Not that their fake war on wimmenses!-crusade ever really had a real shred of credibility, mind you, but at least things like “reproductive rights” and “the Lilly Ledbetter Act” kinda’, sorta’ sound like attempts at seriousness, even if it’s only deceptively so.

Last week, the Obama campaign unveiled a range of graphically attractive but intellectually bereft e-cards trying to convince women that a Republican administration would take us back to the puritanical days of yore in which women had no control over their health care decisions (for goodness’ sake, what mature adult would send a plea like this to their mother?), and earlier today, this appeared on the campaign’s tumblr (the Weekly Standard got the screenshot):

The image has since been removed, and the Obama campaign had a statement (via Katrina Trinko at National Review) claiming that “we have a review process for our online content and this piece did not go through our regular review.  When it was discovered, it was taken down,” but whatever — review process, shmeview process. The point is, one succinct e-card just summed up what this entire “Women for Obama” campaign is really about: Getting women to stop voting with their brains and instead get them to vote purely on gender-identification because those “scary” Republicans are going to take away “their rights” and “undo all the progress we’ve made,” or something. Here’s a fresh exhibit B attesting to what’s really going on here:

Some of the money lines, from the various celebrities:

• “Unfortunately, I think in this election, there is a strong contrast between the positions of this president, who believes in women, who trusts women to make responsible decisions, and frankly, the Republican party leadership, who seems to want to take away the right, and put government in between women and their doctors.”
• “It feels like we’re in a different era. I mean, an era that I have never known in my lifetime, that is challenging and trying to dismantle every gain that women, that women’s rights have accomplished over the last 30, 40, 50 years.”
• “I feel safer knowing that my president understands the value of women’s rights.”

As we’re reminded throughout the video, these ladies’ authority seems to rest on the fact that they are actual women. Well, so I am, so let’s get real: There is nothing more unempowering to women, or just people in general, than the attitude that a big government needs to nanny our decisions and pay for all of our wants and needs. Notice how this ad tries to make it seem like Romney & company are the ones who would get the government more involved in our lives, when actually, the exact opposite is true. Republicans don’t want to do anything scary like “ban contraception” or “take away equal pay for equal work.” I don’t care what you do, ladies — just take responsibility for your own choices and pay for them yourself. There are now more women than men in higher education; women outpace men in terms of income until they choose to put their careers on hold to have children (and are now even catching up on that!); and women have never had more freedom to live their own lives and make their own decisions. Nobody is trying to deprive women of those gains or equal footing, and attitudes like the above only undermine that freedom.