By Zoe Huber-Weiss ’13, Staff Writer

I live a very sheltered life. I have never gone without food, I have always had a roof over my head, and I have received a high-end education. Additionally, I have never been confronted with someone radically opposed to my personal moralistic views.

In the tri-state area, people tend to have social values that largely resemble mine. So when I read about proposed national legislation that is blatantly harmful to women, I was shocked. It never occurred to me that people could have such openly sexist beliefs, let alone that these people would ever have enough power to create actual laws encouraging harm to women.

The bills that have caused an uproar in the liberal media are widespread and span both federal and state governments. The most well-known of these bills is an amendment to the law that provides federal funding for abortions for victims of rape. The amendment redefines legal rape as “forcible,” which excludes date rape, rape where the woman is unconscious, and even rape where the woman is drugged. Additionally, under the amendment to the bill, a woman can only qualify for financial aid from the American government for an abortion of a pregnancy caused by rape if she can produce evidence of violence on the part of the rapist. This requirement is close to impossible to meet in many rape cases.

Regardless of the abortion debate, the amendment crosses a line in terms of women’s rights. The bill, if passed into law, will set a legal precedent for a new definition of rape, making it nearly impossible to hold rapists accountable for their actions in a court of law.

While this bill on its own is enough to make one shudder, other shocking legislation has also been proposed. On the national level, a bill has been proposed to cut federal funding of Planned Parenthood. This organization provides education and medical help with regards to pregnancy to mostly lower-income women and families, and it is mostly able to do so because of federal funding. However, the bill and a budget proposal, drastically cuts the funding for Planned Parenthood and raises funding for NASCAR. Another bill eliminates the only federal family planning program in the country, outlined in Title X of the Public Health Service Act, while proposing funding for the contraception of wild horses. (It seems too ridiculous to be true, but it’s not.)

And these bills aren’t only federal. In South Dakota, a bill has been proposed that would make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortions. No matter your convictions on the matter of abortion, legal murder is simply wrong. These bills’ blatant sexism and obvious harm to women are shocking.

Much of the liberal media—political websites such as MoveOn.org and television shows such as “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”—have recognized this shocking sexism and harm and have termed this set of legislation “The Republican War On Women.” While I myself associate with the Democratic Party, I think that labeling this as a partisan issue detracts from the core of the matter. This issue should not be seen as an opportunity to take shots at a particular political party, but as a crisis of a nationwide departure from basic human rights.

Sources: MoveOn.org, “This Modern World” on Salon.com, and “The War on Women” in the Opinion section of The New York Times