Statement by NOW President Toni Van Pelt:

Emmy-award winning writer and producer Dinah Kirgo, one of six women who has come forward with charges of sexual harassment against CBS CEO and chairman Les Moonves, told NPR that she is not trying to end the executive’s career as much as she is trying to change a culture that enables such misconduct.

“People think that we’re trying to take these guys down, and that is, at least in my case, that is so not true. It’s about stopping this behavior.”

We agree and we stand in solidarity with her How many more stories do we need to read about a powerful boss who thinks he can aggressively kiss, or pin down on a couch, or make sexual remarks to a woman with no consequences and no reckoning?

Enough is enough – those days are over. The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements cannot be stopped, and they will not stop until we end this culture of abuse against women.

Toxic men like Les Moonves must know they can no longer prey on vulnerable women over whom they wield tremendous power in the workplace. Les Moonves shouldn’t be at work today and he shouldn’t come into the office tomorrow. CBS must suspend Les Moonves and conduct an independent, outside investigation into his behavior.

Les Moonves received $68.4 million in 2017 for his role as chief executive and chairman of the CBS board of directors. The women he is accused of harassing are paying a terrible price. How much will CBS pay the women for their loss of wages, career advancement, and prestige caused by CBS’ protection of powerful men? They are the ones that deserve CBS’ attention, financial remuneration and care today—not Les Moonves.

It’s time we change the norm. Our silence ends now.

Contact

Brittany T. Oliver, comms@now.org, 202-628-8669

Statement by NOW President Toni Van Pelt

When Donald Trump takes the world stage, the world trembles.  President Trump’s disastrous European tour was foreshadowed by the news that earlier this year, the Trump Administration pushed the World Health Organization to weaken or trash a resolution meant to encourage breastfeeding and to minimize the inaccurate marketing of substitutes.According to several officials at the WHO meeting, once Trump’s delegation was unsuccessful in removing language that affirmed support for breastfeeding, they turned to bullying and threatening other countries that were considering introducing the wording.   According to the New York Times,

           “The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the initiative, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorian government quickly acquiesced.”

A British health policy advocate at the meeting said, “What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on the best way to protect infant and young child health.”

But that’s Donald Trump’s way.  He’s the hostage-taker-in-chief.

Whether it’s infants at the border or at their mother’s breast, Donald Trump sees foreign policy as a vehicle for advancing his own business interests, and to funnel more wealth to his friends and financial backers.  The powerful infant formula industry has its hooks in Donald Trump—just as it’s been able to influence scores of U.S. politicians and agencies.

Donald Trump is guilty of collusion—with the formula industry.  Together, they are perpetuating a system of racial disparities that harm women and children.  Because women of color are one of the most vulnerable populations in the country, they are easy to target with factors that make it impossible for them to actually breastfeed.

Both the WHO and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that infants consuming nothing but breast milk for the first six months of life.  Donald Trump may not respect science, or value public health—but we do. NOW calls on women to demand that U.S. officials stop ignoring decades of research that proves breastfeeding is best for children.

Contact

Brittany T. Oliver, comms@now.org

Statement by NOW President Toni Van Pelt:

Either Jim Jordan is lying—or the wrestlers he was paid to mentor and care for are.

The Ohio Congressman denies knowing about a team doctor groping student wrestlers when Jordan was the assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University between 1986 and 1995. The university says that former athletes from 14 OSU sports have reported abuse. But when former OSU wrestlers came forward to say that they saw Jordan witness or acknowledge the doctor’s behavior, Rep. Jordan attacked the whistleblowers and denied everything.

“Conversations in the locker room are a lot different than people coming up and talking about abuse,” Jordan said. “No one ever reported any abuse to me.”

In other words, because no one had a conversation with him in which the phrase “I was abused” was uttered, no wrongdoing occurred. As the Cleveland Plain-Dealer said in an editorial,

“With all due respect to Jordan, there’s a slang word Ohioans use to describe such fine-line distinctions: ‘Weaseling.’ “

Jim Jordan wants to make a run to succeed Paul Ryan as Speaker, but his colleagues should know by now that they can’t trust a word he says. Do they even care?

We don’t believe Jim Jordan. If he didn’t know about the abuse going on under his watch he should have known. It was his job to protect his students, and he failed miserably.

Contact

Brittany T. Oliver, comms@now.org

Statement by NOW President Toni Van Pelt

By naming Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, Donald Trump has set the table for a vote on repealing Roe v. Wade. That was the promise Trump made during the presidential campaign. In his final debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump said the Supreme Court would “automatically” overturn Roe once he became president, “because I am putting pro-life judges on the Court.”

Trump outsourced his Supreme Court nomination screening process to the radical Federalist Society, a group started during the Reagan era to move U.S. courts to the right. Its leader, right-wing activist Leonard Leo, has called abortion “a threat to human life,” and conservative activist Ed Whelan has said, “No one has been more dedicated to the enterprise of building a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade than the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo.”

Now, Leo, the Federalist Society and the network of anti-abortion extremists, billionaires and committees have gotten their wish. After pushing Neil Gorsuch to the top of the pile last year, they are gearing up for a repeat performance now.

We can’t let them succeed. Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat by refusing to consider Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, and now Senate Republicans are at it again. We are on the threshold of the most consequential Congressional elections in modern times. Voters are going to the polls to express their views on who should be setting the agenda in Congress and whose values should be reflected on the bench. We call on the Senate to refuse to take up this nomination until the people they represent have voiced their opinions.

Contact

Dee Donavanik
press@now.org
(951) 547-1241

Statement by NOW President Toni Van Pelt:

WASHINGTON–The Supreme Court has ruled in the NIFLA v. Becerra case that fake women’s health centers can continue to lie, discriminate and deceive women who seek a full range of reproductive health care services. Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell’s hand-picked Justice, Neil Gorsuch, delivered the deciding vote against women.

So-called “crisis pregnancy” centers are political, not medical entities. They were created to promote the anti-abortion agenda of religious extremists. The California legislature found that the nearly 200 centers in the state used “intentionally deceptive advertising and counseling practices that often confuse, misinform, and even intimidate women from making fully-informed, time-sensitive decisions about critical health care.”

To counter these propaganda factories designed as clinics, California required them to post notices that free or low-cost abortion, contraception, and prenatal care are available through public programs. The Supreme Court has struck down that requirement, giving a green light to ideologues who would hijack the public health system for their own political agendas.

Donald Trump has a vision for the Supreme Court that is dangerous to women’s health. He has set the Supreme Court down an anti-abortion road that will surely lead to an attempt to repeal Roe v. Wade. We will oppose Trump’s anti-choice appointments to state and federal courts, and to the Supreme Court. Junk science and religious extremism have no place in our legal system or our politics. Women deserve the truth.

Contact

Dee Donavanik, press@now.org, (951) 547-1241