#emma waters

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Meet Gen Z's Phyllis Schlafly—She Hopes

Emma Waters has a powerful platform, but is anyone watching?

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

Emma Waters is offended that The New York Times wrote about her butter. The 28-year-old Heritage Foundation staffer—who encourages young women to prioritize getting married and having children over a career—was the subject of a glossy profile this past weekend. But she’s irritated, she wrote today, that the Times focused on her sourdough bread and homemade butter rather than her “actual work promoting root-cause care for infertility.” Almost as if reducing women to their domestic labor is sexist and dehumanizing.

I first learned about Waters last year, when she was interviewed in a different Times article about the White House’s efforts to increase the birth rate. The young mother and author—who insists on being called Mrs. Waters—has been advising the Trump administration on policies to help “encourage” young women to have more babies. Remember how the White House wants high school girls to learn about period tracking instead of contraception? Yeah, that was Waters. She also contributed to “Saving America,” the hellish Heritage roadmap for pushing young women out of college and the workforce and into early marriage and motherhood. From the Times profile, it’s clear that powerful conservatives have anointed Waters as some kind of tradwife evangelist—even if she wouldn’t use the controversial term herself. Times reporter Anemona Hartocollis writes, “Mrs. Waters and her allies are looking to seize the opportunity presented by the Trump administration to change the basic shape of American life, and to do it in the image of young women like her.”

Over the past few months, the powerful Heritage machine has pushed out book promo for Waters, put her on panels, and given her a new podcast—“Rethinking Fertility.” In other words, they want her to be a Gen Z Phyllis Schlafly—advising young women to stay at home while she, herself, enjoys a high-profile career writing books, giving talks, and shaping national policy.

I don’t think she’d mind the comparison: in her book, Waters lauds Schlafly as a “revolutionary” who “didn’t abandon her home, her femininity, or her faith.” She also cites Schlafly as precisely who American women should strive to be: a “model of traditional womanhood [that] encourages public engagement, but only after family duties have been honored.”

[...] It’s clear that Waters is looking to sidestep accusations of extremism—insisting that she writes for women who are “neither tradwife nor girlboss.” But there’s no amount of messaging that can pink-wash just how radical Waters actually is. We’re talking about a woman who has compared IVF to Hitler’s “breeding program to try to create the ideal humans” and Jeffrey Epstein’s desire to impregnate as many women as possible. Waters has also claimed that hormonal birth control can make women attracted to their own brothers; she wants to end no-fault divorce; and in an interview about her new book, appeared to suggest that women shouldn’t attend college because less than 1% meet their husbands there. [...] Unfortunately, plenty of young conservative women have amassed large audiences in spite of their truly troubling beliefs; so Waters’ extremism isn’t necessarily a hurdle. The problem is that the Heritage Foundation’s chosen ambassador for “traditional womanhood” doesn’t seem to be catching on with…well, anyone. The most recent episode of her Heritage-produced podcast was watched 42 times on YouTube. (Forty-three, if you include me.) Despite powerful backing, it’s unclear if Waters has an audience outside of the guys writing checks for the conservative movement. That doesn’t mean Waters isn’t dangerous; of course she is. This is a woman who has the power of the country’s most influential conservative organization behind her, and is already influencing national policy. The Hill named her a “Top 50 Women Shaping Policy” this year, and she’s already signed up to publish a second book.

Still, if you want to convince an entire generation of young women that the Republican attacks on their rights are a good thing actually, you need a seriously persuasive and charismatic messenger. Waters just doesn’t seem to be that person. [...]

Waters, like Schlafly, found a way to have her cake and eat it too: working while making it harder for other women to work, embracing her professional drive while telling young women their ambition will make it harder for them to be mothers. Most egregiously, she's robbing other young women and girls of the choices she was privileged enough to have.

Emma Waters of The Heritage Foundation seeks to be the Gen Z version of antifeminist hypocrite Phyllis Schlafly.

[arcticdementor]

Pro-Natalism Is Not Enough

My husband and I have one little girl and we are expecting our second child at the end of this year, six weeks before our third wedding anni

What began as a marriage recession has turned into a full-blown birth dearth. In 2023, the birthrate fell to its lowest point of 1.62 births per woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. The future of the United States, along with that of every developed nation except Israel, is threatened by demographic decline. Our economy, Social Security, military readiness, eldercare, education, and more depend on new generations of children. On an individual level, this decline reflects a much darker reality. Happy, hopeful people have babies. If we are not having babies, what does that say about the health of our nation? 

…

Pro-natalism, a movement against the decline in births, is making headlines as it draws prominent champions like Elon Musk. While we should be pleased by this development, we should distinguish between “mere pro-natalists,” who simply want to see more babies born, and those who prioritize family formation as the basis for increasing birth rates. Mere pro-natalists can serve as excellent allies against our anti-child culture, but the lack of concern for family formation risks perpetuating the very social pathologies that gave rise to the birth dearth in the first place. 

…

Technocratic pro-natalists often desire to create a certain kind of a child: a healthy child, a smart child, or a “wanted” child. Indeed, with the expansion of embryonic genetic selection technology and the potential of artificial wombs or in vitro gametogenesis—an experimental procedure that genetically modifies anyone’s DNA into viable gametes—parents may use technology to customize their future children. This “Silicon Valley” style of pro-natalism exploits a parent’s desire to raise healthy and happy children by offering them a false promise of control. As Anglican ethicist Oliver O’Donovan warns in Begotten or Made?, “a being who is the ‘maker’ of any other being is alienated from that which he has made, transcending it by his will and acting as the law of its being.” Children who are “made” are no longer viewed by their “maker” as gifts, ends in themselves, but as luxury goods.   Reducing babies to one among various competing goods—a child, a yacht, or a house—reinforces our society’s disinclination to value them as ends. As far as consumer goods go, children are risky, difficult, and time-consuming. Studies find that the biggest reason that women delay or forgo childbearing is their desire for leisure, such as travel, or their preference for personal independence, such as the freedom to focus on hobbies or careers. When Americans view childbearing as just another pet project, it’s unsurprising that fewer adults decide that children are not worth the trouble. 

…

Civilization depends on individuals recognizing that building a family and nurturing children is an essential part of the human journey. Promoting marriage, which is consistently the best predictor of birthrates, is the surest long-term strategy to reverse declining fertility. The marriage recession—occurring as divorce, cohabitation, single parenthood, and hookup culture became the norm—preceded the fertility crisis in the United States. As fewer families formed stable, long-term relationships, the number of children born among the middle and upper classes began to decline. Today, the birthrate among married men and women has remained steady since the 1990s, save for a modest decrease from 2016–2020. The overall decrease in children is the result of more adults delaying or forgoing marriage altogether. To solve the fertility crisis, we should not simply focus on creating more children, we must focus on creating more healthy marriages between men and women. 

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Womanosphere influencers' pro-natalist panic over birthright citizenship

The Supreme Court wrapped up its term by striking down the Trump administration’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship.

Madeline Peltz at Number Two Pencil:

The Supreme Court wrapped up its term by striking down the Trump administration’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. Trump v. Barbara struck a major blow to the order at the very center of the administration’s anti-immigrant agenda. Still, even by questioning the 14th Amendment, the administration succeeded in getting three Supreme Court justices to say that children born to non-citizens should not have constitutional rights. Conservative female influencers cleverly knit the immigration question into a broader pro-natalist agenda by fearmongering about so-called “birth tourism,” “global surrogacy,” and even framing the decision as a plot to encourage abortion. The Daily Wire’s Isabel Brown claimed the ruling was the “most impactful” decision in a generation, describing it as the “Roe v. Wade of Gen Z’s lifetime.”

“Does being a leftist in America today mean that you must fervently support as many American women killing their children as humanly possible, by the millions, before they are ever even born because ‘human rights,’” she said, adding an air quotes gesture, “while also fervently supporting foreign adversaries hijacking a birth tourism system so that their children can be born in America and take over American culture because ‘human rights?’”

Fearmongering about “birth tourism,” the notion that immigrants are coming to the United States and giving birth to obtain citizenship rights for their children, is a longtime right-wing scare tactic. The administration raised the issue during arguments in Trump v. Barbara. Solicitor General D. John Saucer claimed that “uncounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have flocked to give birth in the United States in recent decades.” But as The New York Times reports, “Scholars at Penn State released a study this week, based on analysis of official data, that found that fewer than 0.3 percent of all U.S. births in any given year were to tourists.”

Fundamentalist podcaster and author of Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion, Allie Beth Stuckey, took a similar line. She said the “ruling solidifies a key driver of illegal immigration, baby trafficking, and global surrogacy.” The comments section on this post is flooded with disagreements among her conservative Christian audience.

On her Substack Rethinking Fertility, Emma Waters, the anti-IVF policy analyst for the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, focused her criticism of the Barbara by claiming it will fuel abuse of surrogacy laws.

[...] The administration has responded to their defeat by floating a ban on pregnant immigrants. On X, SiriusXM radio host Megyn Kelly endorsed the idea of terminating the visa of any non-citizen who becomes pregnant and prosecuting doctors who do not report positive pregnancy tests of non-citizens to the government.

The right-wing womanosphere big mad over the Trump v. Barbara SCOTUS ruling protecting birthright citizenship.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Right-wing media are poised to escalate attacks on women as MAGA cracks emerge

John Knefel at MMFA:

The right-wing media and policy ecosystem appears poised to escalate its attacks on the basic rights of women as a weakened President Donald Trump lurches toward the end of the first year of his second term. The campaign to roll back decades of material gains for women is coming from both the gutter sexists and the would-be high-brow elements of the conservative media world, and it could serve as a rallying point for an increasingly fractured MAGA movement.   

[...]

New Heritage hire pushes birth control restrictions and rollbacks to the Civil Rights Act

Olsen runs through some of Yenor’s lowlights, including pushing for laws that would let businesses “support traditional family life by hiring only male heads of households, or by paying a family wage,” and his belief that “governments should be allowed to prepare men for leadership and responsible provision, while preparing women for domestic management and family care.” Yenor has repeatedly attacked the Civil Rights Act — a distressingly common phenomenon in conservative media — telling a Mother Jones reporter that the landmark 1964 law “made it impossible and, in fact, suspect to treat men and women differently.” Yenor’s opposition to the law extends to racist grievances too. A blog he co-wrote argues that “the 1964 Civil Rights act, and especially its administrative and jurisprudential offspring, have warped American law and culture and traded one set of racial preferences for another.”  Heritage’s decision to bring Yenor on has generated significant support from right-wing media, suggesting that he’s more of an opening salvo than a random misfire. 

Fellow Heritage staffer Emma Waters wrote that it was a “huge win for @Heritage to have Scott on board, and I'm glad he's here.” Her colleague Genevieve Wood reacted to The Atlantic article by writing: “The entire premise of this piece is invalid and disingenuous.” Anti-civil rights activist Chris Rufo argued: “Scott's idea that private companies should be able to prioritize hiring married men with families is completely within the bounds of reasonable debate, and, in fact, it's absurd that individuals cannot hire whomever they want in their own companies, with their own money.” (The Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination based on sex and other characteristics.) The campaign to roll back decades of material gains for women is coming from both the gutter sexists and the would-be high-brow elements of the conservative media world

Given Yenor’s recent output at Heritage — his author page currently hosts two pieces of writing — The Atlantic’s premise doesn’t seem invalid in the least. An October 29 blog headlined “RFK Should Grill the Pill” argues that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should consider imposing restrictions on hormonal contraceptives and that his seeming reluctance to do so is “to the detriment of women across the country.” Yenor and his co-author write that the “proliferation of the birth control pill since the 1960s has fostered a number of grave consequences for our society: hook-up culture, delayed marriage, and the destruction of the nuclear family.”

The blog is hardly the first time Heritage has gone after birth control. Roberts took aim at the pill in his own book, writing: “In the case of contraceptives, we are a society remade according to a research agenda set by the Party of Destruction.” As Media Matters previously reported, Heritage’s sprawling presidential transition effort, Project 2025, “suggests restoring Trump-era ‘religious and moral exemptions to the contraceptive mandate’ through the Affordable Care Act that would allow employers to deny coverage.” A separate Media Matters analysis found that at least 34 of Project 2025’s partner organizations “have spread misinformation about contraceptive methods or championed limiting access to contraception, largely on religious grounds.”     

[...]

Right-wing media figures urge women to leave the workforce

Yenor’s other piece at Heritage argues that prohibiting single-sex education at the Virginia Military Institute and beyond has harmed the school and society at large, suggesting that sex segregation in schools can “be wholesome per se, serving the innate differences between men and women and their somewhat different social destinies.” Elsewhere, Yenor’s writing details those “somewhat different social destinies" a bit more clearly; as Olsen noted at The Atlantic, Yenor has argued: “​​The Mrs. Degree, with additional credentialing for work, is all you want by graduation day.”  The position that women should largely, or perhaps entirely, eschew careers has become increasingly normalized in right-wing media. The late Charlie Kirk — who also railed against the Civil Rights Act — told a young woman with ambitions to be a surgeon that between her career and a potential family, “you’re going to have to choose which one matters more.” On the off chance his advice wasn’t clear, he added: “There are a lot of successful, 35-year-old orthopedic surgeons that have cats, and not kids, and they’re very miserable." Not only do many right-wing media figures want women to exit the workforce — they also want to make it much more difficult for them to leave a failing marriage. Conservative pundits have attacked no-fault divorce, seeking to reduce women to a second class status and exposing them to greater risk of violence from their husbands.

With the MAGA coalition fracturing on many issues, right-wing media commentators seem to pump up the anti-women attacks, such as attacks on birth control, women in the workforce, women’s suffrage, and no-fault divorce.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Meet the Anti-Feminist Women's Group Leveraging Their 'Independence' to Convince Americans to Vote Republican - Ms. Magazine

The anti-feminist Independent Women’s Voice/Forum (IWF/V), backed by billionaires and anti-abortion zealots, is poised to use its leaders’ i

Ansev Demirhan at Ms. Magazine:

The anti-feminist Independent Women’s Voice/Forum (IWF/V) has officially launched its 2024 election agenda. An internal fundraising document provided to True North Research shows one way it is putting that agenda into action is by continuing to try and blunt the horrific repercussions of the Supreme Court overturning Roe, while deploying their veneer of independence to sway centrist and independent voters.  The document details a two-phase plan and a budget that is almost twice the amount it proposed in its 2022 midterm fundraising documents, as reported by The Washington Post. Despite claiming to take no position on abortion, IWF/V launched a PR campaign ahead of the 2022 midterms—the first election cycle following the Dobbs decision—which included advertising trying to convince younger women that reproductive rights were less important than other issues the group listed. 

One way IWF/V’s agenda for this election cycle stands out from its previous midterm action plan is its emphasis on reassuring women that access to contraception is not in jeopardy—despite key voices in the anti-abortion movement making it clear otherwise. The group is a member of Project 2025, a MAGA blueprint that includes detailed plans to attack contraception access, promote the rhythm method, deploy the CDC to increase “abortion surveillance” and data collection and much more.  IWF/V also has a long history of undermining contraception access, though the group has a talking point about supporting over-the-counter availability of the contraception pill.

IWF/V’s “Hope Agenda”

Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), a 501(c)(3), and its 501(c)(4) the Independent Women’s Voice (IWV), are pay-to-play groups that use their “independent” branding to laud right-wing politicians along with the legislative wish lists of some for-profit corporations, such as Juul. Based on its most recent tax filings, the groups reported a combined $8.1 million in revenue. IWF/V has received money from the Koch network, Leonard Leo’s network and funds from secretive donor-advised funds, like the Bradley Impact Fund, the National Christian Charitable Foundation and DonorsTrust. 

[...]

But Americans are intimately familiar with the political reality of abortion access in this country. 

The majority of states have abortion restrictions or bans in place that make it difficult for pregnant Americans to receive essential healthcare. 

The U.S. Supreme Court continues to be deployed as a tool to potentially limit abortion access nationally (in the mifepristone and EMTALA cases). 

Over 64,000 unwanted pregnancies have been caused by rape in states with total abortion bans that were implemented post-Roe. 

Abortions increased in 2023, the first full calendar year following the Dobbs decision, because people continue to need and seek abortions despite the fractured abortion healthcare landscape unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Americans are also faced with the political reality that the anti-abortion movement is coming for contraception. That is one reason why IWF/V honing in on messaging around birth control access as something that is safeguarded and supported by the GOP is so troubling. The group itself has a history of opposing contraception access. 

[...]

Anti-trans messaging is also central to IWF/V’s plan to ‘get out the vote’ in 2024, according to its “Hope Agenda.” IWF also attacked the Right to Contraception Act, using anti-trans scaremongering to falsely suggest that this legislation would “require doctors to sterilize minors.” This is not the only anti-trans tactic the group has used to detract from the devastating impact of the overturn of Roe.  IWF/V is also behind the anti-trans “model” bill the “Women’s Bill of Rights,” which enumerates no rights other than the right to discriminate against transgender people, especially transgender women. This model bill has ostensibly been used by so-called conservative or independent policymakers and groups that allegedly care more about American women, but IWF/V itself has repeatedly attacked pro-woman policies. IWF/V has opposed the Equal Rights Amendment,  federal paid leave, federally subsidized child care, the Violence Against Women Act and Title IX—though it recently backed a watered-down version of VAWA and for decades it sided with men’s sports teams against Title IX spending on women’s sports until it deployed anti-trans messaging about women’s sports.

Ms. Magazine exposes the right-wing Koch/Leonard Leo-funded antifeminist group Independent Women's Forum and their sister groups Independent Women's Voice and Independent Women’s Law Center. These groups claim to be pro-women, but in reality, the policies they support-- such as anti-trans "Women's Bill of Rights" and attacks on abortion access, contraception, and in vitro fertilization-- are harmful to women.

[freezergnome]

[freezergnome]

Rest in peace, Emma Waters and Felix Beyer.

[freezergnome]