I think I get it. It’s a 50 year old grudge. They’re still mad about the Pill. The birth control pill turned the power game upside down more than 50 years ago and some people are still honked off about it.  Reliable woman-controlled contraception changed many things.  The Pill became forever linked to the sexual revolution, women’s liberation, cultural change, even consumer activism. All the things some people wish they could reverse.

As the Republican presidential campaign continues its jaw-dropping mission to control women’s bodies it’s clear that one way the hard right would take this country back is to drag women back a half century.

If you weren’t around to remember, ask your mother or grandmother what it was like after the Pill put women in charge of their bodies. They didn’t have to leave birth control up to the man who promised, “Trust me, I’ll take care of it.”

Not anymore. Women took control. Discreetly.  Your man didn’t need to know, or your mother, or the church.

A woman in charge of her future could plan her life, develop a career, start up a rock band, finish med school.  She could decide when or whether to have children. She could enjoy sex. For another pre-Pill reminder,  watch Mad Men.

In her book When Everything Changed, The History of American women from 1960 to the present, Gail Collins quotes the Economist magazine as crediting the Pill for being one invention that historians a thousand years from now will say defined the Twentieth Century.

In 2010 we celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Pill, confident that reliable birth control was taken care of. Today’s young women could feel assured that reproductive choices were “like the air and water, simply there when you need them,” writes  Gloria Feldt in her book No Excuses, about women and power.

But apparently some weren’t celebrating, but brooding, waiting for their chance to pounce and show women who’s boss.

Our current attackers are not all crusty old guys, the fools who think sexist jokes are funny. Some are young enough to be Phyllis Schlafly’s grandsons.  But their message is the same – that women, the poor dears, are simply incapable of knowing what’s best for their bodies.

The feverish Rick Santorum would get rid of abortion, birth control, prenatal testing and amniocentesis. Who knows what he’ll go after next. Virginia legislators pushed by the governor tried to force women to have an intrusive vaginal ultrasound prior to an abortion. Against her will. Whether she wants it or not. Non-consensual penetration of the vagina or, at worst -  in the case of Virginia – state rape. At best, politicians wanting to play doctor.

Former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder said “If you had told me when I was in law school birth control would be a debate in 2012 I would have thought you were nuts.”

Fortunately women started talking back. In Virginia they organized a silent protest, staring down state legislators going to vote against women. And Gov. Vaginal Ultrasound backed off.  Activists in Ohio labeled their anti-women Republicans “masters of the Uterus.” Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney demanded “Where are the women?” and led a walkout to protest a male-only panel dealing with contraception.

What’s seldom mentioned is that the Pill not only prevents an unwanted pregnancy but helps protect against uterine and ovarian cancer. It’s used to control endometriosis. It lessens migraines. And in its early years it turned women into their own health advocates. Concerned about the side affects from the heavy estrogen dose women pressured manufacturers to adjust the dosage. And they did. And women realized they had power as consumers.

Well, all of this has just been too much for too long for some people, mostly men, I’m sorry to say. Powerful women are obviously a menace to society and must be stopped.

That is our challenge then, for modern women and men to resist these 19^th century throwbacks. If we don’t, we will leave a legacy for our grandchildren that will cause more pain and suffering than any whopping national debt.

This new concern about our electronic addiction and how we should temper the tweets, take a Facebook fast, is an idea that doesn’t take much prompting for me to friend. Of course, my generation doesn’t need as much encouragement to unplug.

I wear a watch. I read books on paper. I do love my smart phone and would like to find a way to rationalize the purchase of an iPad.  Yet, some people think I’m terribly old fashioned for holding onto my CD collection.

Still, I do understand the seduction of the little screen and how sometimes you need to break free and tune out, turn off, go find a whale.

Especially on a cold bright morning when rain is around the corner and soon to obscure the ocean. And when the word has been out for weeks that the whales are back and you’re just getting around to driving out to the beach.

Every winter just knowing that the whales are nearby makes me happy.  I imagine their huge gray graceful selves doing a dark underwater ballet as they silently slide along our coast on the way to Mexico’s warm spa.

You can go on the internet and see whales frolicking in the ocean. You can listen to the distinct clucking and squealing noises peculiar to the gray whale and the song of the humpback.  But a laptop doesn’t deliver the up-close smell of the ocean or the light touch  of the winter sun.

The wind was whipping around the rocky bluffs of Bodega Head, giving the gulls and pelicans a giddy ride as a small shivering group of hopefuls steadied our binoculars and waited.

The winter ocean is pretty thrilling when it’s bringing in a storm and the water goes from calm to churning. But were those white caps or whale spouts? Was that a shadow of a cloud or a giant’s dark back?

Our computer obsession is not good for our health we are told. Experts worry that Facebook makes people feel more alienated than connected. We need to take a break from all those beeps and alerts. I agree. How can a person daydream if they’re always plugged in?

We’ve heard these moderation lectures before. In the days before computers took over multi-taskers were encouraged to develop a healthy balance between work and play.  Remember the days of take-time-to-smell-the-flowers?

I’m kind of old school media. I read newspapers, listen to the radio. We have a landline phone in the house. I give journals to people for birthday presents. I write down dates and appointments on a calendar in the hall.

In the book The Information Diet, author Clay Johnson talks about our unhealthy habit of gobbling information and news. With just about everything you want available on the internet, he urges people to be more selective about what we take in and to employ more conscious consumption.

Certainly we all know people who are addicted to their computers. Yet just by looking at Facebook it’s apparent from all the photos of real sunsets and dreamy snowfalls that people do occasionally get away from their gadgets.

We didn’t see any whales that morning. That was okay. Last summer I saw a bunch of humpbacks in the Atlantic from a whale boat out of Gloucester Massachusetts. Those east coast whales came so close to the boat we could wink at each other.

I know our whales are out there, somewhere between us and the horizon. Moby Dick doesn’t have to be available on demand. We have our ways of interacting.

Planned Parenthood has come up with a big pink sign that it plants next to Republican campaign placards. It says, “Women are Watching.”

There’s been plenty for women to keep an eye on.  The Republican chant to take this country back apparently includes taking back some basic reproductive rights for women.

We’ve heard it before from the Republican front. They don’t trust a woman to choose what’s best for herself and her family when it comes to baby-making. They seem to think that that family planning should be practiced only by God.

If you are a woman and you are watching you might wonder what century does this backward brotherhood come from? What country are we living in? If you are a woman living in a so-called backward country that looks to America as a model of freedom, you might be asking, what’s going on, sisters?

Of course the abortion debate is standard Republican rhetoric. One candidate brings it up and they all follow like a chorus of neighborhood dogs barking at the garbage truck. And enjoying it as much.

Oh good, here comes abortion, let’s all get crazy.

But this time around they added in this unbelievably dumb idea that birth control is a bad thing. Rick Santorum was clearly the alpha dog on this one, declaring that contraception is “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Wait a minute, Rick. Think back to your sex ed years, although maybe you had parental permission to skip class. Doing things in a sexual realm without contraception is a license to cause unwanted pregnancies and invite terrible diseases including AIDS.

Santorum says it should be okay for states to make birth control illegal. And how would he do this? With diaphragm detectives, pill police, a raid on the rubber aisle at Rite-Aid?

It’s tempting to turn it into a bad joke except that being the  champion of non recreational sex plays well with the Christian Conservative extremist vote. And yes, I know that bloc includes women.  But for women who believe in keeping the government out of the bedroom and ob-gyn clinics, this patriarchal playlist is disturbing.

After the New Hampshire primary Cecile Richards, head of Planned Parenthood, told Rachel Maddow the Republican primary is “absolutely a race to the bottom for women, where they are trying to outdo themselves on who would be the worst president for women.”

The Republicans have long tried to paint Planned Parenthood as abortion central, ignoring that its services include safe sex counseling, cancer screenings and preparation for pregnancy.  They would eliminate Title X, the federal program that gives low income women access to family planning programs. They would prohibit American health agencies operating in foreign countries from even mentioning abortion. Rick Perry is crowing over Texas forcing doctors to show a sonogram to any pregnant woman before she gets an abortion.

Maybe when the pack of GOP hopefuls thins down to a couple of real candidates they’ll have to talk about issues more crucial than who’s toughest on women bodies.

Like what jobs the job creators are ready to offer. What to do for people without health insurance. How to protect the country from more ruin by banks and big business. What’s better than Social Security and Medicare.  How to give all children, including poor kids, an equal chance.

On this,  women will definitely be watching. With the same eye on Democrats and President Obama, too.