Snap Fact #198 - President Obama’s Life Experiences Inspire His Strong Stand For Women!

President Barack Obama defends the rights of women more staunchly than any President in US history. He has consistently championed equal pay, especially in the Lilly Ledbetter Act. President Obama has defended women’s rights to abortion, birth control, and medical care. Over and again, the President has opposed efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, a leading provider of medical services to women.

President Obama’s commitment to women and to women’s rights is rooted in his childhood and in his family. As a child, he was reared by his single anthropologist mother and by his grandmother in Hawaii. His wife Michelle is an extra-ordinarily competent woman, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, with a successful career as an attorney before she became First Lady by virtue of her husband’s election to the Presidency. 

The President moved his mother-in-law Marian Robinson into the White House, and speaks of her with great affection as either the "Nanny-in-Chief " or the “First Granny.”Obama is the proud father of two strong-opinioned daughters. 

He surrounds himself with competent women advisors and appoints extra-ordinary women to judicial and other positions, including Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.

Contrast the record and stance of Obama on women to Mitt Romney’s leadership of the Republican War on Women. While Ann Romney is viewed as the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee’s best asset, Mitt Romney himself generally appears out of touch with women and their concerns. If it wasn’t sad it would be humorous how the candidate often haplessly turns to his wife to explain women. This underlines how completely clueless he is. 

Governor Romney’s platform includes, advocating de-funding Planned Parenthood, opposing abortion rights, and vilifying women’s preventive health care. In addition he shows little knowledge or interest in securing equal pay for women. 

The 2012 election affords Americans a sharp contrast in their Presidential candidates on a wide range of issues. One of the starkest areas of divergence is women’s concerns and their rights. In voting for Barack Obama for a second term as President, American voters express their own personal commitment to totally equal inclusion of women in our society.