Dear John,
The U.S. Senate has recently introduced a flawed bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that will soon get a vote, and your senators need to hear from you.
In recent months, much ado has rightly been made about the damage to female athletes' rights and equality caused by allowing biological men to compete in women's sports on the basis of “gender identity.” These same cultural forces have an even more destructive impact on battered women seeking help; allowing biological men who identify as women to enter private spaces in women’s shelters has a profound negative impact on women who have suffered domestic violence, abuse, and trafficking.
Congress passed VAWA in 1994 to improve the criminal justice response to domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking and increase the availability of victims’ services. These are admirable aims, but unfortunately, when VAWA was last reauthorized in 2013, language was added that prevented it from achieving these important goals. The current reauthorization text of S. 3623 continues and exacerbates these problems by mandating harmful gender identity ideology, maintaining Planned Parenthood’s ability to obtain VAWA grants, cordoning off certain grant funds to be used for only limited purposes and limited pools of victims, and now possibly opening the door to fund abortion more directly. In short, S. 3623 would harm the very women VAWA should be protecting.
Women who have been victims of rape, sexual assault, sexual molestation, sex trafficking, and the worst imaginable abuses deserve a safe place to heal emotionally and physically. They should not be forced to share private spaces with biological men, sleep next to biological men, or disrobe in front of biological men. Requiring this of women who were abused by biological men compounds their trauma.
These women deserve as much access to victims’ services as possible. However, the mandates contained in this reauthorization will surely lead to some service facilities closing, other facilities either ending or forgoing partnership with the government, and lawsuits against facilities. All these outcomes would limit facilities’ ability to help victims of abuse. S. 3623 also creates certain grants that can only be used to help certain victims and perpetuates similar grants that already existed. Funds should instead be made available to serve the maximum number of women, without regard to federally-mandated special categories.
Furthermore, an appropriate mandate for VAWA would certainly include preventing its grantees from perpetuating or covering up the victimization of those they serve. Yet, Planned Parenthood is allowed to be a VAWA grantee despite its coverup of sexual abuse and sex trafficking. They have received over $3 million in VAWA grants since 2010!
This VAWA reauthorization would further traumatize and reduce resources for battered women. It should be strongly opposed.
Please tell your senators to OPPOSE this reauthorization of VAWA and demand better protections for victimized women.
Sincerely,
Mary Beth Waddell
Director of Federal Affairs
Family Research Council
