Many people debate the reasons why the Republican/Conservatives have been promoting an agenda that serves to circumscribe the rights, liberties and potentialities of women. Dahlia Lithwick makes an argument that there are those who that the issue regarding gender equity is about the lack of trust by the white male conservative base, which doesn’t trust women to do the right thing. To suggest a woman would fake a rape to gain access to abortion certainly supports that opinion. In fact, I think Ms. Lithwick has many good points. While there is obviously truth to that perspective, I see another component. The fact remains that the reason that these initiatives that help to level the playing field exist in the first place is because that conservative base cannot be trusted. They can’t be trusted to not create an old boys system that seeks to reinstate the feudal systems of the south where wives where little more than concubines who had to accept sharing the marriage bed with the plantation owners female slaves. The 2011 introduction of a bill to redefine rape as occurring only when force is applied goes far beyond limiting abortion. It would set the stage for limiting what could be prosecuted as rape. Despite the fact that the initiative was beaten back do you really think they won’t try again? By merely reflecting on Ms. Lithwick’s discussion regarding the debate about the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), one possible result would be immigrant brides that their domestic husbands could over-bear and force in to compliance and submission with no recourse for the women to seek relief from their oppression. Michelle Chen presents a very informative discussion of how female oppression would increase without VAWA. If women have no legal protection from force, might and beatings administered to elicit obedience, their lives would be better only in the sense that the slaves’ and concubines’ very lives could be taken without repercussion.
If we couple the above with the very well written analysis of a Romney Presidency performed by Nancy L. Cohen it becomes easy to see that in addition to reducing women to little more than birthing devices, the Republican/Conservative agenda would also increase the number of women and children in poverty and without health care. That is another of the glaring hypocrisies of these people; they want to force women to bear children but don’t want to provide means to assist taking care of them. Sally Kalson wrote an article that outlines the Republican/Conservatives efforts to force women to have children by limiting access to contraception. It’s as if they want a nation of desperate women and children they can easily manipulate and control. I guess that would make it easier for them to have the affairs, mistresses, and concubines that they criticize guys like Bill Clinton, whom women generally like, for having. Women are the primary caregivers for children, and if they are repressed and suppressed in terms of their rights and freedoms, it is the children who inherit these limited opportunities. Moreover, when their children grow up, because they have had limited access to prenatal care and under funded and under supported public schools, they become less capable to succeed in society. They then become the perfect candidates for the prison industrial complex, the only form of legalized slavery in America.