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According to the Guttmacher Institute, the only organization that keeps reliable stats on the issue, one in three American women, about 33 percent, has an abortion by the time she’s in her 40s. Far more American women have children by the time they are in their 40s. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2006, about 80 percent of women between the ages of 40 and 44 have at least one child. Far more American women are concerned about how they can manage to have children and keep their jobs than they are with terminating a pregnancy, but the Democratic women who have set the feminist agenda in Washington for more than 50 years have made sure that every piece of legislation aimed at women gets boondoggled with abortion rights—a circumstance that makes better family leave policies and proposals for equal pay difficult to pass among moderates and conservatives. Liberal women have failed American women shamefully and catastrophically. Harvard University conducted a study of the family/maternity leave policies of 168 countries in 2007 and found that the United States ranks at the bottom of the list, tying with Papua New Guinea and Swaziland. The federal Family Medical Leave Act only protects the jobs of American women on maternity leave for 12 weeks—and that’s only at big companies. By comparison, some countries offer as much as 16 months of family leave. American women earn only 76 cents for each dollar earned by American men, despite having won the right to vote in 1920, fully 88 years ago. This is our pitiful lot: the worst maternity leave policy in the developed world and earnings that are 24 percent less than those of men. Even more embarrassing is the fact that we have accomplished such failure though we make up a majority of the American population. We have the numerical wherewithal to change our circumstances, but we vote for Democrats and so our situation stays the same. The vast majority of women serving in the House and the Senate are Democrats. No fewer than 53 of the 73 women who serve in the House are Democrats. In the Senate, the Democratic majority is even greater: 11 women Senators are Democrats as compared with merely five who are Republican. When we look at the failed women’s agenda in this country, the culprits are obvious: the Democrats have been in charge of that agenda for more than half a century. Liberal women believe that abortion is the only women’s issue. That’s where they have put all their energy. For half a century they have fought tirelessly for my right to terminate a pregnancy, a right that is irrelevant to two-thirds of American women. What have they accomplished? Continued unequal pay for equal work and a sorry excuse for family leave. Their answer to the financial woes of women is to tell them to have an abortion. That’s because they are wealthy women who rely on nannies to raise their children while they work at posh law firms that have far better leave and pay policies than is the case for most American women. They don’t know what it means to struggle as most women do to take care of their children and keep their jobs. Their Harvard and Yale degrees have allowed them to advance in life, and I applaud them on their advanced degrees, but they just don’t get the fact that most of us are more like Sarah Palin—we have bachelor’s degrees, if that, because we didn’t have the money to continue our education. Most of us make much less than our male counterparts and that means that being a single woman in America is a rough, impoverished plight; being a married woman with children in America means tearing yourself away from your three-month old baby so you can go back to work; and being a single mother in America is an exhausting, lonely, poverty-stricken road to have to take. This is what the women running the women’s agenda in Washington have given us, and they are almost all Democrats. It is time for them to move over. They have had 88 years to show us what they can do and they have shown us: they can make sure we have the choice to end a pregnancy, a choice that most of us never make and that almost all of us never want to have to make. The Democrats couldn’t deliver on family leave. The Democrats couldn’t deliver on equal pay. It’s time to give Republican women a chance to set the women’s agenda in America. COMMENTS
Since when do Republicans whine about Government not taking care of the people properly?
I thought that was the exact opposite of the usual Republican rant about how people should take care of themselves, not sit around waiting for the government to legislate solutions to their problems.
Oh, that's right. There's an election looming and the Right Wingers are playing the "We're really Moderates Who Care About the Average Jane" Game.
Besides this blatant flip-flop-hypocrisy, the columnist also surely knows that Republicans controlled government ENTIRELY for the first 6 years of the Bush Administration.
Bush boasted for years that he had never vetoed a bill (until Stem Cell Research, which he felt in his scientist's wisdom just had to be stopped).
And yet Stephanie Ramage feels that Democrats and Liberals (!) have ruined the Women's Rights Movement in this country by not passing the correct legislation on Family Leave or Equal Income for Women?
And therefore "Republican Women" should now have a chance to set the agenda for the future?
If "Republican Women" weren't heard during the 6 years Bush and the Republican Congress and Senate ran every bill they wanted through with a Bush signature, signing statement, and blessing - this only proves that Republicans don't give a gosh golly shucks gosh darn what women want and need in this country.
Or does it prove that the columnist contrived this nonsensical propaganda piece simply because she believes her readers are so stupid they believe everything they read in The Sunday Paper?
Come on Ramage. You know better than that.
After all, while you may think you are the second coming of Ann Coulter, deep down inside you are actually a different person. Right? Right?
This column was the stupidest, most blatantly dishonest propaganda piece Stephanie Ramage has yet printed on behalf of this "Free Outside Restaurants" Rag, which has clearly decided that with the Liberal Creative Loafing in town, their only hope for publishing survival is to go as far to the lunatic fringe of the Right Wing as possible.
At least that way, The Sunday Paper can sell itself to potential advertisers as inhabiting a "specialized" market niche, right?
You people are so obviously manipulative it is disgusting.
I'm a longtime fan of the SundayPaper but I have to agree with Jerry, nonrepublican views are so unrepresented in it now that all we're getting instead is rhetoric. Aggressive rhetoric that feels like you're lying to your readers and trying to brainwash us all to your point of view. That's not why I read your newspaper. In fact it's about to become why I don't. What happened to fair and balanced?
I agree with Pat. Fair and balanced went the way of Fox TV -- off the deep end.
LYING?????? Pat, by all means PLEASE point out the lies in my column. PLEASE. I challenge you to do it. Are the Guttamacher statistics lies? Since it's the favorite source of liberal abortion rights organizations, I doubt it. Are the Census Bureau statistics lies? If so, then a lot of businesses, social justice groups, medical institutions and even, yes, liberal groups, will have to completely reassess everything they know about American demographics. Are the House and Senate numbers wrong? I got them from the Democratic Party--why would they lie about how many women are serving in the House and Senate? Is it not true that women in America make 24 percent less than men? Hell, look at your paycheck. Is it not true that we have the worst maternity/family leave policies in the industrialized world? Don't take my word for it, go take a gander at the OECD's stats. EVERY WORD IS TRUE. THE PROBLEM IS YOU CAN"T HANDLE THE TRUTH.
Ms. Ramage,
invalid, deceptive, phoney, intentionally fraudulent arguments are LYING by other means.
Arguing dictionary definitions to the sub-atomic level or playing off "dishonest argument" vs. "Lying" as if you do not realize how disingenuous your column is - is just MORE LYING.
Here's a completely unsubstantiated generality from your article above:
"That’s because they (Democrats) are wealthy women who rely on nannies to raise their children while they work at posh law firms that have far better leave and pay policies than is the case for most American women."
Sounds like Republican Women to me. But I'm just guessing, like you are.
Or, to put it another way, if your sentence above was written in a "liberal" columnist's article smearing Republican Women would you still pretend there is no dishonest argument in the comment?
No. If such generalities were strung together by your political opposites you would be jumping all over them for their terribly misleading and dishonest smear tactics and generalizations.
The entire article above consists of "comparing apples to oranges" invalid reasoning, blatantly partisan hyper-rhetoric, smear tactics and unsubstantiated general comments backed up by irrelevant statistics bent to serve your specious connections between unrelated issues.
It is also poorly written. How did you get a column if this is your best effort?
After all the rhetoric smokescreens clear, the truth is that Republicans had FULL CONTROL of government for 6 straight years, Bush vetoed nothing that crossed his desk, and YOU have the audacity to claim that because Democrat Women supposedly hijacked the female agenda at some point in history, the Republicans have been held back from passing useful legislation for women?
The very base of your argument is invalid by the rules of logic and the laws of this country.
After all, the party that controls Congress, Senate, Presidency and Supreme Court has no logical or legal claim to propagate the idea that anyone else in the country prevented them from passing legislation they otherwise would have enacted into law.
Simple truth is: If Republicans wanted Family Leave or Equal Pay or anything else you irrationally kitchen sink together in the shrill diatribe above - they would have passed it into law when they had the power to do so.
The rest of your commentary consists only of obvious and poorly rendered attempts to muddy the waters, cloud the reasoning of your readers with multiple unrelated statistics, and to get an emotional response out of readers- a gut reaction - rather than to rationally analyze or comment on any of the issues.
In short, this is one of the worst "columns" I've ever read on every level you can measure a column.
It says here that in 2005 the abortion rate was down to 19.4 out of 1000 women between 15 and 44, and that the current rate (as of January) is the lowest since 1974. http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2008/01/17/index.html
It also says that "slightly more than one in five pregnancies ended in abortion in 2005." Where are you getting your 33%?
http://youcanthandlethetruth.ytmnd.com/
Thanks for the insight Stephanie, and the journalistic integrity.
Seth,
Here's a prochoice site that I used to find the Guttmacher stats. They are a projection based on 2003 numbers, as you can see. If you have them from 2006, yours may be an update on those, but I suspect that since your number spreads the rate over a younger demographic (the range you cite begins at 15), that would probably account for the lower rate per 1,000. Here's an easy link to a prochoice site with Guttmacher stats (look at footnote #3)
http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/women_who.html#3
However, abortion has been on the decline, according to the stats you cite, the ones I cite above, and (surprisingly) the stats cited by Time/CNN in 2001:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,999820-2,00.html
I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that abstinence is working, but hey, if it is, I can't complain. Abstinence is what the vast majority of parents teach (liberal or conservative) regardless of how they might feel about abortion. Thanks for your added insight.
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