Now that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, contraception no longer rules the national convers...

If all we get out of the latest Limbaugh firestorm is that it is not appropriate to call women sluts, prostitutes, or any of the other pejoratives commonly heaped on women, then we are missing the larger point: women suffer when their reproductive health and rights are abridged.

For all their howling about intrusive government, the Republicans who control the great Commonwealth of Virginia want to legislate the most intrusive procedure a woman can imagine.

In recent weeks, the nation has talked more about contraception than at any other time during my 58 years of life. Many Republican office holders and outspoken Catholic bishops call the discussion one of religious liberty. For me, it is a matter of whom I trust.

Catholic institutions have been mandated by states to provide the access to contraception for years, without any backlash. So why are things different now?

Republicans have been anti-abortion since time immemorial, but there was a time when GOP leaders supported, or at least countenanced, government support for contraceptives. Those days appear to have vanished.