Recently, I ran across an AP article from April 12, 1999, about Brownback's speech at Butler Community College. The article quoted him on his theory that the problem with Social Security is that women have had too many abortions. According to Brownback, if only those pesky women had given birth to those unwanted children, Social Security would be in good shape. His reasoning? Since the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision, women have given birth to too few worker bees. Given those abortions, it's impossible to keep Social Security afloat for all the Baby Boomers who are now retiring. Strangely, he didn't say that the parents of the Baby Boomers should have backed off from having all those kids that someone else would have to support when they retired.

The article, carried in the Topeka Capital-Journal, quoted Brownback, " 'A lot of people won't like this comment,' the Kansas Republican said Friday to an audience of high school and college students at Butler County Community College. 'You can see a real impact in the abortion policy we've had in this country. We have a lot fewer people out here. You can see we have a lot fewer workers coming on board.' "

He then urged the high school students in the audience to have many children. "You need to think about having five or six more children in the family, instead of two or three," he said, as he smiled at the young people who looked decidedly uncomfortable.

Also in the audience were adults, including several senior citizens. I was there that day, forgoing an interesting lunchtime conversation with my English instructor colleagues to to listen to Brownback's speech.

I have been an abortion rights advocate for years. I've done clinic support, attended workshops, lobbied legislators, and participated in media interviews about abortion rights, so I have a pretty good handle on all the arguments anti-choice advocates use against legal abortion and how to answer them. However, this was a new one on me and I was in shock that Brownback, a U.S. Senator who should have known why the Social Security system was in trouble, would publicly blame women for this problem. I was even more shocked that he would urge high school students, too young to be parents, to have lots of children.

Of course, I knew Brownback was anti-choice, a stance he took as it became politically expedient to do so. He even left the Methodist Church, moderate on abortion rights, to become a Roman Catholic. But who would ever expect him to blame women for a problem caused by the very government in which he was a major player? The Social Security deficit, from everything I can find out in my research, is in trouble because the government has thrown Social Security proceeds into the general U.S. treasury, a move that has drained money for retirees' benefits. Granted this is an over-simplified explanation for the problems with Social Security, but that's a topic for another day.

So, I walked to the middle of the lecture hall, an empty space where Brownback couldn't miss seeing me and I said this: "I don't think women should have on their backs fixing the economy of this country by having more children."

I also told him that he shouldn't blame women having abortions for the shortcomings in the Social Security system.

He responded by saying he wasn't blaming women. Well, who else was he blaming? Men don't have abortions. In most cases except the most tragic, children don't have abortions. So who's left to blame in SamBrownbackWorld?

After I made my comments, I had to leave to teach a class, so no reporters talked to me after the speech. I was identified in the AP article as an "older woman in the audience." That's okay. I was older. I also felt that I represented every woman who had come of age during a time when the only way they could control their reproduction was by finding doctors or lay people who had mastered the techniques of performing abortions, albeit illegally. Of course, every woman who ever sought to have such an abortion took a chance that the procedure would leave her injured or dead. The fact is, though, a woman who doesn't want to carry a pregnancy to term will do anything to end it.

The reporter noted that Brownback avoided his charge against women during the rest of his speaking tour, even though in a later speech he " 'joked with Chamber of Commerce members that some had done their part by having children -- and that more needed to get started.' "

While the German phrase. Kinder, Küche, Kirche originated with German Emperor Wilhelm II, Adolf Hitler also encouraged German women of Aryan descent to stay at home and have children, the "good little Nazis" who would spread Germany's, and Hitler's, power throughout the world. Hitler implemented a Law for the Encouragement of Marriage, and in a 1934 speech, Hitler argued that a German woman's worth should be defined by her husband, her family, her children, and her home. Also he awarded women with four or more children with the Cross of Honor of the German Mother.

Brownback is not Hitler. But his emphasis on a woman's role being chiefly defined as childbearing for the good of the state is creepy. I do know based on his record he will do everything in his power to end a woman's legal right to have an abortion. He will also try to end state funding to Planned Parenthood, the one institution that has as its goal helping women avoid unwanted pregnancies. With the Kansas State Legislature now on board to support him and with Troy Newman, Operation Rescue head, and Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, likely working right now on abortion restriction bills to introduce in the 2011 session, women's control over their lives is on the line.

So, even though right-wing Republicans, particularly those of the Teabagger stripe, have promised to get government out of our lives, Kansas women should know that government will be in their lives in ways that they've never before experienced. Don't worry, though. Those who find themselves forced to give birth to children they don't want, can't support, and are unable to care for should stand up and salute. They're doing it for America and for their retired parents and grandparents.