Ever wonder what that “W” in George W. Bush’s name really stands for?

I’ve already brainstormed a few that are quite fitting for Bush: perhaps White-collar, or maybe an acronym, such as WASP.

But Bush has his own idea about what that W stands for.

Bush thinks that W stands for… Women!

That’s pretty cute, huh?

The most adorable part about it is that ladies can now go and get themselves official “W Stands For Women” merchandise at the Bush re-election web site.

It’s nice that Bush is willing to admit that he needs the female vote in order to win this election.

Women favor Kerry over Bush by a whopping 12 percentage points. Clearly, Bush needs to spend a lot more time wooing American women voters, or he might lose.

The women who support this slogan claim that Bush keeps women’s priorities in mind, because he did, after all, liberate millions of women in Iraq and Afghanistan. They credit him for rescuing these women from torture and tyranny, and giving them the right to attend school.

Therefore, he’s, like, practically a feminist!

Nope. George W. Bush is not a feminist. Not even close. These things he boasts about doing for the Iraqi and Afghan women were not acts of heroism; they were just the right things to do. It’s not much to boast about, yet it seems to be the central focus of the W Stands For Women campaign.

Upon perusing the Blogs For Bush web-site, it becomes apparent that issues such as reproductive rights, one of the biggest concerns for women today, are not even addressed.

This is because Bush believes the choices a woman should be able to make about her own body are best made by male lawmakers.

Under the Bush administration, Attorney General John Ashcroft allowed the U.S. Justice Department to seize medical records of thousands of women from six Planned Parenthood centers for their “review.”

Ashcroft claimed that this was done to enforce the ban on late-term (“partial-birth”) abortions.

Upon closer inspection, it is clear that it was written so they could take as many records as they could possibly get away with.

Abortion is a legal procedure, and these are women’s private issues.

So what right does this administration have to be so nosy? Ninety percent of the women who visit Planned Parenthoods aren’t even going there to seek abortions.

I’m not trying to make a case for whether abortion is ethical.

The law says that every woman has a right to one, and she also has the right to keep that choice her personal business.

Immediately upon taking office, Bush also instated the “global gag rule” which denies funding to international organizations in developing nations that support or perform abortions. Could he be any more eager to deny these women basic health care?

On the home front, Bush suggested eliminating required contraceptive coverage for female federal employees.

Anyone can see how discriminatory this is. I mean, nobody asks to get cancer, but if you got it, hopefully your health insurance would cover it, right?

I didn’t ask to have a menstrual cycle, but I have one, so I expect my health insurance to cover everything that comes along with that, too. To be denied that is discrimination. Yet Bush wants to deny it of the women who work right in the White House, so imagine what he would be willing to deny you.

One thing he’d love to deny you is access to emergency contraception (i.e. the morning-after pill). Due to pressure from the Bush administration, the FDA decided against making the pill available without a prescription. So even if you are willing to shell out the money yourself for such an item, you aren’t allowed.

Of course, in a perfect Bush world, you would be ignorant of knowledge of contraceptives, anyway.

Maybe that’s why Bush took the liberty of altering content on the Department of Labor Women’s Bureau web site, which once read that condoms could help prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, but now says that this information is “inconclusive.” information is “inconclusive.”

Maybe with the re-election of George W. Bush, our genitalia will mysteriously disappear, and babies will be delivered by the stork. At least I hope so because if Bush is re-elected, his old-fashioned views will continue to jeopardize the rights and health of women around the world.

So if you’re thinking about waving one of those “W Stands for Women” signs around like it means something, please think again.

It’s not hard to see that Bush is about as “in tune” to what women want as that four-eyed dweeb who passed you creepy love letters in study hall freshman year of high school. That kid couldn’t get girls to go out with him for a reason, and if female voters have a similarly good intuition concerning Bush, then they won’t give him any love by voting for him this November either.