Ever since the country heard of Sandra Fluke, members of the Democratic Party have claimed that the Republican Party is waging a "War on Women," while GOP women have furiously called such claims bunk.
But according to the National Organization for Women's (NOW) Terry O'Neill, the Democrats took that line from her organization.
"We have been sounding the alarm about a War on Women even before the 2010 elections," O'Neill told CL on Tuesday. "But when the 2010 elections came around, the first since the Citizens United case, you had corporate and billionaire money flooding into the elections, and Tea Party extremists gaining power in this country, and they have accelerated the War on Women to warp speed."
O'Neill was specifically referring to what she said was more than 90 anti-reproductive rights laws passed in state legislatures in 2011 (the Guttmacher Institute reported that 80 such bills passed as of mid-2011).
"My organization is non-partisan," she said of the 'war on woman' tagline."Okay, they want to earn political points from that. We have issues," she said of the state-by-state laws regulating abortion rights that have prospered throughout the country in the past two years.
In Florida, there were no less than 18 proposed bills regarding abortion in 2011. Let's not forget about Amendment 6 on next week's ballot that would prohibit funding most abortions with tax dollars (critics say that's already the law), and allow a future Florida Legislature to pass legislation restoring parental rights.
This article appears in Oct 25-31, 2012.
