Rep. Chris Taylor Speaks Out on the GOP's Assault on Women's Rights

By Kenneth Megan

Rep. Chris Taylor (D- Madison) wrote a hard-hitting editorial this morning highlighting the GOP’s repeated assault on women’s rights. By now, we have all heard conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh’s slanderous attack on women who use contraception, but what you may not have heard about is the ongoing sexism that has become prevalent among influential right-wing Republicans, from big-money Scott Walker donor Foster Friess, who on a national news broadcast stated, “Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly” to the recent Congressional Committee that met on access to birth control, in which not a single woman was invited to speak. Incidentally, all of the speakers were men opposed to birth control. In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers are attempting to legislate from the exam room, mandating, “additional physical exams…a woman must receive prior to and after an abortion,” while making austere cuts to “family planning services that prevent pregnancy.”

Although the CDC has credited family planning as one of the great public health triumphs of the 20th century, extreme members of the Republican Party continue to advocate an archaic and sexist philosophy of chauvinistic paternalism.

Thus, Rep. Taylor is absolutely correct in her editorial when she states that, “If women don’t stand up now and demand to be treated as full citizens…we will continue fighting the same battles as our mothers and our grandmothers over and over again.”

Read the rest of the editorial from Rep. Chris Taylor on Madison.com >>