Great article:
Why Right-Wingers' Hatred of Modern Women Is Going to Cost Them the Birth Control Battle (and a Whole Lot of Votes)
Conservatives are going wildly off-message when it comes to the fight over contraception.
The rights visceral impulse to shame women for being in control of their own sexuality is so overwhelming that they appear to be totally incapable of maintaining their usual message discipline. That's going to cost them the fight over contraception.
The polling: Overwhelmingly people say employers should provide their workers with insurance that covers birth control. 2-1 said yes. So 66% to 33%.
Rick Santorum, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, said, “One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is... the dangers of contraception in this country,
Last week, Santorum's fat-cat backer, Foster Fliess, made waves with his comment about how back in his day, “they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly.” If those women would just keep their legs closed, we wouldn't be having this discussion!
New Hampshire state rep Jeanine Notter, a Tea-Party legislator, claimed that birth control causes prostate cancer, and in Utah, Republican rep Bill Wright sponsored legislation “that would prohibit schools from teaching teens about contraception.”
The claim that this battle has nothing to do with shaming emancipated women simply holds no water at a time when Virginia is poised to become the third state to mandate that women seeking an abortion undergo a painful and invasive procedure compelling them to “see” the fetus they have already chosen to abort. Slate's Dahlia Lithwick noted that “under any other set of facts, that would constitute rape under state law,” but wingnuts like Dana Loesch responded that these women "had no problem having similar to a trans-vaginal procedure when they engaged in the act that resulted in their pregnancy."
Over the past three months pollsters have seen a dramatic, 18-point swing from Romney to Obama among unmarried women, and the president now leads the supposedly “moderate” contender by a stunning 65-30 margin among that group. When it comes to this bizarre fight over contraception, social conservatives are proving to be their party's own worst enemies.
Why Right-Wingers' Hatred of Modern Women Is Going to Cost Them the Birth Control Battle (and a Whole Lot of Votes) | Gender | AlterNet