No More Bread and Circuses

Patricia Miller’s piece, “’Big Tent’ or Abortion Sellout,” discusses the dilemma the Democratic Party has found itself in as it seeks to regain power after a devastating loss last November. It confounds me that, in the year of the Women’s March and the #MeToo movement, certain party leaders would try to dilute one of the tenets of the modern women’s rights movement in this country and what has been a bedrock of the Democratic Party’s platform–the fundamental human rights of women to make decisions about their own bodies.

As a leader of a community-based nonprofit that provides daily assistance to low-income women from across all faith backgrounds on issues such as healthcare access, civil rights and gender-based violence, the linkages between reproductive rights, racial justice and economic equity have never been more clear to me. The decisions these women can make about their reproductive health directly impacts their ability to live safe, healthy, and financially secure lives. This is not earthshattering news. It has been proven time and time again around the world that enabling women to make informed decisions about whether and when to have children leads to healthier families and communities. By making abortion rights “negotiable,” the Democratic Party risks dismantling its entire platform, alienating and angering a strong and growing constituency of women voters, and helping the Republican Party on its now well-demonstrated mission to destroy all progress that women have made over the last century.

SHIKHA BHATNAGAR
Executive Director, South Asian Network
Artesia, CA