I was prepared to give the War on Women a rest until my husband asked me at breakfast if I’d caught Gloria Steinem’s interview with Chris Matthews before the presidential debate. The man knows my propensity to rant about rights. By the way, we consider ranting a positive and passionate form of self-expression in our family. A man with three opinionated daughters and a granddaughter, he’s all for women’s rights.   He found the recorded Gloria Steinem segment for me. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/49509696#49509696

As with any subject having to do with women, Gloria, who isn’t a big ranter, provided a wise, calm and new take on what is at risk in this election. To oppose fair pay and reproductive rights is not just a war on women, she said. It is a war on the country and specifically on the economy.

Turn it around, give women equal pay and it would be the “biggest economic stimulus this country could possibly have,” she said. She came up with some pretty big numbers that would be added to the average woman’s paycheck if all things were more equitable.  Altogether it would bring $200 billion more into the economy.

And how would a woman who is suddenly bringing home as much as a man for the same job using the same skills and having the same education spend her money?  She smiled her sly, Gloria grin and said it would likely not go to China.

No, it would be going down the street into the local economy. Providing family maintenance items like school shoes and groceries and getting a nice haircut.

It was a simple and brilliant point. Women’s rights don’t stop with women. Women share. A working class woman is not going to take that long-awaited fair paycheck and fly off to the Cayman Islands. Maybe she’ll buy rain boots.

And then there’s that other essential guarantee that women need to help boost the economy.

“The biggest indicator of whether a woman can work or not, be educated or not, be healthy or not is reproductive control,” said Gloria. “And that is an economic issue.”

Bingo, again.

So, maybe it’s not your style to get all in a sweat over women’s rights being dragged back to the 1950s. Take a more selfish stance, then.

Think of what more women making more money would mean to your business. More families taking the kids out for frozen yogurt. More businesswomen bringing their pantsuits into your dry cleaners.

It is folly, as Gloria said, to think “that economic issues only apply to white guys.”

Nor are reproductive issues solely a woman’s issue.  A doctor friend of mine named Kathy wonders why men are keeping so quiet in the war on women.  Most men are no more interested in unwanted pregnancy than women, she points out.   They too want an uncomplicated sex life, whether in a committed relationship or not. Men surely would be adversely impacted by tampering with women’s reproductive rights.

“Where are the men in this?” Kathy asks. “Why aren’t they sticking up for the women they love?”

Gloria Steinem called Mitt Romney the candidate “most destructive to equality” that she’s ever seen. Asked why women today would vote for someone who has said he would get rid of abortion and obstruct birth control and give property rights to a fertilized egg, Gloria is as flummoxed as a lot of us.

She told Chris Matthews, Republican women say to her, “Oh, he’d never do that.”

Hmm. And which Mitt Romney would that be?

We haven’t heard any specific mention of the War on Women in the debates so far, but make no mistake it continues to be the elephant in the living room, the bedroom and the exam room.

This election offers a pretty clear choice, if you’re looking for someone consistently loyal to women. Women, being 51 percent of the population,  54 percent of the voting public. Bigger than a binder-ful.

Oh sure, the election will dramatically affect men, too, but as individuals, not the entire gender. Generally speaking, the male sex will be status quo. The female sex?  Ah… could be in big trouble.

Here’s the deal that Republicans offer women. Vote for them and  they’ll come up with a way (not sure how) to get America working again and fix the deficit (ask them how later). But they want women’s bodies back.

It’s surprising, shocking really, how women’s rights became a big factor in the election.  With so many pressing concerns, you would have thought we’d be fully concentrating on moving America forward.  But, nope. There are people bent on going backwards. And they will make their mark with women.

It is not men the ultra right obsesses over.

Nobody is lurking inside men’s health clinics to spy on a man’s exam. No one is thinking up ways to turn a legal urological procedure into something that is shameful, embarrassing, unnecessary and invasive. Or saying vasectomies should be illegal.

No one is saying an employer should get to grill male workers about why they want birth control.  No one is fantasizing about what happens to a man’s body during a “legitimate rape.” No radio bully condemns sexually active male college students. Guys having sex? Well, boys will be boys. And the women? Simply sluts.

Of course the Republicans make war on women.

Republicans fought against the Lilly Ledbetter Act to protect women workers from wage discrimination. Republicans stood against extending the Violence Toward Women Act.

Republicans support person-hood amendments that would turn a woman into a felon if she couldn’t prove her miscarriage happened naturally.

Yet, they toy with us. Mitt Romney has been for choice, against choice and then, kind of, maybe, for.    Paul Ryan, who’s voted 60 times against reproductive rights,  mocks the War on Women. Lately he’s been saying he’d allow abortion in certain cases.

Haven’t women learned not to trust a man who won’t commit?

Romney and Ryan have played fast and loose with women, backing some of the wackiest and most punishing notions concerning abortion and birth control. They hope we will forget.

The Romney campaign this week said that equal pay and choice are “small things” and not important to voters.  Real women, the GOP claims, don’t worry about women’s rights. Women care about jobs. Women care about going to war in Iran. Of course, we worry about the economy and Iran getting the bomb. But does that mean we have to give up our freedom?

The extremist religious and retro right and their candidates  would turn us back to an America where our daughters and nieces and granddaughters have fewer rights than we women have now.

They don’t  want to mess with men.   They are not threatening a man’s choice. Or plotting what their Supreme Court  might do to men.

They just want to take away a little bit of freedom from women, shave off just a little equality.

And were they to once taste victory, what thinking woman can imagine them not asking for a little more? And what thinking man wants that?

The continuing war on women makes me think of the relative who comes to dinner and talks stupid.  An Uncle Ralph with his tired sexist jokes. Others roll their eyes but give him a pass because the poor guy never caught up with the times and can’t help himself. He’s just harmless Uncle Ralph trying to get your goat.

Well, my goat, for one, has been gotten.

When this Republican wave of attacks on women’s reproductive rights and health services began I thought, here we go again.  A gender war reenactment, circa 1960s and 1970s. But it’s gone on too long and oozed from Republican primary rhetoric into state houses, health clinics and now even the boss’ office. I’d love to not take them seriously but I don’t dare.

I think it’s a real threat. Not harmless at all. I think there is big money and more power on their side than we want to think. Why else would they keep  on this nutter if they didn’t feel encouraged? Don’t worry, I hear, they’re just blowing smoke. Never happen, just a sideshow. Any law they manage to push through would be challenged. It’s just political theater.

Maybe, but something has emboldened prominent members of the Republican Party to push against women’s health services, even while insisting there’s no war on women.  Some 77 percent of Americans say birth control shouldn’t be a public debate but right-wingers keep up the jabber.

GOP leaders even resist the Violence Against Women Act because it might shelter immigrant women fleeing for their lives and expand protection to same sex couples. As if  some domestic violence is acceptable.

There’s the Arizona bill that would compel a woman employee in a group health plan to explain to her boss why she wants birth control. How creepy is that?

I live in coastal Northern California where the predominant thinking is as blue as the Pacific. The war on women doesn’t get very scrappy here. We watch it from a relatively safe distance and can become complacent. But outside my comfortable bubble, I see things that make me nervous.

It’s not just the warbling of a choir boy who believes that sex should only be for procreation and wants to turn the country into a theocracy. It’s a growing roar against women with one wild-eyed effort after another to attach new laws to women’s bodies.

The thinking seems to be if it’s  good for our health it’s bad for taxpayers, anti-male and offends some religious group.

You wouldn’t think there would be such a hysterical effort to put women in their place at this time in this country but as Hillary Clinton said, “Extremists, no matter where or what religion, want to go after women.”

So, what can we do? We can always write checks to causes and candidates on the side of  women but that doesn’t seem visible enough.

We could get Women are Watching signs and plant them in our front yard.

We can work to get more women elected, from both parties, who don’t like what’s happening to women. We can say thank you to women, like Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski for standing up to their party.

We can do like the 150 women and men in Huntsville, Alabama who last weekend put on a Stop the War on Women Rally in their park.

And we can go bigger. Finally, there’s an organized cross-country push-back set for April 28 – a national Enough is Enough march and rally supported by groups like the League of Women Voters and Planned Parenthood.

We can roar back.  And we can show Uncle Ralph the door.