It’s been a tough year for women’s rights. We lost abortion rights (even though access had been eroded for years) when the decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health was issued this past June with our reactionary Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade and 50 years of precedent to give a green light to states to outlaw abortion. Now 13 states ban all or virtually all abortions and only 17 states and the District of Columbia broadly protect abortion rights. No doubt, many women’s lives and liberty now hang in the balance.
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has continued to fight in the courts against adding the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even though already ratified by the requisite 38 states. See Maura Casey’s article, Publish ERA, let skirmishes begin and watch Equal Means Equal’s video: Joe, Do It!
The ERA would establish sex as a protected category, with the same weight as race, which would make it far easier to challenge all kinds of discriminatory practices in every state in the union, including jobs discrimination, violence against women, and yes, abortion bans. See and share our Why We Need the ERA brochure.
And then the coordinated worldwide effort to deny the existence of sex, and to remove sex-based protections including the ability of women to organize against our oppression and to even have language to talk about ourselves, has continued apace in 2022. California passed two horrific bills this year, SB 923 and SB107 and would respectively indoctrinate the medical and mental health professions in gender identity ideology and make the state a magnet for minors seeking sterilizing and mutilating so-called “gender affirming care.” See our post about these dangerous bills.
Indoctrination in our schools and universities is endemic. Feminists are losing jobs and livelihoods and facing civil rights complaints for refusing to deny the existence of two biological sexes. A lesbian in Norway was even facing criminal charges and up to three years in prison for supposed “hate speech” for stating that men could neither be lesbians or mothers.
And most recently, Scotland passed a gender self-ID law, the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, that will allow any male, including convicted sex offenders, to enter women’s spaces and programs simply on his say-so, disregarding concerns about women’s safety.
So, there is plenty of reason to despair. But there is also reason to hope.
Women can and are fighting back. Women in Scotland protested and sang a rendition of Auld Lang Syne outside of parliament during the vote, “women’s rights are human rights.” Their struggle is not over.
Rise-Up for Abortion Rights has done amazing organizing in response to the overturning of Roe.
Two women who challenged their sacking in the UK for their gender critical views were vindicated in court: Allison Bailey and Maya Forstater.
Our Duty, a non-partisan group of parents opposing child medical transition, organized a successful “First Do No Harm Unity Rally” of 100 people in Anaheim California in front of a national convention of pediatricians. The central organizer is a mother, lawyer, and liberal Democrat. The Tavistock Gender Clinic in the UK has been shuttered following the investigation headed up by Dr. Hilary Cass revealing dangerous invasive procedures being recommended for gender dysphoric youth with little screening or oversight.
And then there are the women of Iran, who are leading a struggle against an extremely repressive and misogynist fundamentalist regime. In response to the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in custody of the morals police for not wearing her headscarf properly, and at great risk to themselves, our Iranian sisters have poured out into the streets again and again.
The song, Baraye, has been the anthem of the protests:
For the sake of dancing in the street
For the fear felt in the moment of kissing
For my sister your sister, our sisters
For changing the rotten minds
For shame, for pennilessness
For the yearning for an ordinary life
For the sake of the children that mine the garbage and their dreams…
For women, life, liberty
For women, life, liberty! If they can do it, we can do it!
