Campaign season is here: almost all of the potential candidates for the US 2016 presidential race have announced their candidacy and have started making their rounds on speaking tours and media outlets. I, much like the rest of the country, served myself a bucket of popcorn in anticipation for the almost necessary mudslinging and twitter wars, content in the guilty pleasure in watching “politics” in its truest form. But for many others who have been watching, this 2016 presidential campaign has interrupted their morning news entertainment - it is no longer a spectator sport. We are invested and we are angry. Why am I angry? After years of observing the boxing matches that are DC politics, why would I be anymore shocked at their blows now? They have finally made it personal. As a hispanic woman in the US, Donald Trump’s word vomit and his GOP colleagues’ feeble attempts at separating themselves from those words has made me throw away the popcorn and pull out my pitchfork and torch. It is bad enough that Trump and the other Republican candidates have alienated themselves from the hispanic vote (17% of the total population) to a point of no return, but now it seems they want to throw the women’s vote out the door as well. Many of you may think this isn't exactly news, for the GOP has had a history of excluding the nation's minorities, but in the recent past I have seen attempts at rectifying this injustice. The Republican party has made conscious efforts to expand their constituency into these demographics, including a successful 10 million dollar initiative in 2013 to lure in latino voters. Just a few years ago I began turning my eyes to Marco Rubio (a Republican Florida Senator), who in his early days was a supporter for bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform. His moderate stance and cooperative attitude made him attractive to people like me, who aren't always comfortable throwing their full weight into one party or another. Rubio, like other candidates before him, has strayed from his original vision in favor of the Republican party’s vote and backed away from the immigration bill he proposed in favor of prioritizing border control ahead of clearer pathways to citizenship. I was disappointed to say the least but not too worried about the implications, that is until Donald Trump’s inflammatory language made immigration a key issue in this upcoming election. Now when the time has come for immigration to be at the forefront of political issues, the GOP candidates have more than disappointed me - they are dangling me over the edge. To make matters worse, Planned Parenthood (PP) is once again under attack by the GOP. On August 4, Republican senators proposed a bill to cut out federal funding for PP, which thankfully failed after the Democrat’s filibuster pushed the tally to 53 YEAs and 46 NAYs. For those of you who may not be aware, Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organization that provides reproductive health, maternal, and child services for women. The most obvious objection that Republicans have against the organization is that they provide abortions. Now I do not intend to attack the GOP’s views on abortion; I respect that many of them have religious beliefs that find the practice morally abhorrent. Nonetheless, what I cannot respect is the GOP’s apparent memory loss. It seems that the Senate Republicans have forgotten one very crucial fact: abortion is legal and has been in all 50 states since 1973’s Supreme Court landmark decision in Roe v. Wade. Their plans to defund PP won't change the fact that abortions are legal by federal ruling. However, it will affect the availability of affordable healthcare for women all across the nation, because PP is an organization that provides a multitude of health care services, not just abortions, such as mammograms and pap smears which are critical tests for screening of breast and cervical cancer. Of course, they can and will argue that these services can be received in many other health care institutions. Yet it’s clear that, as Obamacare pushes against frequent attacks from the Republican camp and even some Democrats, health care still has a long way to go before it can affordably provide all the services that women in the US need, especially if women continue to earn only a fraction of what men get paid. On one hand, I am incredibly disappointed and angry at the Republicans, but on the other hand, now that it's all out there I am thankful - thankful that Trump in all his unfiltered glory has made immigration a priority and that the Senate Republicans have revisited the controversy around Planned Parenthood because this time next year we have the power to finally put these two issues at rest. Whether it comes from the work of the GOP or the Democratic Party I hope that 2016 will serve to fix America’s immigration issue, not by building a wall (because we’re not in the 14th century and don’t live in castles) but by reforming the system to provide a clearer pathway to citizenship that fosters job growth and feeds the economy. Perhaps at last we as a nation can value women’s health and sexuality, because frankly as a hispanic woman in the US I can no longer laugh at the caricature of US politics - not when it so directly affects me and my community. So I will continue watching and waiting, hoping that the Republicans heed to the warnings because come Election Day, if the GOP hasn’t gotten their act together, you better believe that I and all the so-called “mexican rapists” and women will be voting and it won’t be in their favor. This article was written by Ana Cicenia. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Tirza Alberta