sanders on women's reproductive rights (negotiable)

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Sanders proved he’s no champion of women when earlier this year he rejected abortion rights as a litmus test for Democratic candidates. This reasoning runs counter to Sanders’s style: abortion access is an opportunity to challenge progressives in the Democratic party to re-evaluate whether they are asking the right questions in the first place. Sanders contends in an interview with NPR, "If we are going to protect a woman's right to choose, at the end of the day we're going to need Democratic control over the House and the Senate, and state governments all over this nation," he said. "And we have got to appreciate where people come from, and do our best to fight for the pro-choice agenda. But I think you just can't exclude people who disagree with us on one issue."

In the back and forth over whether any man should be speaking at the convention, whether Sanders’s high profile would steal attention from Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) or other speakers, and the double-guessing of the organizers’ judgment, the real danger of Sanders’s position on letting Democratic candidates ditch abortion was lost.

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https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/358608-bernie-sanders-doesnt-fight-for-womens-reproductive-justice




Will We Abandon Women’s Rights in the Name of Progressive Politics?
By Rebecca Traister
Bernie Sanders and Tom Perez.

The most disturbing thing to emerge from this week’s badly bungled Democratic “Unity Tour” staged by Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and new DNC head Tom Perez was the fact that the only thing on which the two men seemed to easily agree was that reproductive rights are not necessarily fundamental to progressive politics. This led to uproar and outrage among some precincts of the left, and eventually to mea culpas and “clarifications” from Sanders and Perez. But it is worth closely examining this fight over the importance of reproductive rights in the party because it is an argument that the Democrats seem to rehash over and over and over again.

To recap: On Wednesday, Sanders gave an interview in which he said that he “didn’t know” if Jon Ossoff, the Democrat who the day before had earned more than 48 percent of the primary vote in a longtime Republican House district in Georgia, was a progressive. It was an odd move for a powerful left-wing politician on a tour to rejuvenate Democratic politics to fire a shot of ambivalence at a Democratic candidate in any tight race, but it felt especially egregious given that Ossoff was now facing Karen Handel, a virulently anti-choice Republican who was forced to leave the Susan G. Komen Foundation in 2012 after trying to sever the organization’s ties with Planned Parenthood, and who actively supported voter-suppression efforts as Georgia’s secretary of State.

Sanders’s definition of what constitutes a progressive became even murkier when he suggested that the election of Heath Mello, who’s running for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska — and who as a state senator sponsored a 20-week abortion ban and mandatory ultrasounds for women seeking abortions — would represent a “shot across the board, that in a state like Nebraska a progressive Democrat can win.” Not to be outdone, Perez amplified the message that reproductive rights are negotiable for the Democratic Party. “If you demand fealty on every single issue,” Perez said, “then it’s a challenge. The Democratic Party platform acknowledges that we’re pro-choice, but there are communities, like some in Kansas, where people have a different position.” Well, sure. There are also communities in Kansas where voters have different positions from Democrats on immigration reform, labor protections, climate change, voting rights, and health care, and it would be vexing — and not at all progressive — for post-2016 Democrats to alter their stances on any of those issues.


The simple fact is that anti-abortion politicians support laws that shame, pressure, and punish women. Why would Sanders roll out the red carpet for candidates who refuse to respect women's autonomy and dignity? Does he really believe that ‘you can't just exclude people who disagree with us on one issue'? Sanders would never endorse a candidate who supported an end to collective bargaining laws, or opposed health care expansion or was a climate change denier — so why is it acceptable to support a candidate who rejects a woman’s right to decide if and when she’ll have children? Why does he only apply the “big tent” criteria to abortion? Throwing abortion access under the bus in support of the unproven claim that anti-abortion Democrats can help the party in red states can’t just be reduced to political expediency. There's a bigger principle involved: meaningful accountability to a constituency that makes up the core of the Democratic Party - women of color and black women in particular.

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https://www.thecut.com/2017/04/bernie-sanders-and-tom-perez-must-not-abandon-womens-rights.html



Bernie Sanders Defends Campaigning For Anti-Abortion Rights Democrat

Sen. Bernie Sanders is campaigning for Omaha, Neb., mayoral candidate Heath Mello Thursday night, and he's not apologizing for it. "Absolutely, and I want him to win," Sanders, I-Vt., told NPR Thursday, after a rally in Grand Prairie, Texas.

The Thursday event with Mello, a Nebraska state senator who's running as a Democrat in the mayoral race, is one of several rallies Sanders is holding across the country this week. It's part of a Democratic National Committee-organized unity tour with DNC Chair Tom Perez.
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The Omaha event wasn't that notable – just one of several red state visits on the DNC itinerary — until Thursday morning. That's when Ilyse Hogue, the president of abortion rights advocate NARAL Pro-Choice America, issued a statement blasting Sanders and Perez for spending time and resources campaigning alongside a Democrat who opposes abortion rights.

"The actions today by the DNC to embrace and support a candidate for office who will strip women – one of the most critical constituencies for the party – of our basic rights and freedom is not only disappointing, it is politically stupid," Hogue said. "Today's action makes this so-called 'fight back tour' look more like a throw-back tour for women and our rights." Mello has co-sponsored several bills in Nebraska's unicameral legislature that would restrict abortion rights, including a 2009 measure requiring doctors to inform women seeking abortions about the availability of an ultrasound.

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https://www.npr.org/2017/04/20/524962482/sanders-defends-campaigning-for-anti-abortion-rights-democrat