At Least We Would Know

It's been an odd six or eight months, watching those crazy kids to the south start to propose, debate, and pass laws that limit women's lives by limiting their reproductive choices.  It's been surreal watching the GOP candidates skittering on the edge of insanity over this topic.

Margaret Sanger stated that a woman's primary responsibility was to herself, not the state - this after watching her mother endure 18 pregnancies in 22 years.  Thing is, she said this almost a hundred years ago and US attitudes toward women are backward, still.  Sometimes I am just so thankful that I live in Canada except, well.... 

Here we go:  Mitt Romney says he supports birth control but doesn't seem to know how it works because he believes that human life begins at conception.  Newt Gingrich also says human life begins at conception which would outlaw many forms of birth control.  And not only does Rick Santorum want to limit access to birth control, he also thinks it's a "license to bring things into the sexual realm that are counter to the way things are supposed to be."  I wonder what me means by that.

Despite the figures that state that women overwhelmingly approve of birth control (97% of women have used it at one time or other), these candidates are against it. Women are, also, healthier for having birth control and so are babies.  Stripped of the exhaustion, health risks, and responsibility of non-stop pregnancy, women can become more effective and productive members of society.  All this is so well documented, I am not even going to bother citing it.  And it follows that if women and children are healthier and happier, men are healthier and happier.  Birth control makes life better for all of us.

So.  So what?  What?  What could these GOP hopefuls possibly be thinking?  That the dominant force in politics in the looney-tune right?  It's absolutely nuts, disappointingly backward, and downright evil.

And the best thing that could ever have happened to the moderate left. 

These GOP hopefuls are counting on women doing as they are told.  They are counting on women voting down party lines and accepting their attitudes.  They are counting on women being cowed by male centred intimidation and male dominated religious views.  They are counting on wives doing what they're told.

But I wonder how many women will slip into that voter's booth, slide the curtain across while winking at their pseudo-dominant husbands, and go ahead and vote for birth control, for human rights, and for a better world for all.  How many of them will vote for Obama?

I wonder.  Only time will tell.  But, in the interim, the more these GOP hopefuls jump around declaring the evil in birth control, the better.  Better than them hiding their real views and then trying to inflict them on the world like our prime minister did.  At least, women in the States know what they are voting for.