Working-class feminists, poverty activists, or feminists who feel a loyalty to all women regardless of class, are being put in an invidious situation here; asked to ignore all other considerations, betray our loyalty to the working class and the poor, postpone all our concerns about peace, justice, and planetary survival, and vote the corporate ticket in order to preserve access to abortion for what looks more and more like a privileged few among us in either case. A larger privileged few with access to legal abortions, or a very tiny privileged few with access to top-dollar illegal ones; is this a difference that makes no difference? Or is the upholding of Roe essential, no matter how restricted the numbers of women actually able to exercise the legal right it protects? ...

Today, when the Democrats instruct women in how we should vote, the call is to narrow and specialize our feminist agenda to one issue, to make that our only cause. We are now being wooed as a single-issue special interest group, and the larger polity be damned.

But we have known for decades that feminism is by its nature not a "special interest" politics, but a consistent and inclusive political and ethical stance. Women come in all colours, so racism is a feminist issue. Women bear the greatest burden, suffer the most, in poverty and deprivation; so poverty is a feminist issue. Women are consistently underpaid, sexually harassed on the job, denied promotion, exploited; so labour rights are a feminist issue. Women suffer most in war-stricken countries; peace is a feminist issue. Women's reproductive systems are sensitive to persistent toxins; environmental degradation is a feminist issue. Women make less money than men, and are slipping into poverty faster than men; affordable health care and housing are feminist issues. Women are mothers, or at least all mothers are women; child care, child support, and quality of life for children are feminist issues.

There is hardly any social justice issue that does not bear directly upon women and therefore rightfully engage the attention of feminists. Even the corporate new world order, the malfeasance of the IMF and World Bank, the machinations of the WTO, all bear harder on women around the world; it is the women who are locked into the sweatshops, exploited in the brothels, exported as mail order brides. The prevailing GNP/GDP method of assessing and reporting national wealth and productivity erases women's work and women's worth; even the way governments do their book-keeping is a feminist issue. Feminists have been writing and campaigning and struggling on all these fronts for decades.

And on all these issues, the Democrats have failed and failed and failed again. They have refused to treat women and women's rights as anything but expendable and irrelevant, very low indeed on the priority list as compared to really important stuff like corporate profit and political gamesmanship. We are being asked to vote for people who have betrayed us time and time again. They got some nerve, these guys.

Anyway, what the Democrats are asking of -- or demanding from -- women voters today is to forget every feminist issue except Roe. If you vote for us, for the corporate establishment, they tell us -- if you are good girls -- we will not take Roe away. But you must not disobey your kindly masters by voting for that other guy. (You know, the guy who actually has something substantive and positive to say on all those other feminist issues, the guy who actually takes women seriously enough to share the rostrum with one... and by the way, who supports abortion rights as well.) If you disobey us, the not-so-kindly masters will get into power and then you'll really catch hell.