Democrats and progressives need to change the way we're talking about the recent birth control brouhaha. By making this about women and contraception -- instead of couples being able to decide when to start a family -- we're focusing on the short-term policy goals instead of long-term political narratives, limiting our audience appeal, and playing to people's fears instead of building more powerful narratives around core American archetypes. Ironically, our arguments also reinforce the very sexist stereotypes we purport to oppose. It's a losing strategy over the long term, and we need to adopt more powerful, inclusive, and positive ways to talk about our contraception and pro-family policies.
A number of Democrats and progressives have adopted the women vs. boss frame over the last few days to talk about the Blunt Amendment. For example, yesterday Stephanie Cutter said in reference to Romney's flip on Blunt that "Mitt Romney is taking important health decisions... out of the hands of women and [putting them] into the hands of their bosses." Sec. Sebelius said, "The Obama Administration believes that decisions about medical care should be made by a woman and her doctor, not a woman and her boss." Think Progress (which has an awesome Twitter feed, by the way) went a step further, saying Republicans want to put your boss in your bedroom. Gross, right? Who wants their boss in their bedroom or talking to them about birth control? Of course we should oppose a bill that allows that.
Yes, these arguments will help us defeat Blunt, but the point of Blunt isn't to deny women contraception coverage. I'll repeat that because it is important: Republicans aren't doing these bills because they want to keep women from using birth control. Now before you skip to the end and start leaving me angry comments, keep reading. Blunt never stood a chance of passing, and Republicans and Democrats know it. So the purpose of Blunt clearly wasn't to actually prevent women from having access to birth control, but to create a fight. They wanted a debate, not an outcome. They want a fight over religious freedom and government over-reach. And that is what we're giving them, with some abortion language thrown in for good measure. After all, what's the normal context for Democrats talking about a "woman and her doctor?"
We were always going to win on Blunt. The question is whether we'll win the broader arguments and in winning Blunt, create the strongest macro-narrative frameworks for the long-run.
So let's get back to our focus on women. Are men responsible for unwanted pregnancies? Should fathers take a role in raising children? If your answer is yes, then why are we talking about this as if it's just a woman's responsibility and a decision she makes alone? By making contraception only about women's health, we're telling voters contraception decisions are not about parents, not about men, and not about families. That greatly limits our political audience and sends the wrong message about gender roles in sex and parenting.
Furthermore, there are two ways to look at birth control. It can either be something that allows couples to decide when to start a family, or something that gives women control of their lives by being able to prevent pregnancy. In one frame, you have the happy young husband and wife wanting to make sure they are settled before starting a family. In the other, you have a woman who is having sex but doesn't want children. I'm not saying the latter option is bad (and both frames could be describing the same woman), but which is the one you'd use to sell some unrelated product on TV? Which is the story we want to tell and the characters we want to defend? If we want to win elections, it's the former more than the latter.
When voters think of our position, we want them to see Democrats as the Party fighting for families and parents. So we're better off talking about how Democrats want to ensure couples can decide when to start a family than fighting to protect women's ability to have sex without getting pregnant.
Another way to look at it. We can either go for an "eww" or "aww" reaction to contraception. Bosses in the bedroom: eww. Young married couple wanting more time together with their first child before having a second: aww.
People don't generally have happy feelings about sitting in the doctor's office. And I've never been, but I assume OBGYN visits aren't things women have warm, fuzzy feelings about either. But both men and women do have happy feelings about the idea of deciding when and how many kids to have as a family. We want to be associated with the emotions and archetypes in this IUD ad (note the father happily helping with the baby and mom being able to leave him with kid at end!). We want to be seen by voters as the defenders of that couple, but instead we're trying to scare people about invasions of privacy and making this only about women and doctor visits.
Focusing on families doesn't mean we're ignoring women. Again, let's look to multi-million dollar ad campaigns that businesses focus-group and test more fully than anything we ever do in politics. How do businesses target women and get them to relate to a brand or take the action? With all these same images I'm suggesting we use.
So let's not fight the fight the GOP wants. Instead, let's talk about what is really at stake with Blunt: the GOP is saying parents shouldn't be able to decide when and how many children to have. Republicans believe we can't have better healthcare and make our own parenting decisions and also have religious liberty. They are flat wrong, and if we'd started talking about it that way, the vast majority of Americans would see it and agree.
Eliot Daley: Why Should Employers Control Health Care Benefits?
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand: Standing Strong Against the Extreme Blunt Amendment
1 in 6 patients in the US faces a potential religious hurdle to receiving legal, necessary care. Why isn't this viewed as abusive on the part of the Catholic church. Instead of calling us out for standing up to this kind of bullying. You are insisting if we make it pretty and palatable that we will win. Will that was the argument in Griswald and they still haven't given up. Your framing was the long term strategy 50 YEARS AGO. And it still hasn't met the healthcare needs of women. 50 years. That's a long time.
You won't stand up for reality and the actual public health needs of the community. You are REFUSING TO ACKNOWLEDGE the 20,000-pound gorilla in the room. They don't care if a woman is single or married. They actually believe they have the right not only to deny birth control, but critical care. Letting someone's ovary explode from a cyst is just one frame of this. A woman who has to be rushed 80 miles to another hospital to save her life to get an ectopic pregnancy aborted is another. Ectopic babies can't survive as the mom will die when the baby gets too big to grow in her tube. You are demanding that we respect and frame things for people whose adherence to an ideal doesn't save either the baby or a woman. You are defending the indefensible.
When Linda Murakowski says this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/06/lisa-murkowski-blunt-amendment_n_1323427.html
Then your idea about us having the wrong frame is just wrong. Why can't you admit that? You are so certain that you know "winning" strategies. But you clearly can't see that we won this strategically and we should have.
Explain again why our Blunt narrative failed. Oh, that's right IT DIDN'T FAIL. Since you can't even admit that it didn't fail, why should we listen or respect anything you have to say?
By trying to deliver the-couple-in-control-of-their-lives frame you are completely obscuring and ignoring the autonomous healthcare needs of most women for most of their lives. Very few reproductive healthcare decisions are made with a man. Not because women want to leave men out or because we hate them. Rather, it's because only a fraction of the reproductive healthcare women need involves actively reproducing or a man. I'm a mom. I know having a child with a man can be very profound.
A man in no way needs to be involved in our annual pap smears or our treatments for PMS. Or if we need birth control pills to control cysts. Most women go to the doctor every year for a reproductive health check--that’s our primary contact with medical care from age 13-50. It has been deemed to save costs and lives that we have these appointments covered by healthcare (just as having access to prenatal does). Of those appointments in my life with a very committed partner(s) over 20 years exactly 3 have involved or been with a man.
The point is: women need autonomous control of our own healthcare needs/bodies; to receive value for our labors and healthcare dollars [women of reproductive age lower the healthcare premiums for everyone else on the plan, but receive no benefit for this]; and to be free of other people's religions when making our own health choices.
Ms. Fluke was testifying about a lesbian friend who lost an ovary because Georgetown wouldn't prescribe the necessary medicine. It wasn't even that they wouldn't pay for it. The health center refused to prescribe the necessary medical care. Or the woman in New Mexico that the Catholic hospital refused a tubal ligation after her C-Section (this is a very common problem). So you actually think conservatives are going to be swayed when they don't care that this woman was married?
Yes. If you get lucky and you are one of the women that men happen to stay around, that's great. That's one frame. But it doesn't apply to 75% of the women of which we are speaking. and It has the worst benefit of being entirely framed solely for conservatives.
It wasn't actually a tactic. I just had a lot to say about reproductive healthcare. None of what you had to say was applicable to the 28% STD rate. That 1 out 2 women in the US has been abused by a man. That 1 out 2 divorces end in divorce.
The radicalness and unreasonable of their position you are unwilling to see and name. They are bullies. If we unflinchingly held a mirror up to what they are actually wreaking, much like the civil rights movement was partially won by seeing peaceful people set upon by dogs and hoses, common sense, public health and public opinion is on our side. A large majority of our country wants everyone to have access to basic preventative healthcare and for a little over 1/2 of the population that means reproductive healthcare.
My dad is an 80 year old retired Episcopal priest and he is furious. Fit to be tied. The college aged young men I’ve talked to are furious. The have mothers, sisters, girlfriends. I think you are both underselling short the common sense and good public policy this is as well as understating and under-comprehending how very outrageous and dangerous to women the position that conservatives are taking you are seeking to calm. They aren't the ones being hurt by their action. Women are. It would be nice if you stood up and said that . .
In fact, I'm pretty certain based on his words he doesn't actually value women access to reproductive health and has no idea of our needs or the actual issues we face.
Random drug tests, but of course, no random BAC tests on the job (have your Kahula spiked coffee AT WORK, but don't dare smoke a joint at home on your own time),
Criminal Background checks (didn't think that single shoplifting charge on your record from when you were 19 would matter now that you're 40? Think again).
Credit Checks (I've never understood why a credit check was such a strengent requirement of someone applying to work stocking toliet paper in a wharehouse, but apparently it matters more now that you didn't pay your credit card bill on time than your excellent quality work history).
Facebook and Twitter checks (a recent study said that 69% of employers said they checked Facebook and twitter feeds of potential employees before making their decisions).
And now, a debate on whether to let employers decide what health coverage they choose to allow employees to have? Aka, contraception.
The GOPers may be preaching about a smaller, less intrusive government, but it certainly hasn't detered them from moving that Big Brother stereotype from the government, to more correctly.. your boss is watching you.
Every step you take, your boss can watch you. And now we're having a national discussion about whether we want to allow employers to stand at the foot of your bed and decide when and how you are to have sex?
Ridiculousness