Why the Sudden Outrage, GOP? - Ms. Magazine Blog
Thankfully, things are changing. This behavior is being recognized for what it is—a crime. That’s why GOP leaders are disturbed and outraged. But what Pence and Ryan and McConnell, so self-righteously appalled by this image of Trump feeling empowered to grab a woman in her most private part, don’t seem to realize is that they do so in legislatures every day.
They effectively advocate forced childbirth by impeding women’s access to birth control, morning-after pills, and safe, legal abortion. They comprise the health and lives of young low-income women by banning funding to Planned Parenthood and laboring to close down clinics, depriving these young women of all reproductive health and preventive cancer care. They vote against equal pay for equal work, paid maternity leave and paid sick leave. While they criticize Trump for his sense of entitlement to the bodies of women, they have the same sense of entitlement. They refuse to respect women’s moral authority, spiritual beliefs or choices—to work or not work, to combine motherhood and career, to choose or reject motherhood, to carry a pregnancy to term, or not.
They may not grab “pussy” the way Trump says he can, but make no mistake: they grab it, without apology. That, too, is criminal. When will lawmakers taking these liberties with women’s bodies shock us, too?