Analysis: In deep-red Alabama, would more women in the legislature have made a difference in the heated abortion debate?
By Vanessa Williams Vanessa Williams Reporter on the National desk. Email Bio Follow May 17 at 12:41 AM About US is a new initiative by The Washington Post to cover issues of identity in the United States. Sign up for the newsletter.
Political journalists and pundits often frame abortion as an issue that galvanizes women under the idea that they have the right to control their bodies and their reproductive choices. That view leaves out women who are staunch opponents of abortion and see themselves as protectors of unborn life. Many such women are just as eager as conservative men about the chance to get the issue in front of the conservative leaning Supreme Court in the hope of overturning Roe v. Wade.
Kelly Dittmar, a political-science professor at Rutgers University and a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, said it is important “to remember in all of our political analysis and elsewhere that woman are not monolithic, whether in their beliefs or their behavior, and that’s especially true for women officeholders.”
Indeed, state Rep. Terri Collins , the sponsor of the measure, declared: “This bill is about challenging Roe v. Wade and protecting the lives of the unborn because an unborn baby is a person who deserves love and protection. I have prayed my way through this bill. This is the way we get where we want to get eventually.”
In Alabama, women are 15.7 percent of the legislature. Democratic women also outnumber Republican women — there are no Republican women in the state Senate — but the GOP holds a 75 percent majority in the legislature. Dittmar said the Alabama state legislature, as well as any legislative body, would benefit from having more women.
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