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By Abby J. Leibman | For those of us who spend our lives advocating for social justice in our country, we’re used to disappointment.
For those, like me, who have made the rights and needs of women and girls an essential part of our advocacy, that disappointment is what we’ve come to expect from today’s policymakers. Time and time again, we’ve seen elected officials on both sides of the aisle trade away the basic rights and needs of everyday Americans—women and girls, in particular—for political or economic expediency.
So it wasn’t a surprise to see congressional Republicans again approach this year’s budget reconciliation process not only as a chance to target the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid and other critical basic needs programs, but specifically to attack women, and to erase their presence and undermine their power in our society. Their budget priorities speak loudly and clearly to the women and girls of our country: The goal here is to cement and deepen a status quo where men (specifically, cisgender white men) have access to opportunity and advancement, and women and girls revert to subservience.
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