Listen Up Dems: Repressive Societies Prioritize Controlling Women's Reproduction

Repressive Societies Prioritize Controlling Women's Reproduction

Anne of Carversville has tracked the Republican War on Women in-depth since 2007. The assault on women has gained huge momentum under Trump, and this 2007 essay written by Steven Conn, now the W.E Smith Professor of History at Miami University, is more relevant today than ever. 

Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico lit a bonfire among Democrats when he said earlier in August that abortion rights shouldn't be a "litmus test" for Democrats. 

Abortion rights activists including myself erupted, imploring leaders like Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, to remain defiant with the Democratic Party. Richards couldn’t be clearer on how wrong she thinks Luján is, telling Politico. “It’s a shocking sort of misunderstanding of actually where the country is … which is overwhelmingly supportive of abortion rights and also, who are the ground troops that kind of fuel the election of candidates.” 

“Fundamentally, perhaps [what] he’s missing is, people can distinguish between their own personal feelings and what they believe government or politicians should do. And people even in some of the most conservative areas of the country who may themselves personally say, ‘I would never choose to have an abortion,’ or, ‘That’s not something that’s right for me,’ also, absolutely do not believe politicians should be making decisions about pregnancy for women,” Richards argues. “I think he’s totally wrong and I’ll use every opportunity to convince him of that.”

The truth is that Trump and conservative Republicans are coming at women's body autonomy with a torch -- the same torches that burned in Charlottesville. The alt-right believes that women's essential purpose is to breed. The white supremacists want white babies and they are poised to insist Handmaiden style that they -- THE MEN -- have control over women's bodies. It's positively disgusting to understand that in the aftermath of Hillary's defeat, Democratic men want to bring the Blue Dog Southern Democrats back into the party -- when they would be far more conservative today than 50 years ago. 

Silicon Valley Leads Major Innovations & Curriculum Development In America's Public Schools

Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, is giving middle school principals in San Francisco public schools $100,000 “innovation grants” with the challenge to behave more like start-up founders and less like bureaucrats.

In Maryland, Texas, Virginia and other states, Netflix’s chief, Reed Hastings, promotes a popular math-teaching program where Netflix-like algorithms determine which lessons students see.

And in more than 100 schools nationwide, Facebook’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, is testing a really big idea: software that puts children in charge of their own learning, recasting their teachers as support system facilitators and mentors.

"In the space of just a few years, technology giants have begun remaking the very nature of schooling on a vast scale, using some of the same techniques that have made their companies linchpins of the American economy, " writes The New York Times. Through their philanthropy, they are influencing the subjects that schools teach, the classroom tools that teachers choose and fundamental approaches to learning.

The tech industry is also leading the way expressing their upset that Donald Trump withdrew America from the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Given the right-wing commitment to pull our children back to the Stone Age, as the test scores of America's kids fall lower and lower, tech giants are focused on creating a 21st century workforce. There are understandable debates about who's in charge among sectors of parents who believe they should determine their child's curriculum. The problem with this thesis is that as a civic society, America has a vested interest in an educated workforce. If they learn about science and evolution in the process, that is what America needs. ~ Anne

Trumps Launch Full Assault On International Programs That Benefit Women & Girls

The Trump family double teamed their lies about women's rights with the proposed elimination of Hillary Clinton's Global Women's Issues Office, a State Department office that fights for the rights of women all over the world, with a special focus on defending those who are in the most precarious and vulnerable situations in impoverished countries.

This office is far more than a do-gooder initiative, which is clearly how one of both Trumps see its mission.  How ironic that this news broke hours after Ivanka Trump tried to persuade a skeptical audience in Berlin that her father is a "tremendous champion of supporting families and enabling them to thrive." In fact, most terrorism experts and the highest ranks of the US military know that women's empowerment programs are vital for America's national security.  Women Are the Best Weapon in the War Against Terrorism wrote Foreign Policy in this 2015 article. When we heard Trump declare that he has no interest in soft power, we knew the Global Women's Issues Office was on the chopping block. Just as the cuts to preventive medical care and birth control for women will enhance greater risks of terrorism, the inability of the Trump team to educate themselves on the opinions of their own generals on this matter is reckless and puts America at increased risks for decades. 

In her recent Georgetown speech, Hillary Clinton reminded us that women's rights are the first targets of fundamentalists. AOC reminds us that Hillary is correct and that -- no matter what Ivanka Trump has to say -- Washington DC is also in the hands of the most conservative administration in decades. Cutting back women's rights is their prime objective as well.

Note that many Senators -- including Republican senators -- do not abide by these deep cuts in the State Department. So we can't say for certain if the office will actually be abolished in the end, since it is their decision about how to fund the government, not Trump's. Still, the so-called support for women by the Trump administration is a joke. 

The Global Women's Issues Office did survive the short-term funding bill passed over the weekend to keep the government running. It's the 2018 budget negotiations that will be critical. 

In a related matter, CNN sent thinking women's tempers flaring yesterday with news that the Trump administration intends to discontinue 'Let Girls Learn', Michelle Obama's signature girls education initiative. CNN reported on an internal memo of Trump's intention to end the program which includes leadership camps, mentorship programs, school libraries and other resources intended to help 62 million adolescent girls attend and stay in school. The White House says the program has not changed, but did not say whether it would be maintained in the future or why the memo was sent.

AOC has reported on Michelle Obama's work for 'Let Girls Learn' and also her 2016 trip with CNN and the documentary 'We Will Rise'. 

Read: In Trump's Plan to Gut Foreign Aid, Battle Lines Drawn Over Global Women's Issues Foreign Policy