Guest opinion

Jeannette Rankin, the first United States congresswoman, was a Republican from Montana. She was also pacifist and the only congressperson to vote against World War II, which alone should remind us how much party lines have shifted. Rankin was a maverick before it was cool to be mavericky.

The first political party to allow a rogue feminist to run amuck in the House of Reps. has now come under fire for alienating women. Meredith Shiner and Glen Thrush, of Politico.com, call it the GOP’s “women problem”—the increasing divide between the far right and the Republican Party’s moderate, female minority.

In Monday’s post, Shiner and Thrush responded specifically to the gendered undertones of conservative Republican politicians reprimanding moderates, like recent New York House candidate Dede Scozzafava and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), for their left of far-right social views. The reporters also touched upon a recent gaffe from Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who likened gender in health insurance costs to a pre-existing condition, such as smoking.

Without the bad vibes and ugly sound-bytes, the numbers show a clear trend. While two decades ago, congressional women had an equal likelihood of identifying with either party, Republican women now form only 29 percent of total number of women in Congress — which has been steadily on the rise over the same time period.

Deborah Pryce, former chairwoman of the House Republican Conference from 2003 to 2007, told Politico that women are less present in the Republican party because they “tend to have a more practical, less ideological way of approaching politics, and our party doesn’t always take kindly to that.” It’s an interesting hypothesis; I always thought that women were too emotional to make practical decisions.

But let’s talk pragmatism. As an American woman, I don’t have to agree with the underlying ideology of the Democratic Party to lean away from the GOP. All I have to do is vote with enlightened self-interest. Which party supports abstinence-only education when, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 62 percent of women ages 15 to 44 use contraceptives? Which party has consistently stood in the way of reforming a broken health care system that disproportionately disenfranchises women, and which party has used the health care bill as a platform to diminish access to abortions?

The Stupak Amendment, Nancy Pelosi’s big compromise with the right to push health care legislation through the House, is a giant step back for women’s reproductive rights. It bans elective abortion from the public option and excludes anyone receiving federal health care subsidies from purchasing insurance plans with abortion coverage, essentially barring the very women who aren’t prepared to have children from opting out of pregnancy. Women with inadequate policies will have to purchase supplemental coverage to plan ahead for the possibility of unplanned pregnancies.

Of course, 64 Democrats also voted for the amendment, named after Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak, which pushes pro-choice feminists off the map of mainstream politics. Bloggers for Huffington and Salon declare the Democratic Party is not for women either.

The Democratic Party would have struggled in 2008 without all the ladies, who voted 56 percent for Obama; only 49 percent of men voted Democrat in the same race. I was one of those women. I voted blue with the belief that it made a difference—that, at the very least, the politicians I supported would defend my basic reproductive rights from the ideologues, not trade them away to appease a party that is stuck in reverse. While I won’t argue with the dire necessity of passing health care reform, collapsing under the pressure of Catholic patriarchy isn’t good strategy for a party that relies heavily on the female vote.

This is just a practical tip for Senate Democrats grappling with their own version of the health care bill. When women lose, so do you. Cc: Oregon senators Wyden and Merkley. This donkey never forgets.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Daily Emerald