The Republicans - or apparently the Trump/Pence Republicans - have a new campaign: 'end birth control for American women'.

No, not making this up. This is a leaked memo.

What you're seeing here in my opinion is Mike Pence's influence on the the Republican ticket, on this administration.

"A leaked memo" - this from Erin Gloria Ryan over at Daily Beast - "A leaked memo shows that Team Trump wants American women to go back to relying on total abstinence or the rhythm method to prevent pregnancies."

This is amazing. The list was obtained by Crooked Media. That's the group that syndicates the podcasts like "Pod Save America" and "Pod Save The World".

And the memo advises "there should be cuts to the U.S. government's “gender and 'Let Girls Learn' initiative.”" and then the real show starts when they get into birth control.

"If the Trump administration got its way, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) budget for family planning would be slashed, with 'no other family planning programming for girls except fertility awareness methods.' "

Now, if you're Catholic or if you went to Catholic school, you know what 'fertility awareness' means. It means the rhythm method.

First of all it puts all the responsibility on women. You must know when you are fertile.

I remember when a friend of mine, we were down in Bogota, Columbia. We spoke to the Archbishop of Bogota, sitting on his throne at the headquarters of the Catholic Church there in Bogota. And she asked him to put a special dispensation for pharmacists so they wouldn't go to hell if they passed out birth control pills. And this guy starts pounding his fist on his throne and pointing at me - he wouldn't talk to my friend Elizabeth because she was a woman - and pointing at me and screaming, "women know when they're fertile. This is all their fault. Original sin came into the world through Eve," etcetera, etcetera.

And "Title X funding which helps poor women afford contraception would be slashed in half if team Trump gets its way. Money would be diverted from sex education that emphasizes “risk reduction”" - in other words, don't get AIDS, use condoms, things like that - and move this toward instead " “sexual risk avoidance,” which is another term for “abstinence-only education.” "

One quarter of people who use fertility awareness end up getting pregnant.

"Abstinence-only education doesn't work. A report published this year declared the practice both "ineffective and unethical."

In fact, in her article, Erin Gloria Ryan writes if you had a car that 25% of the time crashed and everybody died, or required hospitalization at least to make the metaphor parallel to pregnancy really solid, would you ever use that car? One quarter of the time you end up in the hospital? Whereas with an IUD what are the odds of an unintentional pregnancy? 0.01%. One one hundredth of one percent.

But science and Trump? No.

Or really we should say science and Pence. Really? No. They just want to oppress women. It comes right down to that.