Women’s Impact Grows, Even As Rights Challenged

Congressman Steny Hoyer

The impact of women-owned businesses on the economy increases every year. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Lexington Park/Pax River business community. Yet even as women-owned businesses swell nationally and succeed, there are efforts in Congress to turn back the clock on women’s rights.

These efforts are of deep concern to me. The tone and language heard recently is an outrage.

First, it is deeply wrong to intrude upon the freedom and equality of women or any other classification of people. Foul name calling, invasions of privacy and government intervention in personal decision-making are simply wrong, let alone constitutionally unsupportable.

Secondly, that the debate on reproductive rights should re-emerge is disheartening. It is, in particular, the control over reproductive rights that finally allowed women to fully enter the professional and business fields where today they succeed as intellectual and entrepreneurial equals.

In yet another prong of this wrong-headed attack on women’s rights, a Senate bill was brought forth that would not merely limit a woman’s right to reproductive information, care and contraceptives but would allow an insurance company to limit any type of care it or an employer choose not to cover.

This is wrong for everyone. This is not the way to safeguard the freedoms and rights that America stands for and it is certainly wrong to turn back the clock on equality and liberty for women.

There are many challenges today.  It is imperative that we use the talents of everyone. In 2010, the Democrats successfully passed the last small business tax and lending assistance bill to aid the economic recovery.  It spurred $21 billion in investment in small businesses, where so many of our minority- and women-owned successes begin.  There have been 1,200 Small Business Administration recovery loans to women-owned businesses. It is crucial, also, that women retain the same access to capital and not be disenfranchised from these arenas.

Women’s rights are important to me, not just as an American, but as a father and a grandfather and a great-grandfather.

It is essential that women retain all of their rights so that equal access to capital is something they can exercise. That’s what I’m fighting to retain in America. That’s what the Democrats are fighting for.