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?

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.