War on women? Most miss the point. It is about the ability to choose

Hilary Rosen created a tsunami of a political brouhaha when she criticized Ann Romney for being the advocate that women cared about jobs more than other issues (referring to her husband’s hard line position supporting the Blunt amendment that would give employers the option of  not covering contraceptives with health insurance, and embracing the right wing stance on many of the social conservative issues).  Most pundits have missed the point: It is about the ability to choose.

Romney himself was on record for saying women do not care about the social issues and care about jobs. Perhaps he had better look at his poll numbers as many  women switched sides to the Democratic column.  

What Hilary Rosen, a former aide to Hillary Clinton  and not a member of the Obama administration or a paid consultant to the Democratic National Committee, did was to infer condemnation of  Ann Romney for never having to work a day in her life, had the choice to stay home, and raise her large family, and therefore did not understand the problems other less privileged women had.   

One  point they all missed is  that there is a connection between women’s choice to  control their reproductive lives and an ability to be able to work . Family planning is critical to the ability of women to go to work in these days of expensive child care .   There was a time when your job position was not held open if a person took leave to care for a newborn.  In most European countries, women get compensation for staying home that first year, but not in ours.  Nursing a baby  was not an option on the job. Those possibilities have been mitigated, but are still dependent upon employer policies and  a patchwork of laws allowing family leave and the ability to come back to work after a brief time at home recovering from child birth.

Wage discrimination meant that those who did go to work earn 70% on every dollar as compared to men and Romney’s campaign was totally ignorant of the fact that Pres. Obama had signed into law rather recently the Lilly Ledbetter act, which made discrimination against women…equal pay for equal work…a law.  This obviously was not in Romney’s  staff’s radar or interest area.

Another point not expressed is that there are many women who would like to stay home, raise their kids, and be a homemaker but they are either single or their husbands cannot bring home enough bacon to cover the costs of raising their family. 

There was a time in my career where I was fired for being pregnant.  It was in the early 1960’s.  I had set out to be a “career woman”,  working in public relations  in media and Wall Street, but I found that at that point, it was no option. I had no choice.  When I graduated from college in 1960, I was the oddball, a woman who wanted to work for the joy of feeling that I was a whole human being, educated and able. In those days of  lower living costs,  and married to a physician, I became a professional volunteer. Even then,  we could afford “help”.   I did not work full time until all three children were in school.

I had watched my mother married to my telephone company executive father who was a stay at home mom, who also had “help”.  My brother was handicapped and even if she had wanted to work, she could not, in any case.  It was not until his medical bills (pre Medicaid) overwhelmed salary and savings that she went to work, and she was in her ‘50’s .   She had no choice.

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On the other hand, I do have cousins in the military who raised their family on military officer’s pay and she homeschooled her brood of six children,  a choice for which I have nothing but respect.  I would not have had the patience, and I fault myself for that.

Where all are missing the point is that women should have the choice and be respected for it if they want to work or must work or if they want to stay home. Reality is that it also means women must be able to control their reproductive lives and when they enter the workforce, get paid fairly.  From that standpoint, Obama gets it. Romney does not.

War on Religion or political posturing: Religion in American politics; some history;

Column in the Sky Hi News today:
The announced policy of the Obama administration to require church affiliated institutions, hospitals and charity organizations to include insurance coverage for birth control for the many low-income employed has created a political brouhaha.

At stake is $50 per-month expenses for those who wish to have that kind of family planning which would not be covered by insurance.

The cries on both sides of the aisle have been high-volume outrage, ranging from “This is Obama's war on religion,” “It Is an example of overreaching big federal government,” to “The GOP is waging war on women, denying women's rights to family planning health care, …whether it is affordable access to mammograms, pap smears, and birth control, and abortions.” There is probably an element of truth in each of these positions, but let us get a grip on ourselves.

The policy was published in January and brought to the attention of the broader public by Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan.

The flap then escalated to a political blowup regarding first amendment rights of freedom of religion, highlighting federal overreach arguments against Obamacare, and playing into other right-wing anti-Obama messages.

Obama switched his position so fast, it made heads swim, as he realized he committed a political blunder. He allowed religious institutions to exempt themselves, while mandating insurers to provide free birth control to anyone uncovered by insurance. That has not appeased Bishops opposed to birth control, but Catholic health care providers hailed the compromise because it accomplished the purpose of giving affordable access to women who choose birth control without making a church-sponsored institution provide it.

Republicans see enacting legislation as a way to keep the heated wedge issue on the front burner. Doing so takes the public's mind off an improving economy. Obama's failed economy is Republicans' major case to-date for election in the 2012 campaign, and this gives the GOP a way to refocus their pitch.

Twenty-eight states already require that church-affiliated institutions provide coverage, including Massachusetts, a heavily Catholic state, as part of Romneycare. That makes Mitt Romney's rant against it seem hypocritical. Like his defense of Romneycare, he is left with saying that it was OK for Massachusetts, but not for the federal government to impose it on any other state. That is a hair-splitting ideological position appealing to the anti-Obama and anti-federal right.

So far as Colorado is concerned, we already require that even churches themselves provide such insurance coverage, a position even more extreme than the Obama administration's policy that exempts churches. No one declared Colorado was at war with religion when that one was passed by the legislature. So let us take the attack on Obama as waging a “war on religion” as being motivated by a large dose of political posturing.

Here is the dilemma of American politics in modern times. When women began demanding the right to control their bodies and their lives in the 1970's, the conservative reaction to it was the making of religious beliefs on abortion as the single-issue litmus test for candidates.

I recall now Sen. Jim Inhofe's first political campaign for Mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1978, where my brother was a pro-choice Republican precinct committeeman. He was ousted by Inhofe supporters on one issue: Inhofe was pro-life. It happened in precincts throughout the city and then throughout the U.S.

I wondered at the time what abortion had to do with street-paving and sewers, but now I understand. It was the beginning of a political movement to gain political power and use techniques of governance so they could impose one segment of Christianity's' theological interpretation on others. Now called “culture issues,” that factor has dominated our national politics ever since, for better or for worse, depending upon one's own personal beliefs.