Shorter Sr. Kathryn J. Lopez, OLSB*: (Piously, eyes locked heavenward, hands clasped under chin:) Republicans are not against contraception. That is, ha ha, a popular misconception, tee hee! (Silly little giggle, flounce, middle-aged version of girlish sigh.) Republicans merely oppose women having access to contraception, because when women have sex and don’t have a baby, Jesus sends down a matronly angel to scold them until they cry bitter tears of barren shame. (Trilling:) You see, as is well known, nothing makes people more unhappy than having sex for fun, as is proven by science, religion, and whorish TV commercials.

… Or at least I think that’s what she’s saying. It would be easier to figure out what the hell she’s weeping about if she weren’t such a godawful writer whose command of metaphor is as sure as a well-brought-up young Catholic boy’s command of his willy the first time a well-brought-up Catholic girl lets him see her bra strap (around age 45, usually). Sr. Kathryn’s metaphors are gooey, shaky, and embarrassing to everyone concerned the next time mom has to launder the underpants.

Why are Republicans waging war on contraception? It’s not the first time the question has been asked, and it won’t be the last. Truth be told, Republicans aren’t engaging in battle on that front — but the phrase gets close to a legitimate fight.

Often is the question asked: why does Republicans hate the pill? But the fact is, it is not a war but a battle, perhaps in another theater in some other unspecified war. However, the phrase that is a question approaches a non-bastard struggle.*

Congress, for its part, held an unprecedented vote in the House in February to end funding of Planned Parenthood. It’s not a permanent or final vote; it was attached to a short-term move to keep the government funded. The debate in Congress was given momentum by the Live Action investigatory videos, which raised significant questions about what exactly Planned Parenthood is doing….

Cough, bullshit, cough, bullshit.

but the rest of us need to discuss why we’ve let Planned Parenthood step in as a mainstream Band-Aid, throwing contraception and even abortion at problems that have much more fundamental solutions.

Indeed. The remainder of the unspecified “us,” presumably meaning conservative whackjobs, must conduct a conversation about why we have allowed Planned Parenthood to behave as walking medical adhesives for superficial wounds, adhesives that have the ability somehow to propel “contraception” and “abortion” as if these were missiles — presumably in the manner of a slingshot or similar?  — at subterranean difficulties.*

While women may want love and marriage, they don’t expect it.

Most women I know and respect demand that singular pronouns have singular antecedents.*

Justice Sandra O’Connor wrote in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey opinion that women had “organized intimate relationships, and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.” And why wouldn’t they? Who, nowadays, encourages them to want more?

Er… this is actually a place where the bad grammar indicates the sloppy ideology. “Who” is the “who”? “Who” is the “they”?

I was rather under the impression that women were making these decisions on their own. And also, what is “more” than “the ability of an individual to define her or his view of herself or himself and her or his place in society”? That sounds like a little thing I like to call… FREEDOM. Certainly nothing a good Catholic girl ought to be concerning herself with, acushla.

That’s why I want to turn back the clock — to a time when we valued love and marriage and didn’t expect, support and even encourage promiscuity. Life and history don’t work that way, obviously, there is no actual rewind.

No, the Magdalen Laundries, they’re all shuttered, more’s the pity.

The spending fight over Planned Parenthood in Congress is about a number of things. It’s primarily about good stewardship, as so much of the spending debate is. But beyond legislation, beyond anything Congress can or should do, it is a call to arms for a new sexual revolution. It’s about wanting more for ourselves and for those whom we love. It’s about ending the surrender to a contraceptive mentality that treats human sexuality as just another commercial transaction.

It’s about women having choices, especially the sort of women with limited financial resources who need Planned Parenthood… no longer having, you know, choices.

It’s about women being able to enjoy sex without being made to feel like God hates them, which is, for all sorts of reasons that bother assholes, still a fucking revolutionary idea in the 21st century, who’d a-thunk it.

*Our Lady of the Soggy Biscuit.

*K-Lo used to get paid to be an editor.

*No, really. She used to “edit” NRO. Though come to think of it, the idea that NRO is “edited” is pretty freaky all by itself…

*The Power of Christ, apparently, cannot compel thee to grasp English grammar.

OH, AND NOTE: the whole “child sex trafficking thing” is a fucking lie.