Junior government and politics major

“If there was a war on women, I think they won.”

That’s Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, apparently communicating the view of fellow Republican lawmakers on the subject. Appearing recently on Meet The Press, Paul dismissed the “war” — a political catchphrase referring to the full menu of Republican policies aimed at curbing female health and reproductive rights — pointing out that, “You know, the women in my family are incredibly successful. I have a niece at Cornell vet school, and 85 percent of the young people there are women.”

What’s that? You don’t see a connection between Rand Paul’s niece’s academic success and policies circumscribing female reproductive rights? Neither do I.

To be fair, Paul was drawing on a trend toward greater female enrollment in higher education — a trend that’s completely irrelevant to women’s reproductive health — as a counterpoint to the charge that women are under assault. His remarks are part of a larger GOP strategy of misrepresenting criticism leveled against its social policies. On a weirder note, former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee recently said Democrats were telling women “they cannot control their libido” without government assistance.

Implicit in Huckabee’s libido comment is the suggestion that any sexual impulse experienced by a woman not prepared for pregnancy needs to be squashed. In his view, Democrats think women cannot resist their worst temptations and believe the government needs to step up to save them. Evidently, the thought of purposeful just-for-pleasure sex is beyond the realm of comprehension.

Contrary to Huckabee’s skewed perspective, I do believe women can control their libidos. I also believe, however, that women should be afforded the contraceptives allowing them to exercise their sexuality at their own discretion, no matter their income level. And despite any GOP reservations, respecting women’s control of their bodies entails granting access to abortion as well.

While the Democrats’ tactic of collapsing all right-wing social policies into a rhetorical war fought against a monolithic mass of single-minded women might be self-serving, Republican policies have indeed harmed women. In fact, GOP lawmakers recently curtailed access to abortion in Texas by requiring clinics to secure permission to admit from uncooperative local hospitals. Also recently, Republicans in the Senate filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in a case deciding the fate of the contraceptive mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, encouraging the court to strike contraception provisions from the law. On the state and federal levels, restricting female reproductive rights remains a common thread.

Sexual freedom and reproductive choice aren’t all that’s at stake — reproductive rights shape female opportunities in the workplace as well.

In her 2012 Georgetown University Law Center research paper making an Equal Protection case for reproductive freedom, now-D.C. Circuit Court Judge Nina Pillard and co-writer Naomi Mezey argued that “many employers assume that to be a mother is to be a primary caregiver with correspondingly less job commitment than a man, who is presumed to be an unencumbered ‘ideal worker.’” Thus, limiting women’s access to contraception and undermining their ability to choose whether to have children could reinforce “broader patterns of discrimination against women as a class of presumptive breeders rather than reliable breadwinners and citizens.”

Considering that Republican policies threaten women’s sexual freedom, reproductive choice and economic equality, their duplicitous public relations defense doesn’t come as a shock. But the stakes are far too high to let it go unchallenged.

Charlie Bulman is a sophomore government and politics major. He can be reached at cbulmandbk@gmail.com.