BY MARGARET ALLUM
With the vocal religious right as his fighting partners, George W Bush and his team have escalated the war on women's rights, most notably in the sphere of reproductive choice.
While Bill Clinton did nothing to reverse the right-wing backlash against women, and introduce some policies such as welfare cuts which hurt women, he loudly proclaimed himself a champion of women's equality.
Bush's attitude to women's rights is not nearly so well cloaked. His attitude to the right of women to reproductive choice, and therefore control of their lives, reveals his connection to the fanatic anti-choicers who make up the US religious right.
According to Ceci Connolly of the Washington Post, the Bush administration is scaling back efforts to promote family planning and contraception while pushing abstinence programs.
Connolly reports that President Bush and senior aides have refused to allow states to expand family planning services for poor women (announced on July 20), have reimposed a ban on abortion counselling at overseas clinics and have released a report questioning the effectiveness of condoms.
The Bush administration was pushing for an end to mandatory contraceptive coverage for federal employees, one of the health benefits on the public service payroll, but this proposal was overturned by the House Appropriations Committee on July 18. The measure would have affected 1.2 million working women.
One of his first acts as president was to reinstate the "global gag rule", whereby organisations receiving aid money from the US must not provide abortion services or even provide information on this option.
This rule had been introduced in 1984 by the Ronald Reagan administration and was in place throughout the presidency of George Bush senior. Bill Clinton rescinded it during his term.
The effect of the rule has been disastrous for women in countries who, faced with no legal abortion option, will opt for illegal terminations, often carried out in extremely unsafe conditions.
Of the 40 to 60 million abortions that take place annually, at least 20 million are performed under unsafe, illegal conditions. Up to 50% of the women who have unsafe abortions require follow-up gynaecological care. Millions suffer permanent physical injuries. At least 78,000 women die.
Most of these deaths are preventable, and occur in countries where access to abortion is highly restricted or illegal.
Anthony Browne wrote in the July 23 New Statesman of a 13-year-old Nepalese girl, Min Min Lama. After being raped by an uncle she became pregnant, and was then forced to have an abortion. The police found the foetus and sentenced Min Min to 20 years in jail for killing an unborn baby.
She was eventually released, but only after lobbying by the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the Family Planning Association of Nepal. Browne reports that Bush has now withdrawn all financial support for these organisations.
In more anti-choice moves, the Feminist Majority Foundation reported on May 17 that Bush has replaced medical associations with anti-choice organisations as delegates to the World Health Assembly in Geneva.
Right-wing extremist Lindsey Graham is also putting before Congress a bill, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act which, wgile ostensibly increasing penalties for those who attack or kill pregnant women, also creates a separate prosecution for injuring an "unborn child".
Pro-choice groups believe the bill is just the first step in legally declaring a foetus a person, meaning it has rights apart from the woman who carries it.
Bush has surrounded himself with the staunchest of anti-women's rights campaigners. His nomination for assistant secretary for family support at the Department of Health and Human Services, for example, is Wade Horne, the anti-women's rights founder of the National Fatherhood Initiative.
Despite having several very influential women in his administration, "Proud to be a feminist" bumper stickers don't adorn many vehicles in the White House car park.
Many of Bush's female appointees to the new government belong to, or are connected with, the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative group founded in 1992 that "challenged the central tenets of feminism and refused to accept that women always had to be the victims". In reality, the IWF is a conservative anti-women outfit.
Such figures include labour secretary Elaine Chao and state department official Paula Dobriansky; Lynne Cheney, the vice-president's wife, is also a former member.
While some of Bush's highest profile appointments are women or people of colour, overall appointments to his administration show low percentages of appointees from these groups, with women making up only 26.1% of nominees for Senate confirmation.
While opposing affirmative action programs, Bush has been quick to show his discriminatory policies for the right.
Only on July 11, according to the Feminist Majority Foundation, did the White House end its consideration of a proposed regulation that would have protected government-funded religious charities from state and local laws that prohibit workplace discrimination.
This measure, requested by the Salvation Army, would have allowed religious charities to discriminate against lesbians and gay men in their hiring procedures.