With the GOP Presidential primary candidates, this current reproductive rights flap started with Planned Parenthood, took a turn to a woman’s right to choose and now has gone full circle with their unanimous opposition to contraception whether its through the candidates statements or the stand up comedy of their ancient surrogates, one of whom advises women to keep their legs together by pressing an aspirin between their knees. WOW! No doubt about it. It’s the boy’s War On Women.
So ladies, gear up for a 50’s redux…18 years of chasing 10 kids around the house while papa flees the scene for the comfort of his workplace.
I want no misunderstanding here. Pregnancy is a hard slog, but women are of such courage and love, that, in the end, it’s all more than worth it for a beautiful baby girl or boy. But should the life-altering circumstance of pregnancy be a constant in the life of a woman who may not want 10 kids; who may only want two children, or maybe none?
Here’s a wonderful solution that wise pundits have offered up for decades to educate men about the dynamics of women’s reproductive choices. Let the man have the baby. Then revisit all of the idiocy they so steadfastly defend.
Physiologically, it will never be possible for a male to deliver a baby, but in the alternative, let’s gauge how much pain a women goes through in a delivery and develop a procedure to replicate that pain for men. Maybe modern medicine could duplicate the birth experience for men with the passing of a kidney stone in combination with threading a pencil through the urethra. Now, we’re getting somewhere. And let’s do it every year or so for 7 or 8 years or more. For a really authentic male reality show, add 9 months of nausea and other annoying, painful and sometimes life-threatening side effects such as hemorrhaging and preeclampsia, plus excessive weight gain in some cases. Even after the baby is born and taken home there remains the possibility of postpartum depression and problems reversing that weight gain.
That’s what Republican Presidential Primary candidate, Santorum wants women to do. Not just his wife, but all women. Because Rick knows best and his faith informs all of his secular reproductive decisions no matter that 99% of women have used contraceptives at some point in their lives. Apparently, depending on his mood, Mitt Romney agrees with Santorum on reproductive issues. On other occasions he shows a glimmer of common sense and respect for women.
We already know that Newt Gingrich sees women solely as objets d’sex so he has nothing to offer on the subject. As for Ron Paul, you may add his hatred of the federal government to death and taxes as the only things certain in life. Paul would hand all contraception decisions over to the states, overriding the definitive 1965 Supreme Court ruling on the issue, Griswold v. Connecticut. The court ruled the state’s ban on contraceptives to be an unconstitutional infringement on the right to marital privacy. In large measure the same right of privacy that locks Roe v. Wade into place, along with a half-dozen other constitutional guarantees.
I can’t imagine how four men can be so highly educated and experienced in life and still be so insensitive to the issues of true importance to women. I would counsel political caution. Simply put, there are more of them (women) than there are of you (men). The latest census counted 157 million ladies as compared to 153 million men in the United States.
There are also a higher percentage of women in college; 55% of students are women. Individual women are giving birth to about a third fewer babies than 35 years ago, the rate declining from 3.1 to 1.9. What should be most worrisome to politicians of all stripes is the fact that in the last presidential election, more women voted (66%) than men (62%).
So the numbers for the eventual Republican presidential nominee are getting increasingly unfriendlier. Minorities won’t vote Republican. Those poor people who manage to escape Republican attempts to keep them from the polls won’t vote Republican; Independents and the middle-class are likely to give Obama the edge and now with the emerging Republican War on Women, the group that really matters is running, not walking, to the Obama side of the equation.
Wise choice.
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