QOTD: Repression of Women and Autocracy

Lauren Leader, CEO of All In Together, a non-partisan women's civic education organization, writes on MSNBC: 

"The United States has always stood as a beacon of democracy for the world and while in many ways we are, American democratic foundations have huge gaps where women’s rights should be. Women are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution or any of our founding documents. And while 85 percent of the world’s nations enshrine the rights of women in their constitution, we do not. The 1979 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), known as ‘the international women’s bill of rights,” has been ratified by almost every country in the world. Two of the seven who have not signed it include the U.S. and Iran. 

Repression of women and autocracy go hand in hand. Iran is in the headlines today, but there are other instructive examples. As Russian President Vladimir Putin rose in power, he put down political dissent and the rights of women. He decriminalized domestic violence and banned hundreds of professions from women’s participation. In Saudi Arabia, women pushing for freedoms have been jailed for speaking out on social media. Of course, the resurgent Taliban have built their power on brutally repressing women, banning them from school and most professions. Iranian Ayatollahs, Saudi royals, Russian Oligarchs and Taliban militants know that women’s freedom is a threat to them. [snip]

Will the U.S. progress or regress? The rollback of reproductive rights is an ominous sign. Women simply cannot be full and equal participants in democracy if they lack the autonomy to determine where, when, and how they have children, or worse face threats to their very lives because they cannot access critical medical care. The barriers erected in dozens of states after the fall of Roe present a clear and immediate danger to women’s freedom and power, individually and collectively." (our emphasis)

The overturning of Roe v. Wade by a reactionary Supreme Court skewed by appointees of the Malignant Loser delighted misogynist authoritarians and Christofascists here in the U.S., before they saw the growing outrage and opposition that will hopefully be expressed at the polls in November. Denying rights and power to women is the clearest sign -- from Iran and Saudi Arabia to America -- of the presence of  patriarchal autocracy, now a policy position of the Trumpist / Forced Birth Rethuglican Party.