The "War on Women" Is Being Run By -- Women?

Imagine that while perusing a volume about the French and Indian War, that sideshow of the Seven Years’ War pitting England against France for the domination of North America, you discovered that the leaders of the English side all had names like Montcalm, Duquesne, or L'Evesque, instead of good, solid English names like Wolfe, Braddock, or Washington. It might make you at least a bit curious, cause you to do some further reading perhaps, maybe even lead you to examine your preconceptions about the thing. Maybe, just maybe, things weren't as black and white as you'd always thought.

Now, of course, in the real French and Indian War it actually was the Montcalms and Duqesnes for the French and the Braddocks and Washingtons for the English. But in the much ballyhooed "War on Women" -- a slogan coined by the Left to describe things like the legal challenges to the HHS Mandate as well as any attempts to restrict abortion -- it's hard to avoid noticing that something like my fictitious historical example is actually happening. It's simply a matter of fact that the most significant recent setbacks to what the Left considers the "women's side" of these controversies have come from judges with names like Janice, Diane, Priscilla, Jennifer, and Catharina.

In two cases within the past month, U.S. Courts of Appeals in Washington, D.C. and Chicago have delivered stinging rebukes to the government's attempt -- via the HHS Mandate – to enshrine above all other constitutional and statutory rights, privileges and immunities of free men and women the sacred right to force your boss to pay for your birth control pills. (It's somewhere in the Magna Charta, I think). In the first case, Judge Janice Rogers Brown, writing for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, said that the government could not, under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, lawfully impose on the Gilardi brothers, owners of an Ohio food processing company, the Hobson's choice presented by the Mandate. That choice makes them choose either to comply with the Mandate in violation of their Catholic faith, or "cripple the companies they have spent a lifetime building" by subjecting them to millions of dollars in fines should they choose to obey God rather than Uncle Sam.

In the second case, out of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Judge Diane Sykes authored an opinion that went even further than that of Judge Brown. Judge Sykes found that the Mandate violated the religious liberty of both the individual family members of two companies who objected to complying with it as well as the rights of their corporations. Not only that, Judge Sykes, for the Court, directed the lower court to enter injunctions against the Mandate in favor of the family businesses and their owners and directed the government to pay their costs of appeal.

In between those two major defeats in the phony war, there was the stunning decision by a three judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstating a set of abortion restrictions enacted in Texas over the much-publicized protest of state representative, Wendy Davis. Only 24 hours before the Fifth Circuit's decision, a lower court had struck down the law as an unconstitutional infringement of a woman's right to choose. But pro-choice, "pro-woman" euphoria quickly turned to howling despair when the Fifth Circuit stepped in the next day with its own opinion written by Judge Priscilla Owen, joined by Judges Jennifer Elrod, and Catharina Haynes.

It's also worth noting that in both of the HHS Mandate cases important friend of the court briefs were submitted on behalf of the business owners challenging the Mandate by lawyers with names like Kimberlee Colby, Deborah Dewart, and Mailee Smith. In the Gilardi case, Judge Brown specifically cited information about the carcinogenic properties and other potential heath risks of some oral contraceptives as presented to the court in a brief submitted by Bioethics Defense Fund attorney, Dorinda Bordlee.

Can there really be a "war on women", then, when so much of the damage being done to the “women's side” is being done by women? And by some of the country’s most highly educated, accomplished, and professional women at that?

In his important new book, "The Global War on Christians," John Allen cautions against the overuse of what he calls "the rhetoric of war" to characterize all manner of political, social, and cultural conflicts. Allen observes: "Believing that you just don't disagree with someone but are at war with them makes it far more difficult to find common ground." (I am reminded of what baseball Hall of Famer and WWII vet Bob Feller once said: "people who talk about sports being a 'war' - they've never been in a war.") Just so, labeling controversies over the HHS Mandate and abortion laws a "war on women" is designed to -- and often succeeds in -- foreclosing all rational discussion of the profound issues of religious liberty and the sanctity of life that underlie those controversies. Let's not consider, discuss, and debate those issues. Let's just raise the "war" banner and silence our opponents. No sane person wants to make war on women after all. And no sane politician wants to be tarred with that brush.

The fact is that when it comes to the serious legal and moral issues raised by these things men and women of good faith appear on both sides of the debate. For some women (and some men for that matter), the notion of personal autonomy in the area of reproductive choices trumps all other considerations. But for many women (and many men), respect for the sanctity of human life at all stages is paramount when considering laws about abortion; and respect for religious liberty, as codified in our Constitution and laws, is seen as a higher value than the mere desire to remove all obstacles to reproductive choice even to the point of coercing others to subsidize one’s choices.

The “war on women” may be a clever political marketing tool, good for raking in the campaign cash and stirring up the base. But, honestly, could there be a more blatant example of sexist condescension than to assume that all women must be on one side of any issue by virtue of their biological gender alone? Just from looking at the most recent “battles” in the “war,” it’s obvious that this assumption is false. Let's stop poisoning the legitimate debates -- or worse still -- ending the debates before they even begin by the cheap tactic of labeling them a "war."