It’s Not About Women

You know, the reality is that the Republican “War on Women” is rhetorical nonsense. Yes, Republican men have issues with their world view on women, and yes, the Republican Party is becoming less and less attractive to women voters, but I am here to put forth that women should not take all of these frontal assaults on their health and well-being personally, because it isn’t personal…it’s politics.

 

In actual fact, the “Republican War on Women” is nothing more than political pandering to the right-wing evangelicals amongst them. People who don’t care about the economy – they have money – don’t care about unemployment – they have jobs – but dearly care about what they read in their Bibles and how they and their pastors interpret those words so that they make sense in the 21^st century.

Republicans couldn’t care less about a woman’s vagina. They do care about power and about how to remain in power in the face of a growing Democratic majority.

So we have created this drama where Republicans feign a concern for a poor pregnant woman’s health and safety in a clinic that offers abortion services, and where women feign moral outrage at what they are doing to the availability of health services and an adequate number of reproductive choices

The latter is a very compelling argument, but falls on its face because, when it comes down to it, Republicans don’t care a whit about women’s health. They care about retaining power.

Maybe I give these people more credit than they are due, but the writing on the wall is sure and certain for the future of HB 2 which will be passed by the Senate by Friday this week and sent to Governor Perry’s desk to be signed into law: key provisions of it will be overturned in federal court, as has already happened in several states of both northern and southern persuasion.

The remedy (anti-choice legislation) so blatantly does not fit the illness (unwanted pregnancies), as observed time and time again by federal judges. No, my guess is that most of these legislators who are for HB 2 know full-well that it will eventually be overturned in federal court.

A win-win situation for them.

They can say to their evangelicals that they did what was asked, and gosh darn it the godless liberal federal judges stopped them from doing God’s Work.

Democrats can say whatever they want about why Republicans are concentrating on these issues rather than unemployment and the economy, can drum up any rhetoric they want to, but there is only one truth here: Republicans want to stay in power and this is their only perceived vehicle to accomplish this goal.

Ultimately, it’s about power. It’s not about women.