This Week's Editorial(4/7): W stands for...

W stands for a lot of things. He stands for corporate handouts, cronyism, fear-mongering, small-mindedness, non-tolerance, etc. He sure as hell doesn't stand for women though.

Perhaps you've heard about the "W Stands for Women" ad campaigns. They feature Laura Bush talking about how you should vote for her husband because a vote for him is a vote for the future of women. I would like to talk about how a vote for George W. Bush is a vote to take women back about fifty years into the past. George W. Bush has a very bad record when it comes to women’s rights. This week I'd like to take a brief look at Bush's record on women and ask, what the fuck?

On November 5, 2003, George W. Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban into law, the biggest restriction put on abortion rights in the 30 years since Roe v. Wade. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi called the celebratory signing "a group of men celebrating depriving women of a medical procedure that could save their health and their lives." Oh come now Nancy, there has to be a provision to allow the procedure when the mother's life is at risk, right? No! There isn't! There is an actual clause that says "a partial-birth abortion is never necessary to preserve the health of a woman," which is just plain wrong. And the term "partial birth abortion" doesn't even refer to one specific procedure; it is a term invented by anti-choice activists and the ban prohibits many safe and common abortion procedures performed throughout pregnancy - not just in the third trimester. When have a bunch of men without medical degrees EVER actually known what was best for women? What the fuck?

Speaking of men without medical degrees, let's not forget W. David Hager, who Bush appointed to the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. First, he wrote in his book, "As Jesus Cared for Women" that women who suffer from PMS should turn to their bible and pray. Pray? Unless Jesus was recently resurrected, went to medical school and no one told me about it, his method of caring for women is about 2000 years out of date (however wonderful they were back then). If my gynecologist prescribed prayer and bible readings when my cramps were so bad that I couldn’t move, I would never see her again, and then I would do whatever I could to get her fired. Also, a few years back, he helped out the Christian Medical Association send a petition to the FDA to get rid of mifeprestone (RU-486), a safe and early form of medical abortion, in the name of women's health. Karen Tumulty of Time wrote an article about Hager that disputes his claim that he’s a professor at the University of Kentucky; she says that a university official responded to her inquiries about him and told her that Hager’s position is a part-time and voluntary (read: unpaid), at Lexington’s Central Baptist Hospital, not the university itself, and with interns. Once again, we have a man with some very odd (and medically incorrect) views about women, without any sort of medical degree, placed on a committee to discuss women’s medical issues. What the fuck?

So we’ve established that as far as women’s health goes, Bush and his administration have made some bad decisions. But health and abortion rights aren’t the only women’s issues, what about discrimination against women? In a December 2002 press conference, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer stated that membership in a group that excludes women is not enough to disqualify a candidate for a Cabinet post. Then he said that racial or ethnic discrimination is a “very different category for the President.” So basically, discriminating against someone because of their skin color is not okay (at least he got that one right), but Bush feels that it’s more acceptable to discriminate against someone because they’ve got boobs. What the fuck?

Bush also nominated James Leon Holmes as a judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. What’s wrong with James Leon Holmes? Well, first off, he wrote that the proper role of “the wife is to subordinate herself to her husband.” Can you imagine this guy presiding over a domestic violence case? He’s also made dozens of anti-abortion statements, including one comparing pro-choice advocates to Nazis, and another that said ignoring the differences between men and women would contribute to the “culture of death.” Fourteen of Bush’s anti-choice judges have been confirmed already, including one who thinks the doctrine of separation of church and state should be re-written in the constitution. What the fuck?

In April of this year, Reuters reported that the administration went through and deleted or changed information on women’s issues in several government agency websites. Twenty five publications were deleted completely, including ones that discussed women business owners, child care, and pay equity. Information on the Center for Disease Control’s website that used to talk about the advantages of condom use for disease prevention was revised in late 2002 to say that evidence on effectiveness of condoms for disease prevention was “inconclusive.” What the fuck?

I could go on and on; this barely scratches the surface. The Bush administration has taken many steps to move women's rights backwards. So ignore Laura Bush and the charming Texas lilt in her voice. W does not stand for women. W sits down and turns his back on women.