Election Day

Have you voted today? I did. I voted two weeks early by mail.  If you haven't voted yet, please go vote. It is our civic duty as Americans to vote.  People need to stop complaining about being dissatisfied with the government. If you don't like the decisions our leaders in government are making, go vote. There won't be change if you don't vote.

Change takes time. I don't think Americans are giving President Obama enough credit. He was elected President when we are experiencing another recession. I think that if Mitt Romney won this election, all of President Obama's work for the pass three years will be discredited and in vain. I don't understand how Americans can vote for Romney based on his views about women.

Mitt Romney simply doesn't get women's health. Here are some reasons why I did not vote for Romney. He has shown that he's willing to throw women's health under the bus in ordered to get elected. He was crystal clear when discussing which programs he would eliminate, his answer: "Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that." Here are the top five things you need to know about Romney and where he stands on women's health issues.

1. Mitt Romney opposes access to safe and legal abortion. When asked if he believes the Supreme Court should overturn Roe v.Wade, his answer: "Yes, I do." when asked if the repeal of Roe would be a good day for America, he responded "Absolutely."

2. He announced his support for the Blunt amendment, a bill that was introduced to restrict access to birth control by allowing any employer the right to deny health insurance coverage for any benefit based on a "moral" conviction. He has aggressively supported this stance, launching a petition against the Health and Human Services ruling to include birth control as basic preventive care.

3. If elected, Romney has pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act "on day one" of his presidency, meaning one of his first acts would be to cut off millions of women and families' access to affordable preventive care by returning to the days when you could be discriminated against for pre-existing conditions and overturning the no-cost birth control benefit.

4. Romney supports extreme and sweeping measures like a "personhood" amendment to define life at conception (which could ban common forms of birth control and in some cases, in vitro fertilization) or his belief that states should have the right to ban contraception.

5. "The actions I'll take immediately are to remove funding for Planned Parenthood." Romney has made his position clear: protecting access to basic preventive care is not what he's about and he must be held accountable. Romney doesn't understand that in states like Texas and Tennessee that Planned Parenthood is the ONLY provider for women. Getting rid of Planned Parenthood is detrimental to patients who rely on their health centers for lifesaving cancer screening, well-woman exams, and birth control.

Women should be allowed to make decisions about their bodies. We should have the right to decide if we want to have a child or not. At the second presidential debate, President Obama showed his continued commitment to progress for women. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney didn’t offer a single policy or solution when asked about the problem of pay discrimination, just anecdotes. While the President talked about women as breadwinners, Romney talked about them as resumes in "binders."

Four years ago,  I voted for President Obama while attending UC Berkeley. The atmosphere was of student activism, hope, and change. I was very excited to witness a historic moment in history. I remember the midnight parade that I got to witness when President Obama became president. Everyone was shouting, yelling, hugging, cheering, and drinking. I voted for President Obama again. I think that universal healthcare is necessary. It is going to take time for it to be enacted; however, I think that it can be done. Go Vote!

xoxo,
Kat