This installment will conclude my series on the anti-choice Dems running in legislative primaries. This last one, Sen. Catherine Miranda (LD27), might prove the most difficult to remove due to her incumbency and the strength of her family name. Luckily, her challenger is the hugely impressive and indefatigable campaigner Aaron Marquez. (I’m pretty sure Aaron has gotten more money out of me than any legislative candidate ever has because he’s that good at raising it.) And while it sucks to want a female Democrat to be defeated, Miranda has got to go, we’ll be getting a staunch ally in the Senate with Aaron Marquez:
On your campaign website, you mention that as part of your service with the United States Army Reserve, you helped to build women’s centers in Afghanistan. Can you tell us more about this: What services did they provide, and what impact have they had?
My favorite project that I worked on was when we put together a wool processing center. I worked on a provincial reconstruction team that brought together coalition forces. My team was led by the Swedish armed forces and also Finland’s armed forces. The wool processing center works with all of those groups in the province of Balkh, outside the city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
About 80 percent of Afghans are subsistence farmers, and most of them have sheep or goats. The processing center allowed farmers to use electronic sheep shears to increase wool production by 20 percent annually. At the wool processing center we employ women to card [the wool], spin it, and turn it into yarn. Then they dye it, and they sell it to Afghan rug makers.
I also worked through the Department of Women’s Affairs. In one province called Samangan, there was a women’s center in a location that was very inaccessible, so they wanted a road. We built them an asphalt road that went from the main section of town instead of what was a very rocky dirt road.
In other parts of Afghanistan, I was working to build women’s bazaars. What they were looking for and expecting was just a place that would provide privacy for women to be exclusively around other women. They could take off their burqas, and work on whatever crafts they were trying to market and sell in a place that allowed them to come together. One of the proposals was for a women’s gym. Any gyms that did exist in Mazar-i-Sharif, women were not allowed to go there.
Meanwhile, what has Senator Miranda been doing for women? This kind of stuff:
Last legislative session, your opponent in the primary election, Catherine Miranda, voted in favor of HB 2284, which now permits the health department to inspect abortion clinics without a warrant. How do your views on reproductive health care differ from those of your opponent?
She has a clear anti-choice record, a clear anti-women’s reproductive health care record. She voted for 2284. She’s also voted for 2800, prohibiting state funding for abortion providers; 2384, prohibiting taxpayer funding for abortion providers; 2416, adding regulations for abortion providers, making it more difficult to get abortions. I think every time she’s had the opportunity on issues of choice, she’s been a clear anti-choice vote and a clear vote with the Republican Party.
Miranda voted for harassment of women through surprise inspections of abortion clinics and to defund family planning centers. Remember, they do a lot more than abortions in them. Again, here’s another Dem who wants to “save babies” but who doesn’t seem to understand that when women have effective birth control, the abortion rate plummets.
Vote for pro-choice Democrat Aaron Marquez for LD27. One final note: the only pro-choice Dem challenging an anti-choicer running under Clean Elections is Angela Cotera. Charlene Fernandez, Lisa Otondo, Martin Quezada, and Aaron are not and need contributions. Help them out!