It is almost hilarious watching Republicans giving up trying to contain the gaffes of their family crazy uncles inside the post-Tea Party “big tent.” Yeah, the ones who keep switching the television to the braying blabber of Fox News. Remember all-too-recently when “mainstream” Republicans tried to purge Rep. Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin (R-Mo.)? With Tea Party Senate wannabe Richard Mourdock (R-Ind.), even Bishop Mitt, the party standard-bearer, is embracing their latest extreme “no choice” crazy uncle.

I can’t think of a more polarizing or personal issue than a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. One would think in the nearly forty years since Roe v. Wade, a woman’s right to choose to take charge of her own body would have become settled law. If anything, no issue has divided Americans more. Funny thing is, the noisy anti-choice combatants aren’t participants in the more visceral aspects of their agenda. They want to fast-forward through the “enabling act,” the morning sickness, cravings for ice cream and pickles, the angst on whether her clothes will ever fit the same, to be able to pass out the “It’s a boy/girl!” bad cigars. They’ll disappear again until college graduation and the wedding reception.

I try not to scratch the decreasing number of functioning follicles on my noggin too hard pondering the illogic of male conservative politicians without the required reproductive organs, and the batty Sharron “Turn Lemons Into Lemonade” Angle grandmas wanting to turn back their biological clocks way too many time zones for a writeup in the Guinness Book of World Records..

Just shy of two weeks before Election Day, conservative Republican extremists are putting a strange twist to a late-sixties flashback “let my freak fly” fling, albeit without a Woodstock “free love” tie dye shirt, a bottle of Ripple, and skipping a lot of haircuts. Battered G.O.P. presidential candidate Mitt Romney tries to tack hard to the “center”, in his “say anything” drive to snag votes to make wifey Ann’s six-figure Dressage “therapy” horse the first Portico pony in a century. One can even see the yanked choke chain marks on uber-conservative running-mate Rep. Paul Ryan’s geeky P-90x workout neck in the “new” iteration of the G.O.P. campaign line.

In the faux “moderation” of the Party of the Lincoln Navigator, it may seem that they only want “reasonable” incremental restrictions on a woman’s right to control her own body. Their outspoken crazy uncles, such as “no exceptions for rape or incest” Mourdock, and the even crazier mutterings of loony Rep. Joe “take your chances, ladies, even if it kills you” Walsh (R-Ill.), however demonstrate the radical extremes of their agenda. No abortion. Ever. (Except if your political ambitions could be hindered by a pregnant mistress.) They’re giving “armchair gynecologists” a bad name.

No matter when we think “life” begins, damned few of us will ever face the innately personal angst that comes with ending a problem pregnancy. No one is forcing anyone to have an abortion or use contraceptives. For all the Tea Bag whining about “freedom,” why are they so fanatically opposed to it for women being responsible for their own bodies?

Freedom to choose. For the women we love.



