For those men who take for granted the concept of oral contraception, let's pretend that it's 1958 and there's no pill. What were your contraceptive options back then?
First, there was the prophylactic. A disease preventative, yes, but also an exasperating hassle.
Back in 1958, just buying a package of condoms was unpleasant because you first had to endure the disapproving scowls of practically everybody standing behind you in line, not to mention the lewd chuckles from the pharmacy clerk.
Then, when the time came for you to actually use the damn thing, you cursed the folks at Trojan because you had to spend 15 minutes fumbling in the dark to rip it out of its secure little tea bag package before the mood subsided or she fell asleep or, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, you were suddenly faced with the humiliating prospect of having to shoot pool with a rope.
Then there were diaphragms, those little rubber thingies that kept slipping out of her hands like oily yarmulkes every three seconds while you quietly growled in frustration at the seemingly interminable delay.
For some guys, there was early withdrawal, which was not the kind you performed at a bank, and often didn't work anyway because your idea of early wasn't early enough.
Abstention? Forget it. Abstention is something Congressmen do when they don't know which way to vote. Or a method that the Palin family pretends to use.
There were gooey spermicides (which didn't really work) and the rhythm method (which didn't work either, even if you were a good dancer).
IUDs, though invented in the 1920s, became an option, although they were so complicated, your lady love needed a degree in engineering and an owner's manual to figure out what went where.
If you used nothing, you had nine kids.
Abortion was not an option.
Sounds like the 15th Century, doesn't it? It wasn't. It was only 50-some years ago. In the late 1950s, nobody took the pill. By 1962, 1.2 million women were on it. In 1963, it was 2.3 million; by 1964, 25 percent of all couples in American used oral contraception. And the rest is history.
History, that for some perverse and incomprehensible reason, the Republican Party seems intent on reversing. Republican men in particular. And their wives are okay with this?
Seriously?
If I were Roy Blunt's wife, I'd make him sleep in the garage forever.
If I were Rick Santorum's wife, I'd lace his Viagra with arsenic.
If I were Rush Limbaugh's wife, I'd do something unspeakable to him and not in the good sense.
And when Rush calls Sandra Fluke a slut, isn't he really calling your womenfolk sluts too? Shouldn't you beat him up for that? What happened to chivalry?
On top of that, do you really want some repressed guy in a lab coat probing your lady's private parts for absolutely no good reason whatsoever?
So here's the question, guys: Why is this considered a "women's issue"? Sure, it's about privacy and self-determination and a woman's right to control her own body -- and all men should appreciate and respect that. But in a different and perhaps more superficial way, it's also about our bodies. Sex and spontaneity make excellent, ahem, bedfellows. Fatherhood is great but not if you don't want children.
Do you seriously want to go back to the Stone Age?
Not surprisingly, polls show that a huge majority of women are really really pissed off about this nonsense. Duh.
The question is, why aren't you?