No reason for women to vote Republican

Maybe it is my perspective, or that pesky Y chromosome, but for the life of me I cannot figure out why any woman would consider voting Republican.

With the party's swing to the beyond-far-right on so called "women's issues," it is really becoming inconceivable. The party of family values has become the party of "forcible" rape, and, in the meantime, is whittling away any of its remaining moral high ground. Let me illustrate:

It wasn't a few weeks ago that the bloviating moron Todd Akin decided that, based on nothing resembling fact or thought, women who are "legitimately" raped might by magic or force of will or uterine pixie dust prevent themselves from becoming pregnant at their attacker's hands; Mr. Akin, later, artfully tried to avoid the backlash justly caused by his pre-middle school understanding of human anatomy by referring to his opponent, Senator Claire McCaskill, as a "dog."

And yet, the backlash never really came - surely, the media and the Democrats got on Akin's case, yet the GOP has yet to visibly condemn or disavow him, save in a broad "this may cost us some votes" kind of sense, let alone bashfully withdraw him from consideration as an affront to human decency. And that is because, like it or not, the GOP is the Todd Akin party.

As the Huffington Post has reported, there are at least 12 GOP senate candidates with identical views on abortion as Mr. Akin's. I repeat; there are at least 12 senate candidates who believe that it is better for a woman to die rather than to have an abortion and that a woman ought have no right to control her uterus after a rape.

There is a sick sort of analogy to be made between the crime and the proposed regulation of the aftermath, but I'll leave that to you.

What is more, some of these people who, in any other sane country, would not be allowed out of the house, let alone in the legislature, having said things as bad if not worse as Akin. Joe Walsh, running in Illinois, said that exceptions for the "health of the mother," as he suspiciously put it, are nothing more than "a tool for abortions of any time or for any reason." Never mind the complaints from the medical community - notoriously distrusted by conspiracy theorists and the fact-averse. Last week, Richard Mourdock, a Senate candidate in the state of Indiana suggested that a pregnancy resulting from a rape was God's will.

I could go on, but I'm getting too depressed.

"These cannot be representative of the party," you cry. Surely the establishment of the GOP would never allow, for example, a plank of their party's platform to call for a Constitutional amendment banning abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother

Except that they did that on August 21st, at their convention, with no apparent show of shame.

The convention also nominated a man, Mitt Romney, as their presidential candidate - also apparently without shame, if with a little repressed reluctance.

You might know Mitt Romney as the trailblazing feminist who once, as governor of Massachusetts, hired some women he picked out of a binder. Never mind the fact that, after an early bump during his governorship, hiring rates for women in the Massachusetts state government were back down to the obscenely low average of 21 percent by the end of his term. No, Mitt wants you to know that he cares for women, too.

You might have trouble convincing Peggie Hayes of that, though. As Vanity Fair reported, she knows Mitt pretty well. In 1983, she even had him over for a visit, when he, in his official capacity as bishop of the Massachusetts stake of the Mormon Church, insisted upon threat of excommunication that she give up her as yet unborn child to the church for adoption. Ms. Hayes was a single mother with one 3 year old already - whom Mitt, it seems, was less interested in - and her lifestyle did not fit with Mitt and the Church's vision of a healthy family.

Suddenly, Mitt's theory in that debate, that the only way to reduce gun violence is to promote two parent families, doesn't seem quite as innocuous.  

I opened this article wondering how women could vote for the GOP, but seeing the lack of compassion, the Akinization, of the party, I might be better off wondering how anyone can.