Christmas and New Year’s and Hanukkah
In honor of International Women’s Day, I thought it would be fun to consider what Obama hath wrought. Seeing as how he’s a Superfeminist and all. (The title of this post, for the non-cognoscenti, is an allusion to a sad and frightening piece of performance art by Naomi Wolf.1)
I’ll just quote from the action alert NOW sent out a few days ago:
White House Health Care Reform Bill Denies Women’s Basic Rights
Statement of NOW President Terry O’Neill
March 4, 2010
Today the White House announced that it has set March 18 as the deadline for Congress to pass a final health care reform bill. President Obama has embraced the Senate’s version of health care legislation. This bill is no panacea for the nation’s broken health care system. It has major flaws that probably cannot be fixed within two weeks. However, the National Organization for Women is not about to give up — not with women’s basic human rights at stake.
We cannot hope to achieve social justice without universal access to health care. At a minimum, health care reform should contain a strong public option, which would provide an incentive for the profit-driven health insurance industry to control skyrocketing premium rates. At a minimum, health care reform should allow states to adopt their own single-payer plans. The president’s approach does not meet either of these minimum requirements.
What President Obama calls “moving forward” on health care reform is in fact a giant leap backward for women. The Senate’s version of health care legislation, which the House is now poised to pass, contains sweeping anti-abortion language and fails to eliminate gender and age rating. Lawfully-residing non-citizen immigrants will have to wait five years to qualify for purchasing health insurance through new health exchanges, while undocumented immigrants will not have any access to health insurance under either the Senate or House bills.
Rep. Bart Stupak and his radical anti-abortion rights coalition are threatening to vote against the Senate bill because its restrictions on abortion coverage are not as extreme as those contained in the House’s Stupak-Pitts amendment. Even if Stupak does not succeed, the Senate bill is already bad enough. It places burdensome requirements that would likely result in no coverage for abortion care for either the millions of women purchasing insurance in the new insurance exchanges or the millions of women now covered by large, employer-based group plans, the majority of which currently provide abortion coverage.
Additionally, we have repeatedly been told that gender rating would be eliminated, yet the Senate bill contains language that allows that practice for insurance plans provided to companies with more than 100 employees. It also permits insurance companies to charge older policy holders up to three times the premiums they charge younger customers — a provision that will disproportionately harm middle-aged women. As it stands, this bill is discriminatory against women, and these injustices will not be corrected in the reconciliation process without the ardent advocacy of groups like NOW.
The National Organization for Women refuses to compromise on our most basic principles. We will not accept a health care bill that trades off the rights and needs of some women for the benefit of others. And we will never stop fighting for the right of every woman to have equal access to the full range of reproductive health care, including abortion.
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Happy International Women’s Day!
1 “Christmas and New Year’s and Hanukkah Rolled Into One.” By Naomi Wolf. Perf. Naomi Wolf. CNN, New York. 15 Jan. 2009. Performance.
10 Responses to “Christmas and New Year’s and Hanukkah”
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ugsome says:
What does a feminist look like again?
March 9th, 2010 at 12:46 am EST -
Kookaburra says:
Heh. I actually had a dude try to present his vote for Obama as proof that he was a feminist today.
Laughing in his face was fun.
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simply wondered says:
‘What does a feminist look like again?’
just like you guys, i imagine.
here’s to all the day celebrates and the work done by all women worldwide.
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scott says:
Huzzah, I say, gutsy and principled, even if trust-fund opinionators like Yglesias, Ezra Klein, and company would trash Ms. O’Neill as some kinda dead-ender. It’s refreshing to see someone stand up for basic ideals of equity and fairness without apologizing or groveling.
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Nessum says:
Is the Naomi Wolf who once had an on-air orgasm over all the many festive celebrations that was rolled into just one Obama, the same Naomi Wolf who is now seriously worried about the state of her country because Obama carries on with all Bush’s bad policies, who now sees the US, which she calls an already closed society, well on its way to become a dictatorship, and who now talks about the need to “push back” and “rise up” in protest?
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DancingOpossum says:
Let us not forget Katha Pollitt, who recently posted a sobbing lament over what Obama hath wrought and why won’t he please pretty please act like the “progressive” she was soooooo sure he was…but then wraps it up by saying she’s still glad she supported him instead of Hillary because a Hillary presidency would have been (wait for it) bad for feminism.
Ow. My head hurts, my feet stink, and I don’t love Jesus.
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DancingOpossum says:
And Nessum — that might be Naomi Klein, not Naomi Wolf. How you can tell the difference: One is really smart and one is a raving idiot.
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Nessum says:
Dancing’O. No, I’m sorry (literally!), but it actually was Naomi Wolf saying this in an interview a couple of days ago. I was incredulous too!
I think it was mentioned that she also “talks” about this in her latest book.
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Nessum says:
Let me add that this “new” Naomi Wolf was neither raving nor an idiot. She was serious, mature, and worried about the future of the US under Obama. Nothing at all like the giggling schoolgirl in Violet’s link. That’s why my question was only halfway in jest – that’s how dissimilar “they” came off!
The book in reference was “The End of America”.
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sonrisa says:
NOW should of been raising hell in 2008 instead of breaking it’s non-endorsement policy for this pos tool they stuck us with for the next 3 years. This letter is many days too late & waaaay too many dollars short
