I hate it — hate it — when I hear liberal groups talking about “women’s issues.” Please stop lumping me in to your stupid, sweeping stereotypes and implying that, just because I am a part of the gender demographic that composes approximately half of the world’s population, I automatically agree with you. I don’t. But that’s the appeal of continuing this utterly dumb “Republicans are waging a war on women” meme, I suppose — drumming up a false feeling of mass feminist solidarity and convincing the perhaps less-informed ladies of America that they have something they need to get outraged about.

Getting the full swing-state average-voter experience, I noticed this commercial on one of the closed-captioned television screens at the gym yesterday (by far my greatest exercise was in self-restraint, not taking off my sneaker and chucking it at the tv), but it doesn’t look like it’s available in an embeddable version online yet — you’ll have to follow the link to WaPo to watch.

A new ad from President Obama and the Democratic National Committee raises fears about Mitt Romney’s positions on reproductive rights. “I’ve never felt this way before, but it’s a scary time to be a woman,” says 30-something “Jenni.” “Mitt Romney is just so out of touch.” A female narrator chimes in: “Romney opposes requiring insurance coverage for contraception and Romney supports overturning Roe vs. Wade. Romney backed a bill that outlawed all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.” Jenni adds, “There’s so much to do. [W]e need to attack our problems, not a woman’s choice.”

It is most certainly and without a doubt not a scary time to be a woman. In fact, it’s probably one of the best times to be a woman in America, ever. Never before have women had so many available opportunities, choices, and independence — are we really going to subvert that independence by insisting that our gender entitles us to free stuff? “Romney opposes requiring insurance coverage for contraception.” I should very well hope so! Health care isn’t like free speech — it is the product of somebody else’s labor, and therefore nobody is entitled to it. If you’re going to make certain decisions of your own free will, ladies, you’d better be responsible for them and stop acting like you’re a victim who needs the government to protect you from your own judgment (talk about slippery slopes!). How much more demeaning can it get? And I realize that the abortion debate and Mitt Romney’s record therein is a much more involved can of worms, but Politifact rates the ad’s claims about Romney as “Pants on Fire”-worthy.

The “war on women” may very well be the most aggravatingly counterproductive meme the Democrats have come up with yet. Make it stop.

Update: Just kidding, I was wrong; the video is embeddable. Here it is: