The Women's Vote makes all the difference!

Paul Beaty/AP   Tammy Duckworth and husband Byran Bowlsbey and supporters election night

Reproductive rights won on election night in America! A decisive women's vote help propel pro-choice President Obama to victory. The gender gap in the vote was a whooping 18 points, even bigger than the 12 point gap in 2008.

But it wasn't just the White House where pro-choice women roared back with their vote against an attack on reproductive freedom. Two Republican candidates for the Senate who appeared to be on track to election were derailed when they couldn't help themselves from revealing their true feelings about pregnancies that result from rape--either impossible or "god's will." Not only were they defeated, other anti-choice candidates went down with them.

The GOP stand on abortion is hollow at the center

Thinking cap

The inference that the Romney-Ryan camp has the moral high ground regarding abortion is baloney. Their tacked-on exceptions that make abortion allowable in cases of rape and incest belie their stance that preserving life itself is the crucial factor. One can include the exception to "save the life of the mother," in this analysis, but rape and incest? That doesn't fly.

If the purpose of opposing abortion is to "save the life of the unborn,"--how does the poor soul conceived through rape or incest, or both, count for less? He or she didn't do the rape, commit the incest. Innocent little sperm cells and an ova got together on a date with fate with nary a thought about whether it was a good "idea" or not.

Akin, GOP to women: We are in charge of your bodies, no exceptions for rape

Lorraine

The current rage over rape and abortion set in motion by the incredibly inane comment of Todd Akin, GOP Senate candidate in Missouri, has set us to thinking about our own adamantly pro-choice position: a woman's body is her own and it is her own to decide if she will or will not carry a fertilized egg to term, that is, have the baby.

Akin's ignorance has upped the debate over whether abortion is ever palatable to some, because all he really did is state what true anti-choice zealots believe: that all and any abortion (and that includes the Morning-After Pill and IUDs) methods, regardless of the timing, are Go-directly-to-hell wrong.