Home > Hope Amidst a Backslide in Women’s Rights
We’re coming. From New York and Oregon, Idaho and
Texas, Minnesota, California, New Mexico - from all
parts of the country by the bus full, in caravans, on
planes, by train, we’re coming. Women who’ve never done
anything like this in their lives. Women of all ages
and races and sexual orientations. By the hundreds of
thousands, we’re converging on Washington, D.C. on
April 25 for the "March for Women’s Lives," a march not
only for reproductive freedom, but for justice and
dignity.
We’re coming to say we can’t believe we have to come
out here again, but we’ll do it a hundred more times if
we have to. We’re coming to say we’re thunderstruck
that a handful of powerful, ultra-conservatives whose
job it is to represent the U.S. people are ignoring the
opinion of the majority of those people who support a
woman’s right to choose. We’re coming to say we
absolutely will not sit quietly by and watch our
freedoms be chipped away law by law, appointee by
appointee.
We see the slide down the slippery slope to full
eradication of Roe v. Wade. The Bush administration has
made law the partial abortion ban. Those who’ve had
abortions are having their medical records subpoenaed,
an invasion of privacy once unthinkable. Lifetime seats
are being appointed to anti-choice, ultra-conservative
judges, sometimes under the radar screen via recess
appointments. Much needed money is being shifted from
effective family planning programs to what many experts
say are decidedly ineffective and out of step
abstinence-only education programs.
And as we come together in historic numbers to oppose
these alarming developments, we march not only for
ourselves, but for the women of the world because we
know it isn’t only the freedoms of U.S. women that are
under attack, but the women of Iraq and the world, as
well.
Just as Bush is working hard to drag U.S. women back to
pre-1973 status, the Bush administration-appointed
Interim Governing Council and its supporters threaten
to drag Iraqi women back to pre-1959 status with its
Code 137. This resolution would relegate women to a
time when they weren’t permitted to travel freely, a
time of forced marriages and no education, a time when
women weren’t allowed the work opportunities afforded
to men, leaving them entirely dependent on their
husbands. In short, it threatens to wrench the legal
status of Iraqi women back to the dark ages, their
lives unspeakably changed.
Thankfully, the initial push for Code 137 was defeated.
But make no mistake, it hasn’t been forgotten.
Conservative clerics and political parties like the
Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq are
vowing to try and restore it once control is turned
over to the Iraqis on June 30th.
Of course, it isn’t just the women in Iraq and the U.S.
who are under siege. Sadly, there are more examples of
women around the world struggling for their lives and
freedoms than there are hours to write about them -
like the women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just across
the border from El Paso. Hundreds of women are being
brutally tortured and murdered as the Mexican
government and the U.S. factory owners, where many of
the women work, hardly bat an eye.
Amnesty International reports, "Two years after the
beginning of the military action against the Taleban,
the women of Afghanistan are still subject to horrific
abuses, from honour killings to forced and underage
marriage, virginity testing, and prosecution and
imprisonment for adultery."
And the Bush administration is busily moving forward
draconian foreign policies that will have a dreadful
impact on women in developing countries. Apparently
ignoring the reality of AIDS and mushrooming
populations, Bush is once more pushing his abstinence
programs, trying to block the dissemination of vital,
life-saving information about condoms and family
planning. In fact, Bush prohibits federal funding to
any organization that performs or even advocates
abortion laws similar to those in the U.S., preventing
those organizations from getting condoms as part of a
pregnancy-prevention program.
Just as with Iraq’s Code 137, many claim that at the
core of Bush’s domestic and foreign family planning
policies, as well as his thinly veiled pro-marriage
initiatives, is a directive by religious
ultra-conservatives who are threatened by a world
becoming increasingly more modern and tolerant, and
thus, less under their control.
And it’s this tolerant, compassionate global majority -
not a "focus group" or a smattering of bleeding hearts
– but a vast majority that provides hope.
There are countless stories of women and their allies
who have spoken out loudly and visibly in India, in
Central America, throughout Africa and the world over,
even in the throes of the most dangerous of
circumstances. Code 137 has been held at bay thus far
because the women of Iraq took to the streets and stood
up for their rights amidst the bombs and the
ever-growing murders, rapes, and kidnappings of
occupied Iraq.
So as women from every part of the country converge on
Washington to march for women’s lives, we do it with
indignation, but we also do it with hope. We carry with
us the knowledge that we are part of a tolerant
majority. The media and the fearful Bush administration
can tell us differently, but we know better. We feel
the groundswell and we hear the drumbeat. We know the
world will continue to rise up, speak out, and say
enough is enough.
We call on you, man or woman, to join us -
non-violently, but no less powerfully - as we take a
stand for women’s rights at home and abroad, because at
a fundamental level this is about every single one of
us. It’s about respect and freedom, interconnectedness
and compassion. We call on you to speak out because the
women of the world will in no way sit back as our
freedoms are stripped away. Kurdish lawyer, Hassan
Abdullah, said, "Iraqi women will accept [Code 137]
over their dead bodies." But, there are already enough
dying women in countries across the globe from war,
domestic violence, poverty, violent kidnapping,
dangerous sex trafficking, botched abortions, and AIDS.
The world doesn’t need anymore.
Carol Norris (carol@codepinkalert.org) is the National
Organizer for CODEPINK: Women for Peace. To sign our
petition calling for political and economic viability
for the women of Iraq, and to find out how you can join
us as we work for peace and justice, go to:
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views04/0419-
12.htm