On Jan. 23, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee attempted to clarify why the GOP is not waging a “war on women” during the Republican National Committee Meeting. 

Huckabee tried to address that the real villains are the Democrats, who “want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government.”

Now, Huckabee also stated that the war they are fighting is “not against women, but for women.”

Hearing this from Huckabee makes me think that he is not aware of what is really affecting women, but he is not alone in his thinking. There have been countless instances of this groupthink among Republicans in the past few years.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum said that contraception is unacceptable and is a way for women to engage in more sexual activity.

If women cannot use contraception, then what about abortion? It too is morally frowned upon, according to former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin. He said that if a woman is raped, her body can stop her from becoming pregnant so an abortion would not be needed.

There was also the comment Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney made about wanting to “get rid” of Planned Parenthood, which helps many women, especially poorer ones, receive basic health care, contraception, and information about their sexual health.

I don’t see the fight for women anywhere. All I see are a bunch of men wanting to tell me and my fellow women what to do with our bodies without asking us what we want to do.

Providing women with the health care services they need isn’t a government handout, it’s a service that everyone pays for through taxes. So why shouldn’t our money be invested towards better health care treatment or even allow women to choose what is best for their bodies?

Since 2012, it seems that one of the missions of the Republican Party is to find all the ways possible to control a woman’s reproductive system while also preaching the values of small government. How can a party say they are for small government while also telling  a person what they can and can’t do with their own body?

They can’t.

People are in charge of their own bodies, not the government, and certainly not a bunch of old male politicians.

Just recently on Jan. 29, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment that said that no taxpayer money will go to funding abortions, except in cases of incest or rape. Abortions are already not covered by Medicaid, so why go through all this work of passing a piece of legislation when it’s already in effect?

It really saddens me to see more and more restrictions being imposed on women, especially women with low incomes. If a woman already has a struggle to receive contraception, what about when she has an unexpected pregnancy?

As women, we are the ones responsible for caring for our bodies and our reproductive system. We are also the ones whose life can change with an unexpected pregnancy, but the right to be sexually active shouldn’t be taken away from us.

We shouldn’t be prevented or condemned from being sexually active. We certainly are not helpless when it comes to knowing what our bodies need based off the decisions we made.

To me, it seems pretty obvious to see who is for women, and it’s certainly not the Republican Party.

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