who thinks she's a "voice for all women" is smoking Walmart store-brand crack.
indieinva
Thanks for reminding readers of Ms. Siskind's "credentials" bettycracker. People should know what a small and distorted lens she views all issues relating to President Obama.
Siskind lost all credibility on women's reproductive rights issues when she backed Sarah Palin, one of the most anti-choice candidates I can remember in my lifetime.
sadie101
oh this sounds like cheenthere. that you? bet it is! your female hate is soooo easy to spot! :
calling women who talk about misogyny bitter is like calling blacks who complain about racisim whiners.
when the potus sells out women your answer is to blame women? RU Kidding me? get real!
cbeenthere
Well, looky here sadie, I have found my lost sisters or daughters in indieinva and bettycracker. I'll be damned. It is about playing the victim, sadie, a game we were not interested in. Here is to strong woman who don't buy into that !
indieinva
Here, here, cheenthere!
cbeenthere
See indie-
I am hateful of females because I won't play the way sadie wants me to. I believe I have learned a few things by age 63, but what I really learned, I learned in the 1970's. What a relief to know there are woman who are carrying that torch.
johnmcenroe
This bill is not written by Obama, and he has already made clear on ABC News that he wants a health care bill, not an abortion bill. So don't judge too soon.
Also, there's more to this than this amendment just being against women. While I (male) personally think abortion should be the woman's choice, and no one else's, some women actually disagree. This topic is not as black-and-white as the author presents it. According to the Pew Research Center 47% of Americans support abortion rights, 45% don't. While that certainly proves that his amendment shouldn't be in this health care bill, it doesn't make it less understandable that Pelosi cum suis decided to take the hit in favor of a major and extremely necessary health reform bill. We--women, men, children--need affordable universal health care, and this House bill is a big step in that direction.
(party-of-no'ers: now it's time you start yelling that this bill is taking away the health care of the elderly, ruin the country, and so on)
UglyRed
Johnmcenroe, why don't you google the joint session of Congress, whereby
Pres. Obama said "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."
Why should my tax dollars go towards increasing the troops to Afghan only to have my brothers and sisters killed, not to mention the Afghans. Why should my tax dollars go towards health care for illegals? Why should my tax dollars go towards companies that fail and rip us off?
What you forget is that women are the largest consumers of health care, and Obama has sold us out.
Wayfarin
women are the largest consumers of health care? i thought women only paid more because of 'insurance discrimination'.
selahh
Can you not think of anyone but yourself? This country needed healthcare reform. They couldn't pass it through the house without the abortion amendment. Healthcare is a bit bigger of an issue than abortion. Abortion is is most cases not a medically necessary procedure, but one that allows irresponsible women to terminate a pregnancy simply because they consider it inconvenient. Should federal funding go towards other completely voluntary medical procedures, like plastic surgery?
williams1977
Take the time to look up the Hyde Amendment and expend your less-than-convicted time working on your new Republican buddies to get that repealed. Then we'll talk.
XRISEABOVE
I think Mcenroe has it right. Given the insane level of partisan opposition for equally insane reasons I think it is wise politically speaking to not bring this controversial issue into an already heated debate.
I understand the impatients and angst that many groups of Americans (women, gays, working poor, etc.) are feeling, but there must be an 'order of operations' to successfully enact Obama's campaign agenda. Your beef should be with the mess of a political system we have today not at Obama for trying to carefully navigate that system.
newswoman
The abortion issue is always brought into discussion by the hysterical anti abortionists (religious fundamentalists). They want to torpedo healthcare reform so they do all they can to bring up this controversial issue, for Reps, and get the whole business off track. I am beginning to dislike Reps as mean and obstructionist.
UglyRed
Obama seems to have the right order of things. He and his camp quickly took the knife out of their pockets and went after abortion. They have no respect for the privacy of women's medical issues. You can be assured of something else, there will be a extra crop of unwanted babies if this bill is passed, and their pockets will be full of death due to back alley abortions. Not to mention the that the poor sick people of this
country will continue to be thrown in the streets.
I understand my sisters speaking here, Obama's message is that women are basically powerless, so get over it.
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n--Y--cvillekidps2301
hey cheenthere/cvillekid, you said this before. why ARE you so afraid of Ms. Siskind. Empowering women is scary yes?
williams1977
Siskind's version of empowerment is to support candidates and politicians that are the polar opposite of those who truly stand for women's rights.
kingrat
How I read this article is that the only things that are important are those that are important to a certain segment of women. Heatlth Care is directed at ALL of us, some of us the most poorest. We sacrifice them for you?
I am in agreement with other writers in this blog. First, "abortion rights' was sacrificed by a woman.
Second, the loudest voices were anti -abortion. Were was your voice?
Third - Congress (including the women), responds to those who vote consistantly. (Look at the governors races of Virginia and New Jersey). Neither liberal women nor the young turned out in enough numbers to affect a difference.
Blaminig Obama is starting to get old. The people on the left is starting to sound like the people on the right - whine, whine, whine, but do nothing to help!
Hart88
Yet another "any stick to beat a dog" story from Ms. Siskind.
Tell us Amy - how do you square your pout-rage over this with your support of noted pro-choice luminaries like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann?
I won't hold my breath waiting for an answer.
Provincial
Thank you Amy Siskind. You are willing to say things that need to be said.
The current leadership of the Democratic Party (I am a registered Democrat) are as a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. Following Obama's guidance, these people who know that their families and friends will continue to have both proper education and choice do not hesitate to sell out poor women for political advantage.
Ozone69
This will not make the fringe Left pro-abortion people happy.
sadie101
Fringe? check ur facts, the majority of women support abortion rights!
Ozone69
Not according to recent polls:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/us/02abortion.html
sundevil
While the majority may support legalized abortion, they do not support taxpayer funded abortion, which is what this amendment was about. Abortion is an elective procedure in the vast majority of cases, and Planned Parenthood is happy to step up to the plate in the non-elective cases.
sadie101
women Ozone, the majority of women support abortion..
newswoman
Are you forgetting? ABORTION IS LEGAL! Move on.
Thank you.
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