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Andrew Cuomo<\/p><\/div>\n
For the second time in 13 years in the same state, an abortion-promoting governor has resigned because of sexually “liberated” practices that displeased women.\u00a0 \u00a0Besides Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo, other prominent \u201cliberals\u201d have acted the same.\u00a0 Some have gotten in trouble for it, some have gotten away with it.\u00a0 But their actions show that\u00a0supporting abortion is compatible with sexually exploiting women, and that many women don\u2019t like “liberated” sexual experiences.<\/p>\n
Legal abortion has deprived women of once-accepted justifications for refusing a man’s sexual advances.\u00a0 In return, sexual libertinism helps generate demand for abortion.\u00a0 An early supporter of the post-1965 abortion push was Playboy’s Hugh Hefner.\u00a0 \u00a0Is it any wonder that some men labeled as “women’s allies” for supporting abortion have sexually harassed, exploited, and\/or abused women?<\/p>\n
Powerful men have promoted abortion for both reasons related and reasons unrelated to sexual libertinism.\u00a0 For various reasons, including to wipe out justifications for rejecting their sexual advances, they imposed a sexual revolution about 50 years ago.<\/p>\n
The sexual revolution put both men and women under pressure to increase their sexual activity.\u00a0 Men were told it was abnormal not to make more sexual advances.\u00a0 Women were told, “Don’t consider it harassment or exploitation.\u00a0 \u00a0This is what you really want.\u00a0 This is what you really long for.\u00a0 Yes, you do!\u00a0 Be liberated!\u00a0 Shut up and enjoy it!”<\/p>\n
Sexually demanding associates and bosses like Harvey Weinstein were portrayed as not abusers but teachers.\u00a0 How many men exposed for their sexual shenanigans react with, ‘I was just doing what was expected of me’?\u00a0 How many women endured their abuse convinced it was remedial sex education for their own good?<\/p>\n
For years, the message has been: “The Sexual Revolution has won.\u00a0 If you complain or disrespect this victory, you’re a Religious Right, Puritan enemy of freedom.”<\/p>\n
After all, didn\u2019t the media report stories about Thomas Jefferson\u2019s and John F. Kennedy\u2019s extramaritial dalliances with happy excitement?\u00a0 Did not it treat Bill Clinton\u2019s episode with Monica Lewinsky as happy entertainment?<\/p>\n
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Bob Packwood<\/p><\/div>\n
For decades, Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon \u2013 a Republican abortion advocate \u2013 took sexual advantage of his female staff. Compatible with the image of exploiter as teacher, “at one point . . . he suggested it was his ‘Christian duty’ to have sex with a woman he thought deprived of it.”1<\/sup> In 1981 or 1982, Mary Hefferman of NARAL was in his office, finishing up a discussion of abortion legislation, when he touched and kissed her in unwanted sexual ways.\u00a0 After that, Ms. Hefferman avoided being alone with him, but “she did not complain to anyone about the incident out of concern that it would adversely affect the abortion-rights cause.”2<\/sup><\/p>\n <\/p>\n But unlike many sexual harassers, Mr. Packwood did not get away with his behavior.\u00a0 In 1991, he and his first wife, Georgie, divorced.\u00a0 Soon after, a Washington Post<\/em> investigated rumors about his womanizing and unethical activities. In 1995, the Senate concluded that his actions had “discredited” it, and he had to resign.<\/p>\n Georgie, quoted in the Buffalo News<\/em> on September 10, 1995, said that his\u00a0\u201cshadow life made a mockery of my marriage . . . [and] a mockery of Bob’s dedication to equality for women.\u201d<\/p>\n Eliot Spitzer<\/p><\/div>\n About a decade later, Eliot Spitzer was the Attorney General of New York State, and his agenda included closing down crisis pregnancy centers.\u00a0 In 2007, he became governor and championed a drastic bill to reduce a woman’s right to escape abortion and reduce a professional’s right not to participate in it.\u00a0 Roe v Wade<\/em> denies women any protection from unwanted abortions in the first trimester.\u00a0 \u00a0Spitzer’s bill would have extended that denial to all three trimesters.\u00a0 Pro-life publications suggested the bill could allow even chiropractors and massage therapists to cause miscarriages at any stage of pregnancy without the woman\u2019s explicit permission and could require health care professionals to perform abortions in order to get licenses.<\/p>\n Silda Wall (Spitzer), divorced 2013<\/p><\/div>\n Before the bill was finalized, someone discovered that Spitzer was indulging in luxury prostitutes.\u00a0 His wife Silda, whatever she thought of his social agenda,\u00a0looked very unhappy in the photo accompanying the news story about the prostitutes.\u00a0 \u00a0In March 2008, Mr. Spitzer resigned.\u00a0 The Spitzers divorced in 2013.<\/p>\n But the media and prominent voices continued mocking those who objected to sexually libertine behavior \u2013 except if the exploiter espoused a “cultural conservatism” cause or belonged to a pro-life entity.<\/p>\n But then some women remembered that Harvey Weinstein had treated them as badly as the media was noticing Donald Trump had treated other women.<\/p>\n Harvey Weinstein<\/p><\/div>\n Weinstein was known as a big supporter of “women’s\u00a0rights,” the New York Times <\/em>acknowledged, but the story was too big to shove aside.\u00a0 Ironically, right after Trump’s election, the story of Weinstein’s sexploitation of women came out, and the #MeToo movement arose.<\/p>\n Meanwhile,\u00a0Andrew Cuomo, who had succeeded Spitzer as Attorney General, became Governor of New York in 2011.\u00a0 He and his wife, Kerry Kennedy, had divorced in 2005.\u00a0 His agenda was “culturally liberal.” In the middle of the last decade, he told pro-lifers (as well as people culturally conservative in certain other ways) that we don\u2019t belong in New York.<\/p>\n In 2020, he proudly and excitedly signed a version of Spitzer\u2019s abortion-promoting law.\u00a0I don\u2019t know how it compares with the Spitzer proposal. But one of its proud points is making it easier for parents to force a minor to abort against her will, no matter how late in gestation they discover the pregnancy.\u00a0 To celebrate this violent law, Cuomo had his girlfriend flick a switch that turned lights in New York City pink.<\/p>\n Kerry Kennedy (Cuomo), divorced 2005<\/p><\/div>\n However, late that year, it came to light that some women complained about Cuomo’s making unwanted sexual moves on them.\u00a0 His misdeeds, from reports I read, seem less severe than Packwood\u2019s. Would Cuomo have gotten into trouble if this were before the Weinstein exposure?\u00a0 Would he still have gotten into trouble if he were moving more quickly and energetically in enacting more points of a culturally\/ ethically “liberal” agenda?\u00a0 Where was First Girlfriend now?\u00a0 In any case,\u00a0some of Cuomo\u2019s fellow Democrats rumbled about impeaching him.\u00a0 In August 2021, he resigned.<\/p>\n (New York State got its first woman governor, Kathy Hochul, as a consequence, but I don’t have high hopes for her. That’s a different story.)<\/p>\n In his resignation speech, Andrew Cuomo said, “In my mind, I never crossed the line with anyone.\u00a0 But I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn.\u00a0 There are generational and cultural shifts that I just didn’t fully appreciate.”<\/p>\n However, the “line” between acceptable and unacceptable sexual behavior had been redrawn before to the position he was used to in about 1970, before he entered his teens.\u00a0 That was the \u201cgenerational and cultural shift\u201d everyone spoke about.\u00a0 Maybe the line has been redrawn again since the Weinstein exposure, but it still is looser than it was before 1970, and we don\u2019t know how long it will keep its new position.<\/p>\n They say baby boomers made the sexual revolution.\u00a0\u00a0 But I was born at the height of the baby boom, and by the time I entered high school, the line was already at the position Andrew Cuomo was used to.\u00a0 Most women of my cohort felt they had no choice.\u00a0 Cuomo is a couple of years younger than me; maybe he didn\u2019t remember the line\u2019s pre-1970 position.<\/p>\n On August 13, the New York Times<\/em> published a letter from a Gail Griffin saying, “Who drew the line in the first place?\u00a0 Whom did the [c.1970-2017] ‘rules’ serve?\u00a0 And most important, do you actually believe that the women being harassed approved of those ‘rules’ or enjoyed that treatment? . . . The fact is that women adjusted.\u00a0 Accommodated. Endured . . . The final test of a man’s ‘good intentions ‘ and respect for women might be whether or not he can identify enough with women to see how the . . . ‘rules’ dehumanized, demoralized, terrified, hurt, and deranged us.”<\/p>\n The media told us that sexual libertinism is what women really want, but only now are some taking seriously that a lot of women don’t like it.<\/p>\n Footnotes<\/p>\n 1<\/sup>Helen Dewar, The Packwood Report, <\/u>\u00a0released September 7, 1995, Forward p. vi<\/sub><\/p>\n 2<\/sup>Testimony to Senate Ethics Council, Ibid<\/u>, p. 65<\/sub><\/p>\n ========================================<\/p>\n For some of our other posts on abortion and women’s rights, see:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Abortion and Violence Against Pregnant Women<\/a> \/ Martha Shuping, M.D.<\/p>\n The Myth of Sexual Autonomy\u00a0<\/a>\/ Julianne Wiley<\/p>\n How Abortion is Useful for Rape Culture<\/a> \/ Rachel MacNair<\/p>\n Oppressors of Women Scapegoat Fetuses to Preserve Patriarchy<\/a> \/ Richard Stith<\/p>\n Gendercide: Millions of \u201cMissing\u201d (Dead) Women<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/1-blog-Spitzer.jpg\")
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