Looking for answers for eroding Women’s Rights….

By Retha Onitiri, PMP
Chair Monmouth County Democratic Women’s Caucus

We’ve all heard the expression, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Yet, the Republican-dominated U.S. House recently attempted to overturn the pragmatic Reproductive Health Non Discrimination Act (RHNDA), an amendment to the Human Rights Act of 1977, which was enacted to protect women in the District of Columbia from being fired for their choices to use birth control, in-vitro fertilization or abortion.

Last week’s House Committee vote on HJ Res-43 was a “resolution of disapproval”—and the first time in 23 years that members of Congress had gotten this far in the process of trying to overturn this local D.C. law. HJ Res-43 also applies to another “resolution of disapproval” on the Human Rights Amendment Act (HRAA) which protects LGBT student groups from discrimination at religiously affiliated schools. Most of us agree….this is a whole lot that “doesn’t need fixin’.”

Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, criticized the House for passing HJ Res-43 saying, “RHNDA is a common-sense bill passed unanimously by the D.C. City Council years ago to ensure that bosses cannot intrude upon decisions made in their employees’ exam rooms....just as politicians in Congress should not be intruding upon the District’s efforts to enact it.”

“Yielding to pressure by right-wing caucus members and outside groups who claim that RHNDA limits religious liberty suggests that GOP lawmakers are hypocritical for voting to overturn this law, given their party’s stance on reducing big government in favor of local control,” stated Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D—D.C.) She added that “the resumption of the war on women by Republicans, combined with the overturning of a local law by the House, will not be lost on the public.”

In addition to the overturn of RHNDA, which would result in more unplanned births, we cannot dismiss the fact that aggressive Republican budget cuts put low and middle income women in the crossfire of how to use their meager incomes to provide substantive healthcare, child care and education for those children.

Clearly, there is a great chasm in our country. We must ask WHY? If we are allowed to plan workdays, holidays and vacations but not allowed to plan Parenthood, we must ask WHY? If men and women cannot determine when and how many children they can afford, taking into account their personal resources, we must ask WHY? If a woman is required to answer to her employer in regard to her reproductive health decisions and a male employee is not, WHY? A doctor/patient relationship has always been protected, but women’s rights are now under siege, WHY?

Busy fixin’ women’s reproductive healthcare, our GOP lawmakers not only waste the time, energy and resources that brought them to Washington in the first place, but also impede the efforts of other elected officials from resolving some of the nation’s looming crises—income inequality, lack of job training programs, high college tuition debt, racial violence in our cities, immigration reform, inexcusable lack of good gun sense, global warming, to name a few. Could this distraction become so overpowering that real problems remain unfixable? Most of us agree…..there is a whole lot that
“does need fixin’.”

Let’s start by sending loud and clear messages to lawmakers who waste our taxpayer dollars. Tell them that finding solutions to the real problems, rather than using partisan tactics to deflect from them, will keep our nation strong. HOW?

Vote in every election and ask your neighbors to vote. Write a letter, even two lines will do! Make a phone call—voice your opinion. There is nothing that we, as American citizens, cannot accomplish when we have the collective will to do it. We owe it to our future generations.