Stop talking about birth control. That was the key message from some of the most prominent leaders of America’s anti-abortion movement, speaking Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. During a talk on how to advance the movement through messaging, an all-female panel discussed the Obama administration’s birth-control-coverage mandate and suggested that the best way to defeat it is by calling it an “abortion mandate.”

At CPAC, some top conservative minds (stay with me here) got together to try to decide how to defeat the previously not terribly controversial law mandating insurance cover contraception. Their conclusion? Conservatives should just lie about it Well, of course. Birth control is quite popular with the public, even among Catholics whose bishops are very, very angry about it. So if you're going to fight a law that's popular and uncontroversial, of course the thing to do is just make shit up wholesale. Hey, let's call it "abortion" instead! Let's call it an "abortion mandate"! Yeah, that's the ticket. Not quite as catchy as "baby death panels" but trust us, we'll work on it.

So soon no doubt we'll be hearing a carefully polished message from the conservative brain trust, who will be making the case that The Pill is really preemptive abortion, and that pretty much everything else is also preemptive abortion, and why do you hate Jesus by allowing time-travel abortions? If they even bother to make that argument, that is: More likely, they'll just lie outright and say Obama is trying to force people to have abortions, period.

The good news is that they recognize they're fighting a losing battle here. America is just fine with birth control, birth control isn't going anywhere, and if a few old men in funny hats want to get uptight about that then we'll shuffle some money around so they can keep feeling better about themselves. The bad news is, as usual, that now that they've recognized they're on the losing side of the issue, they're now at work trying to figure out how to best lie about it to the public. Conservatism!

