Women and Politics

In honor of the 37th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I am Blogging for Choice - a NARAL Pro-Choice America tradition. TOPIC: What does Trust Women mean to you?

Trust. It’s a tricky thing—very difficult to earn, but extremely easy to lose.

It’s a concept most often applied to close personal relationships. You need to trust your family, partner, doctor, friends, auto mechanic, co-workers, etc.

But what about when we think of trust on a larger scale—our government, elected officials, and world leaders? We’re supposed to trust them to protect us and make decisions in our best interests.

In America, we’re granted the freedom to make many personal decisions. Because of this, we’re in essence saying that we trust our fellow Americans to carry out their actions in a careful and harmless manner. Be it with their gun ownership, raising children, public safety, etc.

However, it’s become increasingly clear that some members of our society and even our elected officials don’t trust certain groups of people—be it based on race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or gender.

Women, over half of the US population, certainly don’t seem to be trusted. Sure, it’s better than it was…we’re now trusted to work outside the home, vote, drive a car, and start a business.

But when it comes to the most deeply personal of actions, we don’t trust women to take care of themselves. We don’t trust them to make their own decisions regarding their bodies, health, and reproductive options.

Men’s reproductive systems are completely left alone—we trust them to make their own decisions about sex, health, vasectomies, and cancer prevention.

But women…oh, no. They’re a different story. We must regulate every aspect of the reproductive health—from birth control to pregnancy to cancer screenings. Because they, clearly, cannot be trusted to make decisions for themselves.

They couldn’t possibly decide when to have sex, when to have children, or how to protect themselves. They wouldn’t take these things seriously.

What? If we can’t trust women to take care of their most critical health needs, how are we even trusting them to be in public and function in society? They must be so irrational, frail, and unintelligent—how do we even allow them outside the home?

Despite how damaging it is for anyone to harbor this opinion, the problem is that it’s not just normal individuals—many elected officials don’t trust women, and are constantly working to pass laws that restrict our ability to make personal, private medical decisions.

Though it’s doubly devastating for a woman public official to work against women’s health choices, the current problem is that we don’t have enough women in our government. A pitiful 17% of Congress is women. Some states have never even seen a female Governor or Senator.

I promise you that if we had more women in government, a woman’s right to make her own health decisions wouldn’t even be up for discussion. We could focus on things like the economy, environment, and national security, instead of what a woman does with her doctor.

This is why in addition to fighting the ridiculous legislation coming at us from anti-choice, anti-women officials, we also have to work to elect more pro-choice women, immediately. (First step: Getting more women thinking about running for office). This will be the only permanent way to end the vicious attacks on women’s reproductive freedoms.

We have to start trusting women. Trust them to choose, trust them to run, and trust them to lead. Or we may never see the day when our personal health decisions are truly our own.