Women's and LGBTQ rights are under attack. But we're fighting back.
Authoritarian regimes have long undermined equality. But we can still protect and advance essential rights.
By Jennifer Weiss-Wolf
For any entity committed to defending fundamental freedoms, the deluge of attacks on democracy must be viewed through a gender lens. Authoritarian regimes around the world have long undermined women’s and LGBTQ equality as a way to consolidate power. It is a playbook the Trump administration adopted from Day One. Simply stated, they lean into the connection—and so must we.
This is why I’ve proudly joined The Contrarian (and Joyce Vance’s Democracy Index) to regularly track, catalogue, and analyze these attacks in the United States, with a deliberate eye toward solutions—how to effectively wield influence to defend, protect, and advance essential rights.
Among the news stories that caught my eye this past week:
In a New York Minute
• Governor Kathy Hochul refused to extradite a New Paltz-based doctor charged by a Louisiana grand jury with prescribing abortion pills online to a resident there. The doctor, also sued by the state of Texas, and others are further supported by additional legislation signed by the governor allowing physicians in the state to withhold their individual names from prescription labels.
• After NYU Langone made headlines for cancelling appointments for trans teen patients, Attorney General Letitia James fired off a letter putting all New York hospitals on notice of their legal obligation under state law to continue offering gender-affirming care to minors.
• Members of the New York City Council joined a weekend of protest in response to the National Parks Service’s erasure of the “T” in “LGBTQ” on its website for the iconic Stonewall National Monument. The council member representing the district said the removal of some words and letters but not others was an attempt to divide and weaken the community.
• State legislators have a powerful sword to wield, thanks to Proposal 1, New York’s Equal Rights Amendment, which won at the polls in November. The state constitution now includes protections on the basis of “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive health care and autonomy.” We fought hard for it—now let’s use it.
You Know I Read it in a Magazine …
• Voting Rights. For those hell bent on dismantling women’s rights, keeping them from casting a ballot is inevitably part of the game plan. All cred to women’s magazines—from Glamour to Ms.—for making the Republican-sponsored Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act go viral last week. In particular, the magazines called out the provision that could prevent many women from being able to register to vote. The bill would require that voters show ID in the form of a birth certificate that matches the name of the registrant (which is not the case for up to 69 million married women in the United States who changed their legal name), a passport (which more than 140 million Americans don’t have), or one of a few other proof-of-citizenship documents; states otherwise will have little oversight in determining what are reasonable accommodations for voters who have discrepancies because of a name change. Read Joyce Vance’s thorough summary here.
• Abortion Access. Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he has announced that the White House requested new studies on the safety of abortion pills—despite decades of data showing the safety and efficacy of mifepristone (and despite attempts to freeze other research funding). I appreciated The Nation’s comprehensive summary of what to expect from HHS when it comes to abortion access. It’s well corroborated by a roundup in The Hill written by the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who calls out not just the president, members of Congress, and RFK Jr., but also Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, highlighting the threats posed by Cabinet-wide coordination.
• Philanthropic Leadership. A New York Times weekend feature highlighted the unnerving silence and, worse, likely ongoing retrenchment of philanthropy since the election. According to the Times, institutional funders and political donors alike have turned to shoring up their defenses and preparing for potential retaliation. With a few exceptions—among them, the Gates Foundation condemned the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule and withdrawal from the World Health Organization, and Pivotal Ventures, led by Melinda French Gates, is now fielding proposals to invest $250 million in women’s health—U.S. foundations have said and done very little to respond to the urgency of moment. The Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU Law (of which I serve as executive director) published a tool kit to help philanthropic leaders forge concrete strategies to leverage the power of the pen, the podium, and the purse to counter the billions invested globally by authoritarian movements to undermine and oppose women’s and LGBTQ rights.
Under His Eye
“The Handmaids Tale” season six trailer dropped last week. Just in time! Blessed be the series finale we need more than ever.
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This column is designed to be responsive and interactive (like my earlier Contrarian piece Public Health Websites Are Going Dark on citizen efforts to republish scrubbed federal data and agency web pages). We are hoping for real-time—and democratic—engagement: the plan is to follow a bi-weekly round-up with a deep dive segment on the issues readers want to follow more closely; please weigh in via the comments section. The fight for democracy—and women’s and LGBTQ justice—is for all of us.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law.
Women in blue states beware! Don't let men AND WOMEN in red states dictate your rights to vote and to make decisions over your own bodies.
They've already won the latter in most red states, don't let them win the former. It is up to each and every one of you to make sure it doesn't happen.
Thank you. These are such important topics. Women fought for many decades to win the right to vote, and now we have to fight to protect it. If the SAVE bill becomes law, you'll need to bring a birth certificate or a passport to the election office order to update your address - something you can now do easily online in many states.
The goal, of course, for Republicans is to disenfranchise as many people as possible. That will further entrench their power, which is all they care about.
Please tell your friends and family and encourage them to call their members of Congress and demand they protect your right to access voting.