The Oxford English Dictionary defines “obscene” as something that is “offensive or disgusting by accepted standards of morality and decency.”

Accordingly, this is how I define obscene: that in 2012 we live in a country, the only one in the industrialized word, that empowers 456 Catholic Bishops, theoretically celibate, misogynistic men to dominate public discourse on how we manage the health of 150 million women in the United States?

Misogyny, a cultural hatred of girls and women because they are female, is defined by its placing of women in subordinate positions with limited access to power and decision making. There is no clearer description of the Catholic Church, or as we so visibly saw last week, Congress, it seems. There are no women in the Catholic Church Hierarchy and only 90 of the 536 seats in Congress are held by women. Together, these two organizations paint a pretty clear portrait of misogyny in action.

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Soraya Chemaly