Do Women always Need to Prove Their Competence?

“There are lots of opportunities for women to pitch in, prove their competence and learn a lot about governing and the political process,” Ms. Hassan said in an interview. “We’ve had a very deep bench of women.”

--I just find something so patronizing about the above quote ... And the article as a whole.  It could be having to return to work after the holidays, feeling fired up about the new year and a cold that arrived with an eye infection that has me feeling that this article portrays these fighters not as feisty and on the gentle side. I'm sure they had to be warriors in some way to get to where they are or maybe they didn't?  Does it always have to be a fight? Maybe society has changed so it's not?

Thoughts??

From Congress to Halls of State, in New Hampshire, Women Rule

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
NY Times

Published: January 1, 2013

Most states are red or blue. A few are purple. After the November election, New Hampshire turned pink.

Women won the state’s two Congressional seats. Women already held the state’s two Senate seats. When they are all sworn into office on Thursday, New Hampshire will become the first state in the nation’s history to send an all-female delegation to Washington.

And the matriarchy does not end there. New Hampshire’s new governor is a woman. So are the speaker of the State House and the chief justice of the State Supreme Court.

“Pink is the new power color in New Hampshire,” declared Ann McLane Kuster, one of the newly elected representatives, at a recent forum at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College in Manchester, where the women’s historic milestone was celebrated.

These women did not rise to the top together overnight. Nor was there an orchestrated movement to elect them. Each toiled in the political vineyards, climbed the ladder in her own time and campaigned hard for her job. But they have caught the state’s collective imagination, inspiring forums and media interest and prompting Jay B. Childs, a New Hampshire filmmaker, to make a documentary about them.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, 65, a Democrat and dean of the delegation, was the state’s first elected female governor and the first woman in United States history to be elected both governor and senator.

Senator Kelly Ayotte, 44, a Republican, was the state’s former attorney general.

Carol Shea-Porter, 60, a Democrat and former member of the House, lost her seat in 2010 and won it back in November.

Ms. Kuster, 56, a Democrat, is a lawyer and lobbyist who has not held office before but has long been active in the state and comes from a political family.

Maggie Hassan, 54, a Democrat and the new governor, was majority leader of the State Senate.

Women will make up 20 percent of the new Senate and 17.9 percent of the new House. These are records in Washington, but they fall far short of matching the 50.8 percent of the general population that is female.

While New Hampshire is doing more than its share of bolstering the number of women on Capitol Hill, six states — Alaska, Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota and Vermont — have never elected a woman to the House. And four of those — Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi and Vermont — have never sent a woman to the Senate.

The state after New Hampshire, with the next highest proportion of women in its Congressional delegation, is Hawaii, where both House members and one senator are women.

In only three other states, Maine, Missouri and Washington, do women make up at least half of the delegations. Sixteen states, including New Jersey, have no women in Congress.

Although the women in New Hampshire are serving all at once by happenstance, women have long held prominent positions in New Hampshire government.

One reason is the size of the State House, a typical pipeline for aspiring politicians. It has 400 members, making it the largest of the states and the fourth-largest governing body in the English-speaking world (after the United States Congress, the British Parliament and the Indian Parliament). With so many seats available, women have a better chance of being elected in New Hampshire than they have in many other states.

New Hampshire also has a long history of volunteerism, and serving in the General Court, as the legislature is known, amounts to an act of volunteerism because it pays just $100 a year, plus mileage. Every year since 1975, more than 100 women have served.

“There are lots of opportunities for women to pitch in, prove their competence and learn a lot about governing and the political process,” Ms. Hassan said in an interview. “We’ve had a very deep bench of women.”

Even if the legislature in New Hampshire is big, the state itself is small. That makes it easier for everyone to know everyone else, and most of the women in the Congressional delegation have intricate ties to one another.

Continue reading, here. 

Wage a War on Wages

How to Attack the Gender Wage Gap? Speak Up
By JESSICA BENNETT
Published: December 15, 2012


A workshop at the College of Mount St. Vincent in the Bronx dealt with the many issues of the gender pay gap — and offered ways for women to negotiate about salary. Sain Mota, a participant, answered a question during the session.

“How many of you know about the wage gap?” she asks a roomful of undergraduates, almost all of them women, at the College of Mount St. Vincent in the Bronx.

A few hands go up.

“Now, how many of you worry about being able to afford New York City when you graduate?”

The room laughs. That’s a given.

Ms. Houle is the national director of a group called the WAGE Project, which aims to close the gender pay gap. She explains that her dollar bills represent the amounts that women will make relative to men, on average, once they enter the work force.

Line them up next to a real dollar, and the difference is stark: 77 cents for white women; 69 cents for black women. The final dollar — so small that it can fit in a coin purse, represents 57 cents, for Latina women. On a campus that is two-thirds women, many have heard these numbers before. Yet holding them up next to one another is sobering.

“I’m posting this to Facebook,” one woman says.

One of three male students in the room is heading to the photocopier to make copies for his mother.

Another woman in the group sees a triple threat. “This is crazy,” Dominique Remy, a senior studying communications, says, holding the pink cutouts in her hand. “What if I’m all of them? My mother is Latina. My father is Haitian. I’m a woman.”

I’ve come to this workshop amazed that it exists — and wishing that there had been a version of it when I was in school.

I grew up in the Girl Power moment of the 1980s, outpacing my male peers in school and taking on extracurricular activities by the dozen. I soared through high school and was accepted to the college of my choice. And yet, when I landed in the workplace, it seemed that I’d had a particularly rosy view.

When I was hired as a reporter at Newsweek, I took the first salary number that was offered; I felt lucky to be getting a job at all.

But a few years in, by virtue of much office whispering and a few pointed questions, I realized that the men around me were making more than I was, and more than many of my female colleagues. Despite a landmark sex discrimination lawsuit filed against the magazine in 1970, which paved the way for women there and at other publications to become writers, we still had a long way to go, it turned out.

When I tried to figure out why my salary was comparatively lower, it occurred to me: couldn’t I have simply asked for more? The problem was that I was terrified at the prospect. When I finally mustered up the nerve, I made my pitch clumsily, my voice shaking and my face beet red. I brought along a printed list of my accomplishments, yet I couldn’t help but feel boastful saying them out loud. While waiting to hear whether I would get the raise (I did), I agonized over whether I should have asked at all.

This fear of asking is a problem for many women: we are great advocates for others, but paralyzed when it comes to doing it for ourselves.

BACK at the Bronx workshop, Ms. Houle flips on a projector and introduces Tina and Ted, two fictional graduates whose profiles match what’s typical of the latest data. Tina and Ted graduated from the same university, with the same degree. They work the same number of hours, in the same type of job. And yet, as they start their first jobs, Ted is making $4,000 more than Tina. In the second year, the difference has added up to almost $9,500. Why?

“Maybe he just talked up his work more,” one woman, a marketing major, suggests.

“Maybe he was mentored by other men,” another says.

“Or maybe,” chimes in a third, a nursing student, “she didn’t know that she could negotiate.”

Bingo. Over the next three hours, these women are going to learn how to do it — and to do it well.

There has clearly been much progress since President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, mandating that men and women be paid equally for equal work. Yet nearly 50 years later, if you look at the data, progress toward that goal has stalled.

Of course, not all statistics are created equal. Some account for education and life choices like childbearing; some don’t. But if you sift through the data, the reality is still clear: the gender gap persists — and it persists for young, ambitious, childless women, too.


Continue reading, here.

Women Breaking Barriers on Congressional Committees

Nita Lowey breaks barrier on Appropriations panel



By DAVID ROGERS, Politico.com 12/4/12 11:44 PM EST

Rep. Nita Lowey — Bronx-born, Jewish and Mount Holyoke-educated — was tapped to be the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, making her the highest-ranking woman in the history of that once hidebound Southern male enclave that famously resisted hiring even female secretaries for decades.

The 75-year-old New Yorker will succeed retiring Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) in the new Congress just as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) will move into the ranking spot on the House Financial Services Committee, replacing Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Together with Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) in the Rules Committee, they pose a remarkable trio for Democrats: women leading the opposition party in three of the House’s five most exclusive committees.

For Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who broke her own barriers as the first female speaker of the House, it’s a personal triumph, made more so in Lowey’s case because of their friendship and Pelosi’s own roots in House Appropriations.

Indeed, in the early 1990s, first Pelosi and then Lowey and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) all won seats on the panel and established themselves as a force on labor, health and education issues as well as foreign aid. When Republicans took over the House in 1995, the three women had to scramble in the minority but those ties remained important even after Pelosi left the panel to climb the leadership ladder.

Among the top committee posts voted on Tuesday by the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, Appropriations was the only real contest. Lowey had to first get around another woman, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who enjoys more seniority on the panel but less of a following in the party.

In a secret ballot, the New Yorker prevailed easily, 36-10, and by prior arrangement, the two lawmakers had agreed not to contest the outcome in the full caucus. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, Kaptur joked beforehand of being the Toledo Mud Hens vs. the New York Yankees: “I’m just happy to be in the league,” she told reporters.

For Lowey, it’s a lesson that patience pays. Elected to Congress in 1988, she has twice been seen as a potential Senate candidate, first in 2000 and then again in 2009. But on each occasion, she opted to stay put, accumulating the seniority that has now allowed her to move into the ranking position.

Indeed, the top Democratic ranks on House Appropriations have seen a remarkable level of change in the past three years, beginning with the sudden death of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) in February 2010, the retirement of former Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) at the end of that year and now Dicks’s surprise decision to leave after a relatively short two-year run in the top position.

Continue reading, here. 

More Women in Government=Less Corruption?

Are women leaders less corrupt? No, but they shake things up

By Stella Dawson
Reuters – 8 hrs ago

WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (TrustLaw) - It is almost a cliché that getting more women into power is a good way to tackle corruption. Women, the argument goes, are less likely to take bribes or put personal gain before public good.


But is it true?

While many bristle at the suggestion that women are the "fairer sex," considering it simplistic and even sexist, a growing body of research hints that the ascent of women might indeed help dent corruption.

A deeper look shows the connection between gender and corruption is more complex than the cliché suggests.

It is not that women are purer than men or immune to the pull of greed. Rather, the link appears to be that women are more likely to rise to positions of power in open and democratic political systems, and such societies are generally more intolerant of wrongdoing, including the abuse of power and siphoning off of public money.

"It's not about having more women in politics and saying, 'Ah, that will change everything,'" said Melanne Verveer, U.S. ambassador for global women's issues.

"It's about changing the gender imbalance and then we could do a better job of tackling our problems. From what we can glean, you can tell this would have a salutary effect."

So it might not be a direct cause, but anecdotal evidence would seem to support the view that with more women in public office the quality of government improves, and with that. corruption falls.

In Lima, Peru, for instance, a field study by Sabrina Karim found that public perceptions of whether bribery was a major problem among traffic police had plummeted in 2012 compared with 14 years earlier. The change came after recruiting 2,500 women to patrol the streets.

A separate public opinion survey showed 86 percent approval for the job done by female traffic officers. From the point of view of the female traffic police, Karim, now a doctoral candidate at Emory University, found that 95 percent of those surveyed thought the presence of women on the force had reduced corruption and 67 percent believed women were less corrupt.

Mexico has copied Lima and introduced women officers as a way to tackle corruption.

India also has seen changes since a 1993 law reserved 30 percent of seats on village councils for women. The World Bank's annual World Development Report this year credited this change for increasing the provision of clean water, sanitation, schools and other public goods in the villages, and for lower levels of corruption.

The World Bank report found that bribes paid in Indian villages headed by women were 2.7 to 3.2 percentage points lower than in those led by men. When men control all the levers of power, researchers say, money is more likely to be invested in big-ticket construction projects such as road building where corruption is rife, rather than in schools or clinics.

BREAKING THE OLD BOY'S NETWORK

Mahnaz Afkhami, who was minister of state for women's affairs in Iran from 1975 to 1978, thinks raising women's voices can have a significant impact on the quality of government.

"There is a direct relationship between the level of democracy and the presentation of women in leadership and the quality of governance," said Afkhami.

"They are not part of the old boy's network and they are less willing to take for granted that this is the way things are done," she said.

Afkhami is now president of Women's Learning Partnership, a training and advocacy center for women leaders based in Maryland. During her tenure in Iran, she oversaw women gaining equal rights to divorce, support for employment, maternity leave and childcare.

In Nicaragua, a councilman soliciting sex in return for metal roofing for her home prompted Aurora Arauz to run for a seat on the municipal council.

Arauz was president of a women's cooperative and trained in her legal rights, so she filed a police complaint when the council member sought a sexual bribe, the U.N. Development Programme reported in a study published in October on women's perceptions of corruption. The council threw the man off the body and held a special meeting to improve services for women, including naming Arauz as a women's coordinator.

All these examples reinforce an influential World Bank study in 1999, which found that for every standard deviation point increase in women in public office above 10.9 percent, corruption declined by 10 percent.

NOT THAT SIMPLE

Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who as Indonesia's first woman finance minister earned a reputation as a tough reformer, agrees that at the grassroots level, more women in government can have an important impact particularly on how resources are allocated.

Women think of the welfare of children first and whether they have enough food to feed the family, whereas men can be less sensitive to public needs and serve their own interests, she said. "They are just being comfortable among themselves and are not having other views," she said.

At the national level, however, Indrawati and other experts said the impact of more women in power was less clear and it is too simplistic to say women clean up government.

Today, women hold a record 20.2 percent of seats in national legislatures, more than double their number in 1987, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Rwanda for example allots half its parliamentary seats to women.

Despite these gains, corruption is scarcely in retreat.

A Gallup poll of 140 countries released in May found that two-thirds of adults worldwide believed corruption was widespread in business and in their countries. Widely watched governance indicators from the World Bank likewise show that the number of countries that have improved their corruption scores is roughly similar to those that have deteriorated.

Helen Clark, who served nine years as prime minister of New Zealand, said there is no specific proof that women are any less corrupt than men. Instead, integrity may be more a function of opportunity and the way society operates than of gender, she said.

"There is a growing body of evidence that corruption operates in specific political and social networks to which women do not usually have access - particularly when women are new to positions of power," said Clark, who is the first woman to head the U.N. Development Program.

A new study titled "Fairer Sex or Purity Myth?" by researchers at Rice University and Emory University lends support to the idea that it is institutional structures that matter most, and that women's political gains are a result.

The report found that in autocratic regimes with strong male hierarchies, more women in power had little measurable impact on corruption, but that in more open, democratic political systems the change was noticeable.

The researchers speculated that the difference may be partially because women are less apt to take risks. They cite two different behavioral studies from 2003 and 2008 that show women are just as ready as men to take bribes, but they are more cautious if there is a good chance they will be caught.

In autocratic regimes, women are more likely to have gained power through male patronage, and if corruption is the norm within the male hierarchy, women are less likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs, they said.

The opposite happens in open and democratic governments. The risk of getting caught is higher where the legal system functions well, and where voters are more likely to punish corruption at the polls. Because they tend to be risk-averse, women are doubly cautious, they said.

This could help explain why corruption in a patriarchal culture like India remains so pervasive despite women's increased political participation, while in open and transparent Nordic countries it is low.

Indeed, a new U.N. study examining 3,000 elected women and men in Indian villages noted that the social and cultural environment does play a powerful role. If women face low levels of literacy, poor training, a large housework burden, live in male-dominated societies and are financially and socially dependent on fathers and husbands, public positions for women have less impact on corruption and governance.

Lavina Banduah, executive director of the Sierra Leone branch of Transparency International, which watches out for graft worldwide, sees the problem daily in her country, which ranks high for corruption and low for accountability on governance indicators.

"Women cheat other women," Banduah said. "In the marketplace, it is women who are using the dubious means and weighting the scales."


(Reporting by Stella Dawson; Editing by Jackie Frank)

Hmmmm.. Newswomen's Attire

Not sure how I feel about this article yet..

The colorful evolution of newswomen’s attire
By Katherine Boyle, Nov 27, 2012 02:11 AM EST
The Washington Post Published: November 26

Dresses dangled on the racks at Neiman’s and Saks and all Norah O’Donnell needed was a suit.


Earlier this year, when the veteran news anchor was scouring stores for a suit jacket to wear for her “CBS This Morning” publicity photo, she discovered what her viewers have known for years: The women’s blazer is disappearing — from department stores and network news broadcasts.



I couldn’t find a nice suit jacket that wasn’t black,” O’Donnell said. “You used to find all kinds in blues and hot pinks. They stopped making them. That’s when I thought, what’s changed?”


For her head shot, O’Donnell, 38, ended up choosing a six-year-old navy Giorgio Armani blazer out of her closet, one she rarely wears except when interviewing presidents or heads of state. Like so many working women in the news media and other professions, O’Donnell hasn’t bought a suit in years, a surprising admission given that the newswoman spent her 20s wearing suits so she “could be taken seriously.” The same can be said of seasoned anchors such as Diane Sawyer and Andrea Mitchell, who rarely graced the screen in the 1980s and ’90s without lapels shielding their chests.


For decades, the suit jacket transformed women into workers. With jackets required for entrance at male-dominated clubs and boardrooms, women bundled up their breasts to blend into a professional culture that predated their arrival. But in recent years, even as men continued to assume corporate uniforms of suits and ties, newswomen — one of the last vestiges of female suit wearers — have resoundingly dismissed them from their closets. They now flank themselves in bright sleeveless sheath dresses and stiletto heels, renouncing the once hard-and-fast edicts of television news: no bare legs, no long hair, no feminine distractions from the news. The revision of the female anchor’s dress code happened swiftly and broadly on network and cable television. And if newswomen are the most visible barometers of workplace fashion, the women’s suit may one day go the way of the petticoat.



“Ten years ago, professional dress meant a Talbots suit for women,” said Dave Smith, president of SmithGeiger, a market research firm that consults with news networks. “What’s appropriate for female talent on television has evolved because of familiarity. The audience has equal regard for female and male anchors. It’s given women far more liberty to be feminine.”



O’Donnell agrees: “There has been an evolution of women’s wear on television. Part of that is the changing times, but it’s also because there are more women in media who feel comfortable about what they want to wear.”



That theory of empowerment rings true for many newswomen. They’ve finally laid claim to the anchor’s chair and can let their hair down or, at least, grow it past their shoulders. Even Sawyer and Mitchell have adopted subtle changes in wardrobe. Sawyer sometimes wears crisp black blouses sans jacket while anchoring the evening news. Mitchell often prefers pastel, cap-sleeved shells for her afternoon show on MSNBC.


Continue reading here

Did Irish abortion laws kill a young Indian woman?

When Pro-Life Means Death


Nov 16, 2012 6:00 AM EST

Did Irish abortion laws kill a young Indian woman?


This week, thousands of people gathered outside the Irish Parliament to protest the death of a young pregnant woman who died in a hospital from blood poisoning after doctors refused to perform a life-saving abortion, reportedly on the grounds that “this is a Catholic country.”

Since the death of Savita Halappanavar on Oct. 28, outrage in Ireland and the rest of the world has steadily gathered force, and on Wednesday, demonstrators outside Parliament held candles as a minute’s silence was observed to commemorate the 31-year-old. Some wept while others expressed anger. “I have a heartbeat too!” one sign read.

On Oct. 21, the Indian-born woman went to Galway University Hospital with a back pain. She was 17 weeks pregnant. At the hospital, doctors told her that she was miscarrying but that the ordeal would be over in a few hours. Instead, according to her husband Praveen, Savita went on to endure four days of “agony” during which time she asked repeatedly that the pregnancy be terminated.

Doctors, however, told her that because there was still a fetal heartbeat, Irish law would not permit the termination of the pregnancy, he said, and that, “this is a Catholic country.” Savita protested, telling doctors, according to her husband, that “I am neither Irish nor Catholic.” But was told again that there was nothing medical staff could do while the fetal heartbeat remained.

The next day, Savita became visibly ill, shivering and vomiting, and the fetal heartbeat stopped during the following afternoon. Doctors then removed the fetus and Savita was taken to intensive care where she deteriorated rapidly, suffering multi-organ failure a few days later, dying in the early hours of Oct. 28. She had contracted a form of blood poisoning as well as an E. coli infection, a pathologist found.

Speaking from Karnataka in southwest India, where he had taken the body of his young wife to be cremated, Praveen was adamant that if Savita’s pleas for a termination had been listened to, she would have survived.

“How could they leave the womb open for days? It was all in their hands and they let her go,” Praveen said. “How can you let a young woman go to save a baby who will die anyway? Savita could have had more babies.”

The appalling events, first revealed in The Irish Times on Nov. 14, have led Irish news bulletins and have been reported across the world, catapulting the most divisive issue of Irish life—abortion—right to the top of the public and political agenda, exactly where the Irish government doesn’t want it.

Ireland has among the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. It remains illegal under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, though referendums in 1983 and 1992 have allowed for protections for pregnant women seeking information about abortion services abroad and wishing to travel for abortions. A High Court ruling in 1992 also stated that abortion was legal in cases where there was a threat to the life of the mother—and not simply the health.

The fussy legal language complicates what is sometimes a life-or-death situation. In Savita’s case, the fetus had a heartbeat, though it would clearly not live. At the same time, the mother’s health was clearly at risk but the doctors ran the risk of prosecution if they intervened and terminated the pregnancy.


Coincidentally, a report commissioned last year about how the government should respond to a European Court of Human Rights ruling obliging Ireland to provide abortions in situations when a woman’s life is threatened, was submitted the evening before news of Savita's death broke.

The larger of the two government parties, Fine Gael, has said it will not countenance legal abortion in Ireland. The smaller, the Labour Party, is avowedly pro-choice.

Solving what has become a political and, more significantly, a moral morass will be paramount for the government in the coming days. Both domestically and internationally, pressure has been mounting. Expressing its concern over the case, the Indian government has said it will closely monitor the two investigations into Savita’s death, which were announced this week by the Irish authorities.

In solidarity with the Halappanavar family, a demonstration calling for improved legislation is planned to take place this weekend in Dublin. It is expected to be one of the largest demonstrations on the streets of the Irish capital in decades.

Nicholas Kristof: Romney + Women

How Romney Would Treat Women

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published November 3, 2012

In this year’s campaign furor over a supposed “war on women,” involving birth control and abortion, the assumption is that the audience worrying about these issues is just women.

Give us a little credit. We men aren’t mercenaries caring only for Y chromosomes. We have wives and daughters, mothers and sisters, and we have a pretty intimate stake in contraception as well.

This isn’t like a tampon commercial on television, leaving men awkwardly examining their fingernails. When it comes to women’s health, men as well as women need to pay attention. Just as civil rights wasn’t just a “black issue,” women’s rights and reproductive health shouldn’t be reduced to a “women’s issue.”

To me, actually, talk about a “war on women” in the United States seems a bit hyperbolic: in Congo or Darfur or Afghanistan, I’ve seen brutal wars on women, involving policies of rape or denial of girls’ education. But whatever we call it, something real is going on here at home that would mark a major setback for American women — and the men who love them.

On these issues, Mitt Romney is no moderate. On the contrary, he is considerably more extreme than President George W. Bush was. He insists, for example, on cutting off money for cancer screenings conducted by Planned Parenthood.

The most toxic issue is abortion, and what matters most for that is Supreme Court appointments. The oldest justice is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a 79-year-old liberal, and if she were replaced by a younger Antonin Scalia, the balance might shift on many issues, including abortion.

One result might be the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which for nearly four decades has guaranteed abortion rights. If it is overturned, abortion will be left to the states — and in Mississippi or Kansas, women might end up being arrested for obtaining abortions.

Frankly, I respect politicians like Paul Ryan who are consistently anti-abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. I disagree with them, but their position is unpopular and will cost them votes, so it’s probably heartfelt as well as courageous. I have less respect for Romney, whose positions seem based only on political calculations.

Romney’s campaign Web site takes a hard line. It says that life begins at conception, and it gives no hint of exceptions in which he would permit abortion. The Republican Party platform likewise offers no exceptions. Romney says now that his policy is to oppose abortion with three exceptions: rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at stake.

If you can figure out Romney’s position on abortion with confidence, tell him: at times it seems he can’t remember it. In August, he abruptly added an exception for the health of the mother as well as her life, and then he backed away again.

Romney has also endorsed a “personhood” initiative treating a fertilized egg as a legal person. That could lead to murder charges for an abortion, even to save the life of a mother.

In effect, Romney seems to have jumped on board a Republican bandwagon to tighten access to abortion across the board. States passed a record number of restrictions on abortion in the last two years. In four states, even a woman who is seeking an abortion after a rape may be legally required to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound.

If politicians want to reduce the number of abortions, they should promote family planning and comprehensive sex education. After all, about half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research on reproductive health.

Yet Romney seems determined to curb access to contraceptives. His campaign Web site says he would “eliminate Title X family planning funding,” a program created in large part by two Republicans, George H. W. Bush and Richard Nixon.

Romney has boasted that he would cut off all money for Planned Parenthood — even though federal assistance for the organization has nothing to do with abortions. It pays for such things as screenings to reduce breast cancer and cervical cancer.

Romney’s suspicion of contraception goes way back. As governor of Massachusetts, he vetoed a bill that would have given women who were raped access to emergency contraception.

Romney also wants to reinstate the “global gag rule,” which barred family planning money from going to aid organizations that even provided information about abortion. He would cut off money for the United Nations Population Fund, whose work I’ve seen in many countries — supporting contraception, repairing obstetric fistulas, and fighting to save the lives of women dying in childbirth.

So when you hear people scoff that there’s no real difference between Obama and Romney, don’t believe them.

And it’s not just women who should be offended at the prospect of a major step backward. It’s all of us.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.