On Sunday, I was enjoying a nice dinner with my family at a new local restaurant that actually features produce from local farmers’ markets.  All was good, until my 8-year-old daughter decided to ask our waitress, “Who are you going to vote for to be President of the United States?”  Too young to know that it’s not ‘polite’ to ask strangers about politics, she was surprised to hear the waitress reply, “I’m not going to vote.  I’m 28 years old, and I’ve never voted because I don’t know enough about the issues to vote.”  That answer stunned my daughter into confused silence because she’d watched the debates and had her own clear ideas about at least a few of the issues.  In the awkward silence, my 70 year-old dad (a pro-choice feminist) gently suggested to our waitress, “Well, you don’t have to know a lot about every issue to know who to vote for — even if you just know about where the candidates stand on one issue….”  At that point, I knew he was hinting strongly at Obama’s and Romney’s clear differences on the topic of women’s reproductive rights, and I did not want to go there — not with our waitress, in the middle of a family-friendly restaurant.

As uncomfortable as that conversation was, I almost wish my dad would have made his point…almost.  While it’s not the best voting strategy to be a single-issue voter, the facts about the differences between the two candidates (and their two parties) on this one issue are fairly astounding and have long-reaching consequences for the health of girls and women throughout the U.S.  Today, I had a chance to catch up on my twitter feed and came across the perfect illustration for this post — impressed by the clarity and distressed by the facts presented, I give you The Republican Party Rape Advisory Chart: