Power

(VIDEO) MoveOn.org Takes On GOP Threats to Women’s Lives

MoveOn.org is taking on the GOP's efforts to strip women of their basic rights and to eliminate access to reproductive health care. 

MoveOn.org has joined the effort to defeat the GOP’s efforts to strip women of their basic rights and to eliminate access to reproductive health care.  As noted by Ms. magazine and by Jezebel, Lisa Edelstein who plays Dr. Lisa Cuddy on House, appears in a MoveOn.org produced video, We Won’t Go Back, that references pre-Roe v. Wade America, in which women were often forced to rely on self-induced abortion or on illegal abortion providers.  MoveOn.org has 5.2 million members.

“This issue is hugely important,” Ms. quotes Edelstein as saying about the GOP’s latest efforts to turn the clock back on women’s reproductive rights.

HR3, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), would impose a tax on women and businesses that provide insurance for reproductive health care and restrict women from using their own personal funds to buy insurance that includes reproductive health services.

Added Edelstein,

This is an attack on women’s rights that’s taking place behind closed doors and fine print legislation. They’re not attacking Roe v. Wade directly, they want to make it impossible for women to choose abortion. … [Most people] rely on organizations like MoveOn to let us know what’s going on. They’re in the trenches and paying attention.

I want to shine a light on what’s happening. No matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican–this is not about the GOP, although we mention them in the ad–voters need to know that their representatives are trying to take away their rights.

The ad is clearly geared toward and references the experiences of middle and upper-class white women. I have mixed feelings about this, honestly. On one hand, we in fact do need to mobilize female voters in upper-income categories because they are less likely to perceive the immediate threats the bills now in Congress pose, which will affect all women but fall most heavily on low-income women and women of color whose access to care is already deeply compromised.  On the other hand, we also need ads like this speaking to women–and men–of all demographics because these bills represent a profound threat to women of all ages, races, classes and backgrounds.

These concerns notwithstanding, I am also personally deeply grateful that MoveOn.org is now taking this issue full-on.  We can’t make these bills better by changing parts of the language.  They are corrupt at their very core.  They can not stand. And we should be targeting Democrats as well as Republicans because when these get to the Senate and the White House, it is Democrats that will need to make the difference.