In an August 23^rd opinion article published in The Greenville News http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013308240013, Karen Floyd the former chairwoman of the SC Republican Party decries the widening electoral gender gap and claims that the GOP isn’t anti-woman, just in need of more appealing messaging. She further opines that no Republican candidates supported banning birth control. However the proof of the Republican Party’s ongoing war on women is in the policy and the facts speak volumes. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in the first three months of 2013, 694 provisions that relate to reproductive health were introduced. And that’s not including a number of other measures which could make it harder for women to get birth control, cut women off from cancer screenings, or prohibit sex education programs that help prevent teen pregnancy. The great majority of these bills were passed by Republican dominated state legislatures.

Eight states have passed “personhood laws.” For the last 16 years Republican lawmakers in South Carolina have introduced personhood legislation according to Tell Them SC www.tellthemsc.org , “Personhood” is a political movement that seeks to outlaw all hormonal contraceptives on the grounds that these forms of birth control may interfere with a woman’s ovulation and may prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in a woman’s uterus. Members of this movement, including SC Senators Bright and Bryant consider any form of hormonal birth control to be the equivalent of an abortion despite medical evidence to the contrary. If personhood legislation becomes law in South Carolina it would outlaw:

• Hormonal birth control (like the Pill and IUDs)

• Emergency Contraception (even for victims of rape and incest)

• In-Vitro fertilization

• Life Saving research used to find cures for chronic disease and disabilities.

More ominously personhood legislation has the potential to criminalize natural miscarriages, violate the 1^st Amendment and the American value of religious freedom by codifying one religious viewpoint over another.

The Republican Party leadership’s problem isn’t that voters don’t know their positions – it’s that voters don’t support their positions. Similarly, the Republican Party didn’t have a problem turning voters out in 2012 – it had a problem finding enough voters who believe that women’s health care decisions should be made by politicians. The media didn’t create the public’s interest in women’s health issues in the last election – the majority of voters in this country are women, and they care about whether candidates believe they should be able to get cancer screenings, have access to birth control, and hold on to the ability to make their own medical decisions.

I find it ironic that Ms. Floyd espouses the Republican Party’s belief in smaller less intrusive government when the GOP party platform and their policies toward reproductive health clearly insert the government into the patient/physician relationship. The Blunt Amendment would have allowed employers to withhold insurance coverage for birth control and for any medical treatment they disapproved of.

In summary, I find Ms. Floyd’s proposition that if the GOP just dresses up their messaging women will be fooled into thinking that these oppressive policies are a positive. That’s sexist in the extreme. Women are smarter than that and they understand that unrestricted access to birth control and equal pay and protection in the workplace are vital to creating the best life possible. That’s why women are turning away from today’s GOP. You can put lipstick on a pig Ms. Floyd but the stench of manure is

still detectible.