Proving once again that modern day feminism is past its peak, a group of women from Planned Parenthood tried to protest the passage of the healthcare bill yesterday by — wait for it — dressing up as women who look like they stepped out of the novel The Handmaid’s Tale (also a smash hit on Hulu).
The healthcare bill threatens to defund Planned Parenthood, which receives the lionshare of its funding through the federal government—to the tune of half a billion dollars per year. Of course, modern feminists think healthcare is a right, Planned Parenthood provides health care, and what better to epitomize that than The Handmaid’s Tale? And “handmade” costumes to boot! The Hill reported “Fern Whyland, communications director at Planned Parenthood Empire State Acts, said the bill would “devastate” women.”
Thing is, 2017 hardly resembles the storyline of The Handmaid’s Tale. To show how lame of an effort this was to protest a healthcare bill that would effectively save the lives of unborn babies, consider first-wave feminists’ effort to do the unthinkable: Acquire the right to vote. While women of yore worked for seven decades just to actually have an equal voice with their male peers, women today dress up and stand in front of the capitol because they may have to find health care through their doctor at best, or, at worst, consider not having an abortion. What a difference a century makes.
Protests in Washington,. D.C., can often lead to real change, especially when they sparks policy debates and legislative action. But there must be a legitimate grievance and, one would hope, an equally strong effort to rally citizens and representatives to empathize with a cause and pursue real action.
Feminists today are so ignorant of history and blinded by any real global perspective of atrocities facing women, they can hardly see how defunding an organization the government should never have funded in the first place is about as dysfunctional a way to promote feminism as Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s CEO, wishing mothers a Happy Mother’s Day.
If feminists wanted to show how powerful, relevant and persuasive they are, they’d support a woman’s right to give birth and a baby’s right to life — that’s true equality. Or, at the least, they wouldn’t wander around the Capitol in silly-looking outfits.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
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