I’m going to be living in the US for the next 3 months, and I think it will be a real eye-opener. I’ve followed the American feminist news for several years, through the excellent mediums of the magazines Ms. and Bitch, and more recently via the fertile grounds of feminist blogging and Twitter. But now I’m actually here on US soil, the reality of the war on women seems just that little bit more real. Only yesterday the right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh caused outrage by labelling a young woman defending her right to birth control paid for by her health insurance provider, a ‘slut’ – because, as his logic went, she wants to be ‘paid for having sex’.

To a Brit, this kind of thing is just gobsmacking. For starters, women’s right to free contraception on the NHS goes without saying in the UK, and any attempt to undermine this would be met with such a stink that a politician insane enough to suggest it would be laughed out of parliament. Furthermore, any British public figure who likened women who use contraception to prostitutes could kiss their career goodbye as they would instantly be labelled a crank, an extremist and unworthy of public airspace. It just wouldn’t happen. Sure, we have our share of buffoons in Britain – who can forget Kenneth Clarke proposing that there’s a difference between rape and ‘serious rape’, or the delightful Eamonn Homes telling a rape victim attacked in a car “Well, I hope you take taxis now”? But we can take comfort in knowing that there’ll be a predictable shitstorm – Twitter exploding in apoplexy, the idiocy of the man in question hotly debated on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine who – and then a quiet climbdown from the offending party. In the US, however, the stakes seem a lot higher. Rush Limbaugh may be an attention-seeking jackass who deliberately antagonises feminists and liberals for a living, but his doesn’t seem to be an isolated voice. There is a real anti-contraception faction in the US, and they are the reason that Sandra Fluke was testifying in the first place.

Not content with the erosion of abortion rights (see Virginia’s recent ultrasound bill), anti-choicers are now focusing their attention on restricting access to the contraceptive pill. (It's telling that some anti-choicers don't even see a difference between the two; one female Republican on TV this evening referred to the pill as an 'abortion causing drug' - someone please give the lady a basic science lesson) Seems they want it both ways – they don’t want women aborting babies, but nor do they want women using anything to prevent those babies being conceived in the first place. The total lack of logic here cannot be interpreted as anything other than a wish to see women entirely at the mercy of their biology – ‘barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink’. It’s certainly not about protecting babies – it’s just about ensuring that enough of them, wanted or not, are spewed into this world to keep women in natal chains.

Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Sandra Fluke betrays a belief that women should only be having sex for the purposes of procreation, and that to demand the freedom to a sex life unburdened by the threat of pregnancy is unreasonable and audacious. He is saying women should be punished for wanting to be sexual for any other reason than making babies, and he has already passed his own sentence – that of being called of a whore.

One can only wonder what kind of mire the debate would enter if male hormonal contraception is considered too – I somehow doubt right-wingers would be quite so enthusiastic in challenging men’s right not to create a baby every time they have sex. To be anti-contraception is to be anti-woman, it’s that simple. And it’s probably worth adding that in a world which needs no more unwanted children, and can barely handle all those it already contains, to be anti-contraception is also to be wilfully stupid.

Whilst I'm sure most Americans are intelligent, right-thinking people...

...the mind simply boggles at the actions of US law-makers. The latest piece of jaw-droppingly misogynistic legislation hails from Louisiana, where it has recently become part of state law that women seeking an abortion must undergo an ultrasound scan first. Even more depressingly, perhaps, than the nakedly woman-hating law itself, is the fact it was brought in by a female senator - a Democrat as well! - who claimed the law 'empowered women'. And even worse than that, the bill passed with absolutely zero opposition from the 78 other members of the state house.

Words. Fail. Me.

If I were a woman living in Louisiana right now, I'd be packing my bags and heading for the border, as I don't think the state can make it any clearer just how much contempt it has for women and their autonomy. Never mind that the sheer cost of an ultrasound, thanks to the American health 'system', will put abortion out of the reach of many low-income women. Never mind the nauseating implication that if a woman realises that what she's aborting 'looks like a baby', she'll suddenly start cooing and decided she couldn't possibly murder that cute prawn-shaped thing on the screen. What is most despicable about this piece of legislation is its total undermining of a woman's right to choose, its attempt to put conditions on a medical procedure which SHOULD and MUST be available on demand and without apology, if we can ever claim that women are truly treated equally in society.

My painfully right-wing uncle started spouting off recently about how 'the measure of a civilised society is how it treats its most weak and vulnerable members, and you can't get any more vulnerable than the unborn foetus'. He didn't seem to consider the vulnerability of the 9 year old raped by a family member (a true case which occurred in Brazil), or any other woman carrying an unwanted pregnancy, for that matter. Much like the ultrasound process, which neatly removes the mother from the pregnancy scenario and makes it all about the 'baby' (NOTE quote marks - to me, it's a zygote, embryo or foetus, NOT a baby), my uncle seemed to have entirely forgotten that the unborn are housed within a WOMAN. A person. A living, breathing, already-existing full human being. It always seems very easy for a man to be pro-life, doesn't it? I wonder how pro-life my uncle would be if laws suddenly started telling him he couldn't have his cancerous liver removed, 'because it's a living organism'. An early-stage pregnancy is probably technically less of a developed organism than a liver, so that seems a fair comparison to me. Something tells me he wouldn't stand for it. But telling women they've got to endure a pregnancy because they're less important than a clump of cells? No probs, because it's all about the ickle ba-ba at the end of the day.

At least some commentators on the Louisiana legislation got right to the point:

"One sentence into this article, and i am already filled with rage.
Hey, darlin'! i know your daddy raped you, but are you SUUUURE you don't wanna have his baby? You'll go to Hell if you don't! Think about it, and let us know!"

"Pregnant women aren't mothers. They're pregnant women."

"Let's be plain. This is NOT a bill that "empowers" women. No one is dumb enough to believe that. This is a bill that presumes women are too frail and stupid to have realized what they are about to participate in."

"Jeez...why don't they also require the woman to frame the ultrasound picture and hang it over her fireplace..."

Refreshingly, the majority of comments were in this vein and socked it to the occasional (all male, from what I could see) pro-lifer who put their two-bibles' worth in. If so many American men and women can see this legislation for the vile piece of woman-hating it is, why can't US state government do the same?