Maybe the 2012 election season should be renamed "Biology 2012: Reintroduction to Basic Human Reproduction," with mandatory, nationwide enrollment. As we scuffle our way into Super Tuesday, with 419 Republican delegates at stake, it seems the political focus is on women, and not in the typically scandal-ridden way. The question is how it will affect GOP voters, particularly women.

Though Rush Limbaugh kind of apologized for calling Sandra Fluke a "slut," unclear is whether he included in his apology his very revealing and misinformed request that if the public was going to pay for her contraception, she should be required to post video of herself having sex online. Regardless, sponsor AOL joined seven other former sponsors in pulling advertising. As none of the candidates has condemned Limbaugh's spewage, will female Republicans still show up for them? More important, will they show up for them in November?

Of course the hullabaloo over access to contraception amid the seeming lack of understanding of how it works is not the only attack on women being waged by the right. A Wisconsin legislator has introduced a bill that would include "nonmarital parenthood" as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.

Start cutting out your scarlet letters, we'll need plenty. While the wording of the statute reads gender-neutralish, the aim is clear from the last line of the proposed language mandating: "Educational and public awareness materials and programming that emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect and the role of fathers in the primary prevention of child abuse and neglect."

So if the children resulting from "nonmartial parenthood" live with their fathers, is nonmartial parenthood no longer abusive? Even if the mother is not in the picture? What do you say about this one, GOP candidates? What's that I hear? Sounds a lot like crickets.

Back to our Biology 2012 course materials. If we decrease access to contraception, rates of "nonmarital parenthood" will increase. It's simple. And the GOP policy has laid the blame squarely on the doorstep of women, making conception a one-woman show.

There has been no name calling of the presumed sexual partners of the Georgetown women Limbaugh lambasted; they have not been mentioned in the discussion. So all these "immoral" women are having all this imagined sex seemingly considered in relishing detail, for which they shouldn't have contraception, and then therefore are having these "nonmarital" children with whom?

I suppose boys will be boys. If that wasn't the case, perhaps one of you might have raised this issue. Their silence only further demonstrates the need for Biology 2012, Lesson 1: It Takes Two to Form a Zygote.

The policies and viewpoints being espoused by Republicans are calculatedly, derogatorily and vehemently punitive of women for the mere basis of biology. Will Republican women care? Perhaps we'll find out Tuesday.

Link:
Will GOP View on Women Matter?