Washington Post opinion columnist Dana Milbank was not unlike lots of liberal feminists this week, many of who were overcome with a case of the vapors over Congressman Trent Franks’ remarks on the low percentage of pregnancies that occur as the result of being raped.
Compounding their outrage was the fact that on the House Judiciary Committee – where Franks’ bill banning abortion after 20 weeks passed on a party line vote, paving the way for it to go to the House floor next week – there were 23 Republican men, and no women. How could they dare to have an informed opinion on such a sensitive issue, considering they are men who can’t get pregnant – let alone pregnant as a result of rape?
Milbank, predictably, fell in line with the pro-abortion lobby’s narrow-minded, exclusionary thinking on this issue, and wrote accordingly:
Ladies and gentlemen, Republicans are again voting on new abortion restrictions. Cue their theme song:
“Men men men men, manly men men men!”
“Men men men men, manly men men men!”
The House Judiciary Committee gathered Wednesday to pass another antiabortion bill, and the nameplates on the majority side told the story:
Mr. Goodlatte. Mr. Sensenbrenner. Mr. Coble. Mr. Smith. Mr. Chabot. Mr. Bachus. Mr. Issa. Mr. Forbes. Mr. King. Mr. Franks.
In all, the nameplates of 23 misters lined both rows on the GOP side; there isn’t one Republican woman on the panel. The guys muscled through a bill that, should it become law, would upend Roe v. Wade by effectively banning all abortions after 20 weeks.
With the grace of Charlie Sheen and the subtlety of a sitcom, the manly men voted down a Democratic effort …..
“There isn’t one Republican woman on the panel” Milbank wrote.
It’s interesting he seemingly believes that would have made a difference not only in the outcome of the committee vote on the bill but also on the opinions of those who stand staunchly in opposition of Franks’ efforts – chiefly, career professional feminists and their dogmatic supporters. For starters, even if all 23 Republicans on the committee were women, the bill still would have passed because most of the Republican women in the US House are pro-life.
Secondly, Milbank apparently needs a reminder as to how pro-life conservative women are viewed by the same feminists who complained of the “all-male” GOP chorus on the committee.
In February 2012, a House hearing was held on ObamaCare’s birth control mandate, a hearing that quickly devolved into a discussion of birth control access itself rather than the war on religious rights currently being waged by the Obama administration and its allies. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and several other prominent pro-abortion Democrats, including Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), expressed outrage over the “fact” that “no women” were allowed on the panel … except that wasn’t true. The first panel did indeed feature all men, but the second panel did not – two pro-life women were invited to speak, and did. (As a side note, this is the same hearing where we first heard of Sandra Fluke and her “exclusion” from the proceedings, and the rest on that, as they say, is history.)
In the minds of dedicated feminists like Rep. Pelosi, Sen. Murray, and others, however, the fact that panelists Dr. Allison Garrett of Oklahoma Christian University and Dr. Laura Champion of Calvin College Health Services were pro-life women who opposed the birth control mandate didn’t matter. Worse still, they didn’t count.
You say you’re a pro-life conservative woman? Your opinion is irrelevant, because it goes against the conventional women feminists hold that any woman worth her salt would never, ever believe that a developing life inside her body is more important than she is. There are countless other examples of this line of backwards, exclusionary thinking from feminists that go back decades. It’s ironic, when you consider that feminists have long championed the idea of “independent thought” and “free-thinking.” In reality, that mantra has been selective and only applies to varying degrees of same-thought group-think within the confines of the likes of NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and the like.
Someone should remind both Milbank and his fellow feminists of these inconvenient facts on post-60s feminism, especially as to how it relates to how women with opposing viewpoints on abortion in this day and age are routinely ostracized and ridiculed as “inauthentic” by fanatical left wing abortion zealots. In fact, it’s not a stretch to consider how feminists – including Milbank – would have reacted had the Republicans on the committee been all female and voted the exact same way the men did: “Sell-outs!” they’d cry. “Slaves to the patriarchy!” Left wing feminists are so very predictable.
As are left wing columnists who unquestionably parrot their talking points.
LifeNews Note: Sister Toldjah is a Charlotte, North Carolina-based blogger and former abortion advocate who frequently writes about women’s issues, with an emphasis on personal responsibility and the dignity and humanity of the unborn. You can read more of her work here.
