Whoever wins the White House, the culture war on women's choice goes on

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/06/white-house-culture-war-women

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It's finally here. Election day. By the end of the night, we'll most likely know who'll be running the country for the next four years. In the blue corner, Barack Obama, rapidly graying but game for another term. In the red corner, Mitt Romney, graying at the temples like a model in a Just For Men commercial and grabbing, desperately, at the job he's been interviewing for for the better part of a decade.

Red or blue, regardless of who wins today, one thing is certain: it will take years of work to remedy the harm that has been done to reproductive freedom in the last two years. It will take more than the four years that President Obama would win; and should Romney win, it will take even longer.

"This is not the 1950s," argues one Obama ad, warning about the Romney-Ryan positions on abortion, contraception, and Planned Parenthood. The reality is that, in many parts of the country, that time travel has already occurred, and without their help. In large swaths of the United States, abortion has become inaccessible to many women: too expensive, too time-consuming, too intimidating, too <em>hard</em> to access.

A second term for Obama would, of course, be far better for American women than would a President Romney and Vice-President Ryan. Romney, after all, has pledged to cut all federal funding to Planned Parenthood on day one of his presidency. And Ryan, who has been far more consistent in his anti-choice policies, favours a national version of the controversial mandatory transvaginal ultrasound law currently in effect in Texas. The official GOP stance on abortion – the one in its party platform – is that all abortions should be illegal, with no exceptions in the case of rape. It also declares that constitutional rights ought to be granted at the moment of conception, taking a cue from the too-extreme-for-Mississippi law that would have banned the pill, the IUD, and in vitro fertilisation.

A vote for Obama and the Democrats is a vote against that regressive platform and those "pro-life" policies that would let women die rather than allow them abortions. But an Obama win alone won't undo the stunning shifts that have occurred in both law and culture in the last few years. In 2011, state legislators proposed 1,100 reproductive rights-related measures, almost all of them aimed at restricting those rights. That was an increase from 2010's 950 measures. Last year, states enacted a record number of abortion restrictions, as the vertiginous line on this graph demonstrates.

In addition to legislative changes, the last two years have seen a shift in the national discourse around reproductive rights, in which positions that were once considered extreme – removing rape and incest exceptions from abortion bans – became mainstream Republican positions. In the space of just a few years, America has become a country in which an organization dedicated to defeating breast cancer pulls funding from clinics that provide breast cancer screenings in addition to abortions and STI tests, and where politicians with presidential aspirations discuss whether or not the birth control pill should be banned.

To those unfamiliar with these issues, it may seem as though the right's fixation on rape, the pill, and ultrasounds has sprung out of nowhere. The truth is far more sobering. A generation ago, when my mother was a vocal young feminist, the pro-choice movement made slow advances towards decriminalising contraception and abortion – advances that culminated, of course, in the success of arguing a case before the US supreme court and securing 1973's historic Wade v Roe ruling. Similarly, the right's desire to throw up as many obstacles to abortion as possible – mandatory ultrasounds, waiting periods, higher costs, the impossible-to-meet requirements for clinics known as Trap laws – has been brewing for some time. Nor did the desire to target hitherto uncontroversial forms of contraception like the pill and the IUD spring fully-formed into existence in 2011. Of course, it was largely thanks to GOP electoral victories, fueled by Tea Party enthusiasm and extremism, that those plans were finally turned into policy.

Electoral advantages and groundwork aside, it's my belief that the misogynistic hostility towards women's bodily autonomy, the desire to turn back the clock on gender equality, is part of a reaction to the election of the nation's first African-American president. The sense that America has rolled dangerously far down an undesirable road has not only brought out the hideous racism that until now had mostly lain dormant and covert, but has also fed a desire to undo what the left sees as progress toward gender equality and what conservatives view as the dismantling of everything they hold dear. The re-election of President Obama will, in all likelihood, serve to deepen that sentiment on the right.

This is not to argue against re-electing Obama: when you're pissing off America's racists and misogynists, it means you're doing something right. It is simply to warn that a win for Obama will mean a continuation, and even a worsening, of the cultural and legislative trends we've witnessed in the last few years.

Regaining the ground lost, and bringing the national discourse back to where it was before this madness began, will take an enormous amount of hard work. It will also take time – far longer than the four years Obama would have in office. Yes, rights can be stripped away in one or two congressional sessions, but restoring them, and crawling out of this horrendous cultural quagmire, will take many more than that.

A victory for Obama will shield America from a president and vice-president who will are eager to appoint anti-Roe justices, and who will be delighted to see abortion and contraception made inaccessible to even more American women. It will prevent the elevation of Paul Ryan, a man who in effect believes, as so many others in his party do, that rape is "just another method of conception".

Even if Obama wins, those of us who care about reproductive rights will have a hard road ahead of us. No, this is not the 1950s, but when it comes to reproductive freedom, an Obama victory alone will not bring us magically back to 2012. It will not guarantee us a just and progressive future. Regardless of who wins Tuesday, we will have to fight for that future. Again.