Election Reflection #1: America Votes For Choice

Published November 06, 2008 @ 03:28PM PT

With Obama's win of the Presidency this week also came many great victories for the women's rights movement.

As final results are tallied and delivered to the American people, I will be covering how this election pushed the women's rights movement forward, but also how it failed the electorate in certain cases such as the passage of Proposition 8 in California.

NARAL Pro-Choice America, the nation's leading non-partisan pro-choice political organization, was the first major pro-choice PAC to endorse Barack Obama for president and offers these encouraging statistics about how the country not only elected a pro-choice President, but also earned a net gain of 16 fully pro-choice members in the House, and moved five Senate seats out of the anti-choice column.

Choice Composition of the 110th Congress

	Pro-Choice	Mixed-Choice	Anti-Choice
House *	165	50	220
Senate	35	17	48

* For comparison purposes only, House number includes former Rep. Tubbs Jones.

Projected Choice Composition: the 111th Congress

	Pro-Choice	Mixed-Choice	Anti-Choice
House *	181	47	207
Senate *	38	19	43

* For comparison purposes only, House number includes Reps. Jefferson and McCrery (election occurring December 6) and Senate number includes Sens. Obama and Biden.

Net Change in Choice Composition

	Pro-Choice	Mixed-Choice	Anti-Choice
House	+16	-3	-13
Senate	+3	+2	-5

By Percentage

	*Pro-Choice*	*Mixed-Choice*	*Anti-Choice*
*110^th House*	*38%*	*11%*	*51%*
*111^th House*	*42%*	*11%*	*48%*

*110^th Senate*	*35%*	*17%*	*48%*
*111^th Senate*	*38%*	*19%*	*43%*

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Comments (3)

Huzzah for progress! :)

Posted by A H on 11/06/2008 @ 07:24PM PT
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Well, it's something, right?!

Posted by Lisa Smolen on 11/09/2008 @ 08:52PM PT
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Wow. Money request spam (?) en Français. Not something you see every day.

Posted by A H on 11/09/2008 @ 09:25PM PT
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Author

Jen Nedeau is a social media consultant, progressive activist, feminist speaker and writer. She currently lives in New York City, where she works full-time as the Director of Digital Strategy at Air America Media. In August 2008, Nedeau was selected to be the Editor of the WomensRights.Change.Org where she facilitates daily discussion about the feminist movement. Additionally, Nedeau volunteers as the Chief Technology Officer for New Leaders Council, a non-profit that offers exclusive training for young leaders. You can follow her on Twitter @HumanFolly or learn more here: www.jennedeau.com.