Just this morning, Tennessee Democratic Party State Chairman Roy Herron asked us, “Have you ever seen anything like it, this Republican War on Women?” 

And our answer is no—but that war is far from over, and many of the attacks are coming from elected representatives in Nashville.

As Chairman Herron noted, a Republican state senator presented his bill to prohibit colleges and universities from trying to include everyone, including racial minorities and women— the same “public servant” who has made it clear he doesn't care what African-American legislators think.

This same state senator and other Republicans are pushing the anti-inclusion legislation, as Chairman Herron stated, “despite being unable to answer the insightful questions of Democratic Senator Charlotte Burks, who has questioned whether there's been a problem with our colleges and universities trying to include all of us.”

Another male Republican senator (and would-be congressman), is responsible for a bill that would require ultrasounds and forced viewing or listening to a description 

by any woman or girl seeking to end a pregnancy—even, as Chairman Herron described, “a 12-year-old child rape victim or a mother facing cancer and having to end a pregnancy to save her life and raise her little ones.” This brings to mind the hypocrisy of current Republican Congressman Scott DesJarlais, whose “pro-life” position apparently does not extend to himself and his former mistresses.  

Republicans rejected amendments to Senate Joint Resolution 127, which will be on the ballot in 2014, that would protect a child forcibly impregnated by her father, a teenager raped by a gang, or a woman who would be saving her own life. These extreme positions do not represent the views of the majority of Americans or the majority of Tennesseans. 

Republican legislation has also attempted to silence Tennessee teachers, of whom more than four out of five are women, from advocating with their employers, the school boards, “the vast majority of whose members are men,” as Chairman Herron states.

Once again, we call upon our state legislators to focus their attention and efforts on the issues that most concern their constituents: job creation, moving the state’s economy forward, health care and improving our children’s schools. The current insistence on guns in parking lots (despite the stated opposition of many businesses large and small), refusing to expand Medicaid and refusing to create a state healthcare exchange, and the demands for vouchers and charter schools that will undermine the public education system, make a mockery of democracy and show just how much in thrall to special, moneyed interests these legislators really are. 

Is the War on Women how you want your state representatives spending their time? If not, demand accountability. We will be. 

Paul Smith
Chairman, Hamilton County Democratic Party 

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Definition of Affirmative Action (which is us; Blacks, Hispanics, Women, con't.): The process of a business or governmental agency in which it gives special rights of hiring or advancement to ethnic minorities to make up for past discrimination against that minority.  

Focusing on women's rights: Historically, the Democratic Party has been adamantly against women’s rights. When the 19th Amendment was conceived and introduced to Congress, it was met with strong opposition by the Democratic Party. When the amendment finally passed through Congress, eight of the nine states that voted against ratification of the amendment were run by Democratic legislation. It was not until the 1970s that these eight states finally ratified the amendment. 

One such example of Democratic Party opposition to women who are, by their own definition, pro-women, is the case of Connie Morella, a Republican congresswoman from Maryland, who was run out of Congress by the Democratic Party in 2002, despite her long-running stance on women’s rights and her record of being extremely socially liberal for a conservative politician.  Though still the “Democratic-controlled Maryland legislature redrew her district to ensure that, as the state senate president gloated, ‘If she runs, she loses,’” as stated in Geoffrey Kabaservice’s article on The New Republic’s website. 

This idea of Republicans declaring a “war on women” because of their pro-life stances has been overly publicized in the last few months. It leaves me to wonder how protecting the rights of a child is anti-woman. This thought then leads me to wonder when did the word “women” come to be synonymous with “contraception?”

I know Paul, that you try on every front to gain... but this is one woman you won't sway with your loose tongue. I think it's disgusting that you put this out there for all to see as the truth. Most don't have the time to see what is the truth, but you are so manipulative with your title... but if you can just get voters from that, yeah? Sheesh. You think we're all Sheeple?! I'm not. I'm a woman and you don't talk for me. 

Jen Sweeten
Chattanooga 

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Jan Sweeten tried to punish the head of the Democratic Party in Hamilton County by denouncing his efforts to display the Republican war on women. Jan, in case you  have already forgotten the last election with that Republican clown running for senate that declared that women can foil pregnancy when raped. He and others, including Republican governors want to intrude and I mean really intrude into the woman’s bodies with probes and other humiliating devices and practices devised only, only to keep women “ in their place...”   

I hope, Jan Sweeten, that you are not a woman, but a man. Women are usually intellectually superior when it comes to conversation like yours. Women in a bygone era and you say, Democrat, may have been, as you say, not tolerant of women’s issues but it is not that way now. 

The Republican party of my youth used to be a party of moderation and cooperation. That party seemed to have disappeared into the fog of noise.  Oh, what noise and the government of the United States no longer operates and functions and those people that we elect, our faults, do only what is good for the minority, not for people like me. Our elected representative from District 6, rarely heard from keeps silent and gets reelected. Oh, woe is me and for the country.

Robert Brooks