To Many Women, Neither Party Feels Like A Good Fit Anymore

Is it better to be cancelled by the Democratic Party or the GOP?

A female protester in her late 20s stood outside an athletic stadium and sighed in frustration.

“I don’t feel like I have a party anymore. Now what am I supposed to do?” she said.

She was protesting the participation in a collegiate swimming event of a 6’3” transgender swimmer who was born male but began identifying as a woman about a year earlier after a mediocre career as a male swimmer. Lia Thomas was breaking female swimming records and sweeping female competitions.

The protester voiced a concern that resonates with many women. We are looking for a party where we feel valued and comfortable. We are finding two political parties that pander to extremists and seem unfriendly.

Anti-Abortion

Most women are aghast at the puritanical fervor of the Republicans to abolish abortion in the wake of the mysterious leak of a draft of a U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the issue of abortion will return to the states. Many states will enact reasonable laws that permit abortion well before fetal viability but others clearly will not if given the opportunity.

Some GOP politicians have filed bills in their state legislatures to outlaw abortion altogether or so soon after conception that most women won’t even know they are pregnant. Texas Rep. Bryan Slaton would subject women and doctors who perform abortions to the death penalty. His proposed bill does not even include exceptions for rape or incest.

No one in the GOP seems to be taking even a remotely moderate path on abortion rights.

Polls show that between 85% and 90% of respondents say abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances. - FiveThirtyEight.

There is suspicion in the GOP that the draft opinion was leaked to help the Democrats avoid a massive shellacking in the 2022 midterm elections. Democratic Party leaders want voters to focus on abortion rather than inflation, crime, illegal immigration, etc. The current GOP anti-abortion fervor may accomplish the Democratic Party’s goal.

Women’s Spaces

Prior to the passage of Title IX in 1972, few colleges had sports teams for women and many academic departments did not have a single female on their faculty. Title IX has not achieved 100% parity for women but it literally transformed the nation.

On his first day in office, Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring educational institutions to add “gender identity and sexual orientation” to the protected class of “sex” in Title IX. Biden’s stroke of a pen also is changing America but not in a good way for girls and women.

Suddenly men who say they “identify” as women - even if they have not converted surgically - have a right to invade women’s private spaces (i.e., bathrooms and locker rooms), compete on female sports teams, and be assigned to female prisons.