By Karen Rubin, News-Photos-Features.com
Gun shops are considered “essential services” by Trump and his ilk during this coronavirus pandemic, even as incidents of domestic violence spike. Women accessing reproductive health services? Not essential.
Indeed, during the nationwide lockdown, there has been a 20 percent increase in domestic violence, there are lines around the block at gun shops, and there is a well-known link between guns and domestic violence – for sure, we see AK-47 and AR-15 wielding Trumpers intimidating lawmakers, notably “that woman” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, to end social-distancing intended to mitigate the high rate of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
They demonstrate that with the cavalier attitude toward making sure healthcare workers have adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Women are also the overwhelming majority of minimum wage earners like those in the meat packing plants ordered to return to work while the employers are not required to implement any safety measures, or else lose unemployment insurance, and I’ll bet they don’t have access to health insurance when they are sickened. Women are the majority of workers in grocery stores and nursing homes.
All these jobs that have been given lip service as “essential” but are really being treated as “expendable” and in some cases as “sacrificial” and it is no coincidence that the majority are women.
“80 percent of all healthcare workers are women, one out of three jobs held by women has been classified as essential,” said 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a Women for Biden virtual town hall in which she endorsed Joe Biden for president. “This is an issue that affects all of us, young and old, every background, walk of life, but has disproportionate impact on women on frontlines, working, caring for others, holding down their home.”
“As it is, women--and women of color, especially--are already bearing the heaviest burden under coronavirus,” write the UltraViolet Action team, a feminist activist group. “Women are on the front line of this pandemic. Women fill a majority of the positions in the health-care industry, where they are risking their lives to provide urgent care. Most teachers are women, at a time when educators are scrambling to reinvent the entire American education system for distance learning. Women are more likely to be laid off when restaurants and hotels close. And, of course, when a child stays home from school or an elderly family member gets sick, it's most often a woman who steps up to provide the needed care.”
As others have described, Women’s Rights may well be one of the casualties of the pandemic – if we allow it.
Right wing states are exploiting the coronavirus in shameful way to designate abortion an “elective procedure,” therefore put on hold during the pandemic. Their wink-and-a-nod rationale is to preserve limited PPE resources, except that early-stage medical abortions don’t require much in the way of PPE, and certainly less than multiple prenatal examinations, possible C-section, the risk to the woman during maternity (Texas has one of the highest maternal death rates) and ongoing medical care that the woman or the child might need which states like Texas fail to provide. And “elective” implies that there is no risk to delaying a procedure, when obviously abortions are time-sensitive.
Further exposing the fraud, these states are also prohibiting medication for abortion that eliminates the need for a surgical procedure – even outlawing receiving the medication by mail.
The misogynistic regimes are exploiting the pandemic in other ways, as well: in Florida, the court (no doubt packed with Trump’s unqualified ideologues) granted a man sole custody of a couple’s children because their mother was a doctor on the frontline of the coronavirus.
“We know that when emergencies hit, women and girls come last,” says CARE’s Humanitarian Policy Director Susannah Friedman. “Even though current data might indicate that men and the elderly are more likely to contract the virus, women and girls will still suffer inequitable hardships as a result of the pandemic.”
Underscoring what Trump has failed to do, Biden outlined the measures he would take to mitigate the heightened stresses on women during the coronavirus pandemic and beyond.
Biden would first and foremost insure access to health care: ramping up testing and ensuring that not only testing, but also treatment and any eventual vaccine for COVID-19, is free for all individuals regardless of insurance or immigration status; pick up the full cost of COBRA premiums for women who have lost their jobs; open a new Obamacare enrollment period, so women who so badly need insurance can get it, instead of fighting in the courts to gut that landmark law like the Trump Administration is doing; and stop states from using the pandemic to curtail access to abortions.
He would address the heightened levels of domestic violence, sexual assault and abuse of women and girls by improving text, chat and phone-based assistance so women can obtain help; expand access to shelters, sexual assault programs and child advocacy centers, including enlisting FEMA; and provide financial assistance to survivors who otherwise would be financially bound to their abuser. (See “Hillary Clinton Endorses Biden Citing Plans to Support Women During, After COVID-19 Crisis”)
The ultimate irony is Trump campaign politicizing the Tara Reade allegations against Biden. That is beyond hypocrisy. beyond chutzpah coming from a guy who was credibly accused of actual sexual assault by 19 women and who has refused to allow any actual investigation of the charges. Biden should never be attacked as if he committed the acts of sexual predation that Trump has been accused of, because of his habit of hugging women, rubbing their shoulders or tapping their head. Not the same at all. Not the same as paying off a porn star with whom Trump had illicit sexual affair in order to keep the secret during the campaign, or boasting that when you are a celebrity, you can “grab ‘em by the pussy”.
It’s one thing for women to be listened to, their concerns be respected and taken seriously, but quite another to immediately condemn and to lump every indiscretion as the same – that undermines the #MeToo movement. Nor should we use the same cultural measuring rod of today to 25 years ago. Moreover, there are gradations of a crime, from misdemeanor to felony – saying something off color is not the same as sexual harassment is not the same as extorting sexual favors for job opportunity, or sexual abuse, sexual assault or rape. And there still have to be standards of innocent until proven guilty.
And women do lie, like the woman who lied about a UVA campus rape. How many would like to be as famous as Monica Lewinsky forever known as bringing down a President and changing history? As it is, Tara Reade’s story has shifted and is unsupported by any evidence that should have been available (like a copy of her complaint).
Indeed, it is telling that Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy Devos has unraveled the system put into place by Obama administration to protect women on college campuses from sexual assault.
Biden issued this statement:
“Survivors deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and when they step forward they should be heard, not silenced. Today, Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump published a rule that flies in the face of that belief and guarantees that college campuses will be less safe for our nation’s young people.
“Simply put: this new rule gives colleges a green light to ignore sexual violence and strip survivors of their rights. It lets colleges off the hook for protecting students, by permitting them to choose to investigate only more extreme acts of violence and harassment and requiring them to investigate in a way that dissuades survivors from coming forward.
“This rule fundamentally disregards student’s civil rights under Title IX, which has helped pave the way for millions of women to access education. Survivors and advocates have fought to hold schools accountable and give young people truly fair access to education. Today's rule rolls back the clock and reverses those hard-fought victories.
“Our young people deserve better. During the Obama-Biden Administration, I traveled to the University of New Hampshire — a school with one of the best programs to prevent sexual assault in the nation — to announce that colleges would have new guidance and support from our Administration on how best to prevent and respond to campus sexual assault.
“With that encouragement — and the It’s On Us campaign that President Obama and I launched — schools took great steps towards leveling the playing field for survivors and accused students. Working with survivors and advocates, we helped to bring this violence out of the shadows and required schools change their practices.
“Now, Trump’s Education Department — led by Betsy DeVos — is trying to shame and silence survivors, and take away parents’ peace of mind. It’s wrong. And, it will be put to a quick end in January 2021, because as President, I’ll be right where I always have been throughout my career — on the side of survivors, who deserve to have their voices heard, their claims taken seriously and investigated, and their rights upheld.”
Republicans have learned they can use the Democrats’ moral standard as a weapon (when Republicans seem to be inoculated from shame or hypocrisy). Now will the press do what they did with Hillary Clinton's emails and make this the focus, distracting from Biden's record such as championing the Violence Against Women Act and policies he would implement as president – such as advancing women’s rights, civil rights, voting rights, climate justice - at a time when political campaigning has been completely hamstrung, with Trump having the huge advantage of using the White House for campaign rallies and manipulating states to reopen so he can hold his dangerous rallies?
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