Jeff Ward: Disdain for Women Is GOP's Death Knell

If I had a daughter and she gave me just two choices, I’d advise her to take up stripping before seeing her become a member of the Republican Party.

I cannot understand why any self-respecting woman would willingly join the GOP—or the Catholic Church, for that matter. Though I will defend anyone’s God-given right to make bad decisions to my death, the GOP's unofficial war on women baffles me.

When I previously wrote about , and , I was trying to tackle the more-subtle ways our culture demeans women by reducing them to the sum of their body parts.

But yikes! Having lived through the Women’s Lib and ERA era, I never thought I’d see the day when conservatives would wage an outright war on women. And it all started with the presidential contender whose highest aspiration is to impose Catholic Sharia Law.

So much for that GOP mantra of less government!

“It’s (contraception) not OK because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be,” Rick Santorum is quoted on the ABC News website and about a billion other sources. “They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also procreative.”

Ah yes! The Barefoot and Pregnant Baby Factory argument. I don’t know what’s more shocking, the bizarre things that come out of Santorum’s mouth or that a woman was actually willing to marry him.

And don’t try to defend him by claiming he’s clinging to his Catholic faith, because religious opposition to contraception isn’t rooted in any moral truth so much as it’s rooted in a centuries-old disdain for women that starts with the Christian creation story.

Some silly woman had the temerity to eat from the tree of knowledge, and that sent the whole thing to hell in a hand basket. How do you come back from that one?

The Catholic Church’s opposition to contraception is nothing more than a bunch of single old men intent on telling women what’s best for them. Should there be consequences for having sex? You bet—for women!

This whole birth control comedy came to a head when our Anti-Christ President issued a mandate forcing religious institutions to cover contraceptives in their employee health plans, despite the Religious Right's obvious objection.

While I can understand the conservative desire to defend the unborn fetus, protecting the unconceived child? Republicans are willing to take care of you until you’re born—then you’re on your own!

Which brings us to the story of 30-year-old Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, who tried to testify before a Republican congressional hearing on the birth control mandate, but was barred from doing so.

In fact, no woman was granted the privilege of speaking at that hearing. Who needs to hear from some silly female student attending the nation’s 14th-ranked law school, anyway?

After she was invited to address Democratic House members, Fluke underscored the need for equal treatment of women’s health issues, especially for low-income women, and argued in favor of the President’s contraceptive policy.

Enter the misogynistic master of mayhem who makes Rick Santorum look like Mr. Rogers. Conservative radio talk show host opened his tirade by chiding Fluke for wanting to have sex at the taxpayers’ expense.

The first problem with Rushbo’s argument is that Georgetown is a private university, which means we’d never be on the hook for any student’s extracurricular activities.

Second, if you doubt that the oldest of all double standards still exists, we do pay for old men to have sex, at least on a technicality, because Medicare covers Viagra if it's prescribed for non-ED purposes. Just be sure to call your doctor for an erection lasting more than four hours.

I’m sure Rush remembers Viagra. It’s the drug they found in his luggage prescribed under someone else’s name.

Please don’t even try to tell me that all that Viagra doled out under Medicare Part D in 2007 and 2008 was some sort of health panacea while preventing pregnancy isn’t a health issue. God forbid a woman should have control over her own body. Which would you rather pay for, the pill or the child?

Continuing with his “impeccable” logic, Rush went on to conclude that anyone who wants to be paid to have sex must be a “slut” and a “prostitute,” and they should recompense the taxpayers by posting online videos of their sexual encounters. Say, what?

I don’t know what scares me more. The fact that this blowhard has a forum or that four separate women agreed to marry him.

Though it was fun to watch Rush fold like a cheap suit when faced with the ensuing advertiser and affiliate fallout, I think we have got to give him credit for so clearly stating what some Republicans were already thinking but too smart to say out loud.

No married woman should use contraceptives because their only purpose in life is to produce children, and any single woman who uses birth control has to be a “slut.” Even after his on-air non-apology, Rush rambled on ad nauseam about Fluke wanting to have sex “all the time.”

And this, folks, officially marks the end of the Karl Rove inspired conservative movement. It’s all over but the shouting. They lost the presidency to a black man. They lost the battle against gay marriage. The occupy movement scares the heck out them and their obstructionist legislative strategy has failed.

With nowhere left to turn, conservatives went after women and, as we all know, any political group that takes up that pastime is doomed to extinction.

Oh! They’ll hang on kicking and screaming for some time, but with these concerted and bizarre attacks on contraception, all the Right Wingers did was prove what we’ve known all along—it’s all about wealthy old white men.

Thanks, Rush! I couldn’t have written a better script myself.