Because let's face facts: America has never really been a friendly place to women and girls. Not really. Sure, there are certainly worse places, but why is the United States settling for the bottom of the developed world when it comes to protecting girls and women?
The laws governing our bodies, our families, our choices, our daughters, our futures continue to erode our faith in and hope for this nation, taking our freedoms and permitting the government to make decisions for us that are, frankly, none of the government’s business.
This isn’t just about pregnancy or birth control.
It’s about a culture of objectifying women from a young age, permitted and even promoted under a quilt of uneven, unequal, and unjust laws across our nation.
Consider child marriage, which is legal across most of the United States. The data show that 87% of child marriages occur between underage girls and adult men. Some girls have been married as young as 10. In most of those states, minors cannot legally divorce or even separate from their spouse once married. They’re trapped.
In Florida, there is no minimum age for child marriage, so long as either the parents and judges approve, and there are loopholes and legal exceptions made for pregnant girls. So, if an 80-year-old-man wants a child bride, he can escape charges related to his pedophilia if he simply gets a judge or the parents of young child to agree to a marriage.
Our region of Florida sees some of the highest rates of human and sex trafficking in the nation.
Perhaps the issue is so pervasive because we have an incumbent representative who was the only person in congress to vote against a bill to crack down on trafficking, who was been the target of a sex-trafficking investigation for more than two years, and whose new sister-in-law even came forward to protect her family, calling Matt Gaetz a “literal pedophile.”
And without getting too far into the statistics on rape in America, we’re first in the developed world for rates of sexual harassment, assault, and battery. Nearly half of women in the United States reported experiencing some form of sexual violence in their lifetime.
1 in 5 women report being raped in their lifetime. Nearly half of those rapes occurred when the victims were minors.
How have we gotten to this place, where girls’ lives matter so little and women are forced to carry such heavy burdens for a society that does not value them?
Did you know that women hold only one-quarter of the seats in Congress?
Even though women outnumber men in the general population, voter registration and voter turnout, we make up less than one-fourth of elected officials in nearly every level of office.
Married women are less likely to vote than women who are divorced, widowed, separated or have never been married, though female turnout generally increases with both age and education level.
We’re not electing women. In the shadow of Roe v Wade and protections we once had, the consequences of electing too few women to positions of power could not be clearer.
If we don’t stand together and fight for our autonomy, our dignity, our independence, then our daughters may very well find themselves without any of it.
I will write legislation to end child marriage, crack down on trafficking, and see that sexual predators who target children are charged with hate crimes and never able to return to society.
I will vote to codify rights that protect and respect our right to make decisions about our own bodies, ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, and finally make us equal in the eyes of our constitution.
Matt Gaetz not only doesn’t support those measures – he was the only person in Congress to vote against some of them.
We need your help. And it couldn't come fast enough. With the election only four months away, we're putting our faith in YOU to make the difference in this race.
In solidarity,
Rebekah Jones
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