In his news conference today, POTUS took care to mention “the women’s vote” as (sure to be Trump’s downfall). This blog is about the leading key issue for all women: control over their reproductive functions.
Although both political parties idealize the nuclear and extended families (Dems: we must” act together” to “invest” in big government programs that create jobs such as rebuilding infrastructure; Republicans/conservatives: only the patriarchal family can solve inner city crime and poverty), the factions differ drastically on the “emotional” issue of abortion and contraception.
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Statist liberals have captured the women’s vote because 1. The mass media have promoted “hyper-sexuality” (in the eyes of the Right); and 2. Young, unmarried women and teens are not about to give up sex for abstinence and other forms of “Victorian” prudery. Nor are many married women, no matter how religious in other spheres, about to remain prisoners of infants and pre-school kids indefinitely; 3. The chipping away at Roe v. Wade through the outlawing of late term abortion is obvious to many; and 4. The legalization of embryonic stem-cell research during the Bush 43 administration aroused opposition.
As a mother and grandmother, I don’t find these pro-choice positions irrational, i.e., emotional. As long as influential social conservatives deny the separation of church and state*, the women’s vote will go to the pluralists who may see a broader scope for women in the world: see https://clarespark.com/2013/09/26/cultural-pluralism-vs-multiculturalism/ and https://clarespark.com/2013/05/02/teen-age-sex/.
Will votes for women forever remain an empty gesture in favor of equal opportunity?
*Many conservatives deny that they want a theocracy, but why is it political suicide for a Republican candidate to adopt the pro-choice position?
anti-suffrage postcard 1906
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