Tag Archives: National Organization for Women

Feminists and the War Against the Taliban

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In an op-ed piece for The Washington Post, Amy Holmes wonders why the National Organization for Women seems to be largely ignoring the United States’ war against the Taliban.

Holmes notes that NOW did put out a press release a few days ago quoting NOW Action Vice President Olga Vives saying, “In this time of national and global turmoil, the reasons we celebrate Coming Out Day are more visible and more important than ever,” but aside for demanding more money for Afghani refugee camps in Pakistan, NOW is silent about the U.S. attack on Afghanistan.

Which is weird since if you search on “Afghanistan” in NOW’s web search engine, you will find numerous press releases condemning the Taliban, including on urging the world to Stop the Abuse of Women and Girls in Afghanistan! But now that a Republican president is actually attempting to end the Taliban regime, there’s not a peep.

Holmes contrasts this with Eleanor Smeal and the Feminist Majority Foundation which maintains that “the United States has a unique obligation to end the Taliban’s atrocities toward women” and explicitly calls for the United States to remove the Taliban and replace it with a constitutional democracy which will guarantee the rights of women in Afghanistan. Though that may not be possible — although the Northern Alliance, the main threat to the Taliban, is certainly an improvement over the Taliban, they are hardly a group of liberal democratic constitutionalists.

Holmes doesn’t mention it, but the obvious question is whether or not NOW would maintain this weird silence over the war in Afghanistan had it been prosecuted by Bill Clinton or Al Gore. The few things NOW has released related to the terrorism attacks are meshed in with NOW’s theme of fighting George W. Bush and the Right. I suspect that for NOW giving Bush credit for trying a government run by misogynistic religious fanatics simply wouldn’t mesh very well with their theme that Bush is “like a vampire who will suck our rights away” as Patricia Ireland described him last October.

Source:

Feminism goes to battle. Amy Holmes, The Washington Post, October 14, 2001.

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Is Providing Fertility Information A “Scare Campaign”?

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Marjie Lundstrom wrote an op-ed a couple months ago about an odd effort by some feminists to restrict information about female reproductive health. They objected to an ad campaign sponsored by the American Infertility Association and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine to inform women about the difficulty in getting pregnant in their late 30s and 40s.

With text like, “Advancing age decreases your decreases your ability to have children,” the ad campaign was motivated by the high profile media cases of women who successfully conceive and bear children at relatively late ages. Although such stories seem rather common these days, the reality, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, is that the odds of becoming pregnant in any given month drop to 20 percent for women over 30 and a mere 5 percent for women over 40.

As Pamela Madsen of the American Infertility Association told Lundstrom, “I have to speak to women every day in their late 30s and early 40s whose biological clock has pretty much tickered out, and they’re asking, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’”

Thanks to technological advances, having children is possible now even for women 45 and up to have children, but usually only for people who can afford expensive fertility treatments and/or donated eggs.

The National Organization for Women was not pleased by the campaign. In a Newsweek article, NOW president Kim Gandy bizarrely ridiculed the idea that women could choose when to have children. According to Gandy,

The idea that you can choose what age you’ll be to have your children is a ludicrous proposition for most women, as though you can simply snap your fingers and say, “OK, I’m the right age,” and then have all the accouterments magically appear — the stable relationship, financial stability, life stability.

That is a very weird view of parenthood. Few people I know who are parents (including my wife and I) were foolish enough to wait until their lives were ideal before having children.

Source:

Should You Have Your Baby Now?. Claudia Kalb, Newsweek, August 13, 2001.

Fertility education is offending feminists. Marjie Lundstrom, Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, August 17, 2001.

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NOW Elects New President

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In June the National Organization for women elected executive vice president Kim Gandy to take over the organization for outgoing president Patricia Ireland. The change at the top of NOW is unlikely to mean very little change for the direction of NOW as Gandy is definitely from the same mould as Ireland.

National Review Online recent ran a brief profile of Gandy including some interesting quotes. Like many of NOW’s ilk, Gandy believes that feminism and pro-abortion politics are largely one and the same thing,

To say you’re a feminist and to say you’re anti-choice is definitely a contradiction. They focus all their attention on this little bit of tissue in the womb, and ignore all the tissue surrounding it.

Not that the father of that bit of tissue counts either. When Congress was proposing to give money to nonprofits to encourage men to marry their pregnant partners Gandy said, “I think promoting marriage as a goal in and of itself is misguided.”

In fact Gandy slammed the a widely circulated statement by The Marriage Movement which said, among other things, that,

Nostalgia for the high hopes of the 1970s should not blind us to the hard truths discovered over the past thirty years: When marriages fail, children suffer. For many, the suffering continues for years. For some, it never ends. Children suffer when marriages between parents do not take place, when parents divorce, and when spouses fail to create a “good-enough” family bond. We recognize that there are abusive marriages that should end in separation or divorce. We firmly believe that every family raising children deserves respect and support. Yet at the same time, we cannot forget that not every family form is equally likely to protect children’s well-being.

Gandy simply kicked in her boilerplate anti-marriage messages saying, “The marriage movement is giving women the message that a bad husband and father is better than none at all. Single moms are being demonized. NOW is committed to exposing and organizing this deliberate return to the days of unchallenged male control.”

Apparently Gandy missed the paragraph in the statement that begins, “Supporting marriage does not require punishing single parents or their children. The Marriage Movement is a movement for a better marriage culture, not a movement of the smug marrieds for the smug marrieds. Many of us in the marriage movement are single parents or the children of single parents. We know firsthand how children suffer and parents struggle when marriages fail.”

But NOW long ago gave up any pretense of even a small sliver of objectivity or of rationally approaching complex social issues. Like others in the organization, Gandy campaigned for Al Gore and appeared on a number of talk shows defending the vice president. An appearance on CNN highlighted her (and NOW’s) love of extreme scare tactics. Gandy asked,

Why are elderly people eating dog food? Because our Social Security system doesn’t take into account all the years of unpaid caregiving that they contributed to society.

What a bizarre statement giving the huge redistribution of income from the young to the elderly that Social Security has created. I’d be ashamed to go on national television and use such an obvious scare tactic, but apparently that’s all in a day’s work for a NOW president.

Source:

NOW’s new gal. Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review Online, July 2, 2001.

The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles. The Marriage Movement, 2000.

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Some Harsh Words about the Equal Rights Amendment

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Wendy McElroy recently wrote an article for Fox News (E.R.A.: R.I.P.) that had some extremely harsh — but accurate — words for feminists who have decided to resuscitate the Equal Rights Amendment. As she sees it, feminist groups such as the National Organization for Women are resurrecting the ERA because they have nowhere else to turn.

McElroy, for her part, has no use for the latest attempt to push the ERA,

THere are many reasons to oppose the new ERA, not the least of which is that the Constitution already applies equally to both genders. What organizations like NOW are hoping to achieve is not equality, however. They wish to sneak in some agenda items through the back door.

What sort of things would NOW like to sneak through the back door? As McElroy points out, NOW would almost certainly use the ERA to demand that all states fund abortions. Section 1 of the ERA says, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” (emphasis added). The Supreme Court has previously ruled that states may fund abortions if they choose, but cannot be compelled to do so.

But with the ERA in place, NOW and other groups would likely argue that when a state says it will pay for, say, an appendectomy but not an abortion, that this decision is a prima facie denial of a woman’s right to equality under the law.

Think this is some absurd right wing idea? NOW and others filed legal briefs in a New Mexico abortion which case which argued just this: that a version of the ERA adopted by New Mexico required state funding for abortions. The New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of this notion in 1998, and ordered the state to begin paying for abortions.

Like McElroy, I am pro-choice but against forcing taxpayer to fund of abortions, and the feminist duplicity on this point is difficult to stomach. On the one hand filing briefs in New Mexico arguing that ERA language means states can’t opt out of funding abortions, but simultaneously attacking as a right wing myth that the passage of the ERA means mandated funding for abortions.

On the other hand, the mainstream feminist movement has become its own worst enemy when it comes to preserving abortion rights. According to McElroy,

Eventually, gender feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon refused to share a stage with women who argued on any grounds for the right to publish pornography. At that moment, I knew the feminist movement would not be able to regroup should abortion rights ever come under sustained attack. The most innovative voices in the movement — most notably Camille Paglia — were relegated to the status of “anti-feminist” because they disagreed. What happened to the feminism in which every woman’s voice should be heard?

You can see this inability to defend abortion rights in the rhetoric that has been coming out of NOW ever since the election of George W. Bush. I expected to see a sophisticated, coordinate opposition to Bush’s initiatives on abortion, but instead NOW seems reduced to shrieking that Bush will create some sort of Afghanistan-style oppressive regime if we don’t all hit the streets in protest today. All NOW and other groups seem to have left when it comes to abortion is hyperbole and vicious ad hominem attacks — most pro-abortion groups, in fact, don’t even seem interested in actually defending the morality of abortion (which might not be so bad, since for the last decade they have been decisively outmaneuvered by abortion opponents on the rhetoric front).

But while they don’t seem to be able to make the case for abortion, they have no problem with regularly sending me fund raising letters/pamphlets that highlight their continuing campaign against Rush Limbaugh. I guess for NOW that’s enough of a consolation prize for the organization’s continuing irrelevance.

Source:

E.R.A.: R.I.P.. Wendy McElroy, Fox News, April 20, 2001.

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Are Bush’s Pro-Life Views Extremist?

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Feminists from the National Organization for Women and other feminist organizations claim that George W. Bush’s pro-life views are extremist. In fact whether you agree with Bush or NOW, Bush’s anti-abortion views are very mainstream. One of the biggest problems feminists are creating for themselves is exaggerating the level of support there is for abortion, and more specifically vastly overestimating the public support for the sort of restriction-free abortion that NOW and other groups advocate.

A poll conducted by the Gallup organization in October 2000 found 47 percent of Americans described themselves as “pro-choice” while 45 percent described themselves as “pro-life.” Although polling data on abortion varies widely over time, probably due to the controversial nature of the procedure, that is a marked change from 1995 and 1996 polls by Gallup that found 56 percent of those polled described themselves as “pro-choice” and only 33 percent described themselves as “pro-life.”

Still, every poll Gallup has conducted in the past 5 years has found a majority of people in the “pro-choice” column. Unfortunately for NOW and Planned Parenthood, what many Americans consider to be a “pro-choice” view is close to what those groups consider “pro-life.”

Although 46 percent of respondents said that abortion laws shouldn’t be made any stricter, when asked about specific procedures overwhelming majorities favored additional restrictions on abortions. Only 28 percent of those polled by Gallup said that abortion should be “legal under any circumstance.” Forty-nine percent said it should be legal only in “most circumstances”or “only in a few circumstances” while 19 percent said it should be “illegal in all circumstances.”

In what sort of circumstances shouldn’t abortion be legal? For one, most Americans oppose so-called “partial birth abortions.” When asked whether they would personally vote for a law to ban “partial birth abortion except in cases necessary to save the life of the mother,” 63 percent of those polled said they would vote for such a law. This level of support has remained relatively consistent over time, with 57 percent of respondents in a 1996 poll telling Gallup they would vote for such a law.

These sort of results indicate a public that is generally in favor of abortion, but on the other hand believes that strong regulation and restrictions on the procedure are also a good idea, especially when it comes to late term abortions.

Source:

Majority of Americans Say Roe v. Wade Decision Should Stand. Joseph Carroll, Gallup News Service, January 22, 2001.

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Cathy Young on Bush’s Ending Abortion Subsidies

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The National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood and the other usual suspects were outraged when, after only two days in office, George W. Bush issued an executive order blocking federal funds from going to international family planning groups that perform abortions or provide abortion counseling. But is supporting government-funded abortion really a consistent pro-choice position.

In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Cathy Young argues that federal funding for abortion is wrong “both as a matter of principle and as a matter of strategy.”

As Young writes,

The most powerful pro-choice argument is that a woman’s decision about something so personal as whether or not to bear a child should be free from governmental interference. A fundamental belief in individual rights has led a majority of Americans, however uncomfortably, to support legal abortion, at least in the early stages of pregnancy. But asking the government to finance abortion is a very different matter.

In fact it is absurd for pro-choice activists on the one hand to argue that an abortion is essentially a decision that must be solely left to a woman and her doctor, but then drag the rest of us along into the doctor’s room by demanding we open our wallets to subsidize other people’s choices.

If a woman wants to have an abortion, I have no problem whatsoever with that, but I do have a problem when NOW and Planned Parenthood says I should be required to pay for abortions.

This sort of hypocrisy highlights one of the main problems at the core of big government feminism. On the one hand we are told that women are independent and capable of making their own decisions, thank you very much. In the next breath, of course, NOW and others inform us that women’s independence can only exist so long as women have access to a whole bevy of government programs.

Which is it — are women independent creatures or are they wards of the state?

Personally, I don’t think Bush went far enough. He should have forbidden all federal funding of abortion, period. That’s the only consistent pro-choice position.

Source:

Choice Yes, Subsidy No. Cathy Young, The Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2001.

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Camille Paglia on NOW’s “Flush Rush” Campaign

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Like me, Camille Paglia is apparently still receiving letters from the National Organization for Women begging for money for their “Flush Rush!” campaign. After all of these years trying to get Limbaugh off the air waves without even a modicum of success, I would have thought NOW would have long ago moved on to something more productive, but alas such is not the case.

As Paglia recounts, the rhetoric in the NOW letters borders on hilarious.

NOW believes that Rush Limbaugh is truly a dangerous man. We need the help of every progressive person to expose the hateful, divisive fanaticism of Rush Limbaugh.

As opposed to the hateful, divisive fanaticism of an organization that rejected a resolution affirming the importance of fathers in children’s lives as being far too right wing.

As Paglia notes, whatever one thinks of Limbaugh, he is successful precisely because he has tapped a broad spirit of populism.

I don’t quite agree with her positive assessment of Limbaugh — “His daily radio show is the one reliable place ordinary citizens can turn to for a different perspective in the blizzard of propaganda and disinformation from the Northeastern media establishment” — but her description of NOW is on the money,

…a group that should be impartially devoted to the advancement of women is shamelessly whoring for the Democratic Party by trying to shut down alternative political points of view.

Source:

The peevish porcupine beats the shrill rooster. Camille Paglia, Salon.Com, December 6, 2000.

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NOW and the Voting Gender Gap

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The National Organization for Women keeps making a claim in its press releases about the recently concluded election that while technicaly true completely glosses over the reality of the election. Here’s a random sample by Tanya Melich,

Unlike Florida, the proof of our power is not sullied with statistical probabilities. Nationally, women gave Gore their vote by an 11-percent margin while Bush won men by 11 percent. In Florida, the margins mirror this national vote with women backing Gore and men Bush. Whether by age, education or economic status, the pattern holds.

This paragraph is disingenous. Yes the pattern holds by age, education or economic status — unfortunately it does not hold by race and by marital status.

The so-called gender gap is in fact largely a racial gap. Black and Hispanic women broke overwhelmingly toward Gore, while depending on which polling data you rely on, Bush barely won or barely lost the white female vote. If, in fact, NOW had been able to deliver its core constituency of white women to “fight the right,” Gore would have won in a landslide.

Bush also beat Gore among married women (as well as men). NOW activists may indeed “have begun outreach in their communities to tell the cold, hard truth about the threat that George W. Bush, if elected, poses to the nation” early in the campaign, as one of their press releases claimed, but if they did a lot of women simply weren’t buying what they were selling.

Source:

Anti-Women Backlash Strategy Dwindling. Tanya Melich, WomensENews, No date given.

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Help Women By Taking All Felons’ DNA?

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Sometimes it’s hard to choose which is more annoying — the radical feminists or the traditionalist anti-feminists. Take Amy Holmes who is featured in the July 27, 2000 edition of the USA Today ripping on the National Organization for Women. Why? Because NOW doesn’t advocate mandatory DNA samples from all convicted felons(“Save women: Take all felons’ DNA”).

According to Holmes, the only reason NOW doesn’t want mandatory DNA testing is that “the powerful liberal lobby, the American Civil Liberties Union” opposes it. But there’s an eminently good reason everyone should oppose it — it’s a stupid idea. I outlined the statistical problems with this approach in an earlier essay (Rapists, Thieves and Logical Fallacies), so will just summarize here that widespread DNA testing of all felons would be a) incredibly expensive and b) tend to greatly increase the risk that a false positive DNA match would occur which could greatly undermine the public’s confidence in DNA evidence that is used properly.

Holmes, in fact, doesn’t even understand the evidence she thinks buttresses her case. According to Holmes, “A study of Virginia’s DNA database released this month found that 40% of men arrested for rape previously committed property crimes.” That is in fact false. The study didn’t look at all rapists, but rather only those rapists who were convicted based in part on previous DNA samples in Virginia’s database. Nobody knows what percentage of rapists commit other crimes first, but most studies do indicate that rapists tend to be people already predisposed to commit criminal acts.

In this case, count me in with NOW and the ACLU.

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Sweden may subject women to the draft

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Yesterday the Christian Science Monitor reported (“Equality may mean Army service in Sweden“) that Sweden is considering extending its military draft to women. Israel is currently the only nation in the world that drafts women as well a men (although women are not drafted into combat positions).

Rather than maintain a standing professional army, as nations such as the United States does, Sweden tests all 18-year old men for military aptitude and then requires about 40 percent of them to undergo military training. After the training the men are part of the nation’s military reserve until age 47. Women can choose to join the military as well, but it is not required.

According to the Monitor, men in countries with military drafts are beginning to file lawsuits against military drafts that exclude women. In Germany, for example, men have filed a sex discrimination suit against that nation’s military policy. As a National Organization for Women spokesperson tells the newspaper, the United States’ male-only draft registration requirement would almost certainly be found unconstitutional by today’s Supreme Court.

Ironically, although Sweden is probably at the vanguard of governments creating programs to enforce sexual equality, many of them not very well thought out, most women are definitely not in favor of a gender-neutral draft. According to the Monitor, 70 percent of Swedish women oppose the measure. Apparently many women in Sweden share the view that military service is a uniquely masculine role.

I believe military drafts are immoral, in general, but military drafts that do exist should be gender neutral. Morever, gender should not be used to exclude women from combat positions. If a person meet the objective qualifications to fulfill a military position, whether or not that person is male or female should never enter into the equation. The military should set a single standard that have to be met for positions and ignore irrelevant characteristics such as race and sex when making personnel decisions. Unfortunately, this is a position even too radical for NOW which, like many feminist thinkers and organizations, maintains that men and women need to have “separate but equal standards” for physical fitness and other criteria used to evaluate a soldier’s fitness.

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