XDA

The Democratic water carriers at the New York Times are featuring this month's meme: The completely apocryphal Republican War on Women. Here's columnist Maureen Dowd adding heat without light.

The attempt by Republican men to wrestle American women back into chastity belts has not only breathed life into President Obama, it has roused and riled Hillary. And that could turn out to be the most dangerous thing the wildly self-destructive G.O.P. leaders have done.

In some kind of insane bout of mass misogyny, Republicans are hounding out the women voters — including Republicans and independents — who helped them gain control of the House in 2010.

How is a principled stand for freedom of employers, including religious institutions other than the churches themselves, to say what they will or will not provide in benefits, including health care coverage, trying to "wrestle American women back into chastity belts" or "mass misogyny"? This must be some of that fish/bicycle sort of logic. I admit that I can't follow it.

Here's the truth: Wanting to ban contraception is not now (and it has never been for at least 50 years) a plank of the Republican party. It can not be done in light of Griswold v. Connecticut even if the Republicans wanted to, which they don't.

This vapid repetition of charges without basis or evidence is not entertaining. But there's more.

Women have watched a chilling cascade of efforts in Congress and a succession of states to turn women into chattel, to shame them about sex and curb their reproductive rights. They’ve seen the craven response of G.O.P. candidates after Limbaugh branded a law student wanting insurance coverage for birth control pills, commonplace for almost five decades, as a “prostitute” and “slut.”

Who's trying "to turn women into chattel"? What state is? Who or what state is trying to "curb their reproductive rights"? Oh, it's Rush Limbaugh calling Ms. Fluke a slut and the lack of prostrate apologies from the Republican candidates for what someone else said (Was Ms. Dowd this up in arms, hysterically overstating what's happening and calling the President "craven" for refusing to apologize for or denounce the actions of his million dollar doner to his campaign PAC, Bill Maher's calling Sarah Palin a c*** and a tw**? I must have missed that).

American women have suddenly realized that their emancipation in the 21st century is not as secure as they had assumed. On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, a Republican, had the gall to say this, justifying his support for a bill designed to humiliate women getting abortions by penetrating them with a wand to take a picture: “Every invasive procedure has an informed consent requirement.” What he really meant is that when abortion is an option, informed consent should require an invasive procedure.

Wait, isn't scraping or sucking the fetus out of the womb necessarily an invasive process? I'm hopelessly confused here.

Of course transvaginal ultrasounds are routinely given to almost all of those seeking to have an abortion, and the only thing the Virginia bill did (which bill did not designate what sort of ultrasound procedure was used) was to make the results of the ultrasound be shown to the woman getting the abortion. I guess reality doesn't matter when you're in high dudgeon over an entirely imaginary war being waged against you.

Along with Rick Santorum’s Taliban views, Mitt Romney suggested in an interview on Tuesday with a St. Louis TV station that to help balance the federal budget he would eliminate Planned Parenthood funding: “We’re going to get rid of that.”

Which of Santorum's views are like the Taliban's? I thought he was a Catholic? More confusion on my part.

With at least a 1.3 Trillion dollar deficit per year for the past four years, and for as far into the future as the eye can see, we're obviously going to have to cut something-- do a lot of cutting, in fact. Why is cutting government spending on the primary abortion provider in the country all of a sudden waging war on women? There is nothing sancrosanct about Planned Parenthood. Certainly it's not held in high regard by all women. And wait, isn't it the policy of the United States that the government will not fund abortions based solely on inconvenience? Has that law, the Hyde Amendment, I think it's called, been repealed? (Well, close, but President Obama issued an Executive Order saying it's still good law to make Bart Stupak feel better about his betrayal of his solemnly held, pro-life beliefs).

The thing Ms. Dowd misses here (and the Democrats in general miss) is that just because it's a right, doesn't mean the government, or anyone other than yourself, has to pay for it. And having a difference of visions about rights in that light is not anti-women. It's not anti-any group. It's pro-freedom and responsibility.

Who could be against that?

Labels: Maureen Dowd; Republican War on Women Smear