Congresswoman Eleanor Norton

Fresh from the battlefield known as the House of Representatives, where men outnumber women more than six to one, I take some comfort in knowing there are more women than men in this country – and more women who vote. The bunch of men who run the House have not used their majority to tame the banks or the corporations that gave us the Great Recession. Their energy has gone to blocking the President’s jobs bills to bolster the economy and to turning on the women of our country -- from attacks on women’s reproductive health to the refusal to support an equal pay bill.

Those who object to calling it a “war on women” haven’t been on the receiving end. They don’t know what it feels like to have Congress bear down on your district, trying to ban all pre-viability, post-20-week abortions with no exceptions for the health of the mother, rape, or incest. They haven’t talked to low-income women in the District, casualties of the Tea Party House that has made the D.C. government the only local or state government forbidden by Congress to spend its own local revenue on abortion services for low-income women.

Call it what you like, but women know it when they see it from the Congress and Republican legislators throughout the country. Women are losing basic rights we won decades ago and are being blocked from moving forward to equal rights.

It is Paul Ryan’s House that first made women’s rights an issue this year, and Ryan’s votes, identical to Rep. Todd Akin’s, that he now carries with him on the campaign trail. Sitting at the right hand of Mitt Romney, who has promised to defund Planned Parenthood, Ryan’s advice is preordained. Women know, however, that power will be measured by the numbers in November.

This blog entry was adapted from a recent speech given by Congresswoman Norton.