Jackson Free Press

"The worst state for women is Mississippi," says the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a scientific research organization founded in 1987 to inform and stimulate debate on public policy issues important to women and families. We certainly need to be informed and stimulated. For women, Mississippi is ranked 49th in employment and earnings, 49th in social and economic autonomy, 49th in health and well-being, and a whopping 51st (!) in reproductive rights.

How did it get this bad? Well, it never was that great to begin with. As in other areas of civil rights, women here have only won a series of battles and lost sight that a larger war must be fought. This study is shocking proof. And it's about to get even worse.

The election is over, and Republicans rule the universe. Republicans are not bad in and of themselves; I like a lot of them. But our new ruling class is extremely conservative. President George W. Bush has gathered around himself a religious-right circle that disagrees with our right to choose, be it a child or a marriage. Marshall Whittman, formerly of the Christian Coalition, told The Washington Post regarding President Bush: "He is the leader of the Christian Right."

I've got nothing against anyone's religious preferences, in fact I'm all for them. But when the government's dogma is interfering with my life, I start to get alarmed. Let me give you a couple of examples.

1. The Florida Legislature passed a new bill that forces a woman who wants to put her child up for adoption to post in the paper (like a letter to creditors) her name, race, hair color, eye color, weight and height, her child's name and date of birth, and either the name of or a physical description of her child's probable father once a week for four weeks. This is supposed to give the father legal rights, even in the case of rape or incest. Reports say many women are opting for abortion to avoid the embarrassment of publishing their sexual history for all to see.

2. President Bush named Wade Horn, founder and president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services assistant secretary for children and families, the nation's top family policy post. Hence, he has been put in charge of welfare, childcare, child welfare, child support, adoption, foster care, and domestic violence. Horn says things like "Government policy must truly value families, and not just any old family, [but] support a specific type of family structure, a mother and father found in marriage."

He and Bush are now, with the help of a budget of about $100 million a year, creating a pro-marriage program to "reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies" and to "encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families." They insinuate that a woman is better off with a man and so can better raise her family with one.

3. Bush proclaimed Jan. 22, 2002, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, "National Sanctity of Human Life Day" in a proclamation that likened abortion to terrorism. "On Sept. 11, we saw clearly that evil exists in this world, and that it does not value life. ...Now we are engaged in a fight against evil and tyranny to preserve and protect life."

Forget about the separation of church and state. Our state has become a church.

We Mississippi chicks need to go out and get ourselves some bootstraps to pull ourselves up by. Our mothers and grandmothers fought long and hard to get the vote and to be able to control their lives without the government or—any man— telling them what to do, and we can't sit idly by and let those victories go for naught. I'm not talking about bra-burning and male-bashing. But I am suggesting we know where we stand and make a decided effort to remove ourselves from the bottom of the barrel. That we start at home and move outward. We demand equal pay. We demand decent health care coverage. We demand decent childcare. We demand a decent education. We demand reproductive rights. And we won't take no for an answer.

Join me on the battlefront. I won't be carrying a sign, and I won't be singing a protest song. But I will be standing.
J. Bingo Holman is the assistant editor of the Jackson Free Press.