In the darkest days of human civilization, when women have been completely marginalized and objectified, their worth has sometimes been seen as nothing more than a few linear inches of their anatomy.

In some times and some cultures, women have been seen as nothing more than their vaginas and their uteruses.

Some societies have been so benighted as to consign women’s significance to nothing more than the pleasure and children they bring men.

It is crude, it is heartbreaking, but it is undeniable history. Women’s humanity has been reduced to the primacy of their vaginas and uteruses.

Vaginas because of pleasure and uteruses because of procreation.

It is a repulsive denial of dignity, individuality and humanity.

But some cultures have been like that.

Ironically, our modern political culture isn’t much different.

I’m talking about the philosophical core of the War on Women, a tactical ploy of the Democratic Party in the last election, intended to drive female voters away from the Republican Party and its presidential candidate.

It commenced in the winter when a former political operative turned broadcaster tipped the hand and asked Mitt Romney if states could ban birth control. It seemed then a stupid question. It was, as it turned out, not a question. It was a trap.

Mitt Romney sidestepped it, but it was used against his party and candidacy anyway.

Democrats said Republicans wanted to take away women’s right to choose an abortion. The claim was false and, given a Supreme Court ruling, not possible. But the Democrats pushed it for months on end nonetheless.

Just as they pushed the notion that women are entitled to birth control and that Republicans were against providing women with birth control.

These two points – the supposed frontlines in the Republican War on Women – were prominently featured in the Democratic National Convention and in the campaign speeches by the president and his surrogates.

It was an artificial issue ginned up merely to frighten, anger and manipulate female voters.

And it worked.

By summer, it was presumed the claim was true, that Republicans were trying to stamp out women’s rights to abortions and birth control. Democrats spoke hundreds of times about this War on Women and party leaders – and reporters – defined these as the issues most important to women.

That was the operating premise for the balance of the campaign – women were going to base their presidential vote on birth control and abortion.

Those were the defining issues of women’s interests. And a woman’s vote for president, the full operation of her suffrage, would be determined by birth control and abortion.

Not the economy. Not the deficit or the debt. Not the size or stability of the military. Not policies about education or taxation or the environment. Not national affairs or international affairs or immigration policy or the proper role of the federal government.

Those don’t matter to women.

Neither do things like our trade deficit or energy policy or presidential nominations to the federal judiciary. Forget health care and child care and militant Islam.

None of those are women’s issues, the Democrat strategy asserted.

Must be they are men’s issues.

Must be women shouldn’t worry their pretty little heads about those things.

Because women’s issues are simple: Birth control and abortion. Specifically, employer-supplied birth control and readily available abortion.

That’s what the Democrats claimed.

If you want to drive women voters against your opponent, attack him in the press with claims that he will restrict abortion and deny women free birth control.

To add a touch of drama, have some female graduate student claim folk hero status because nobody will pay her staggeringly large birth control bill.

This was the Democrat strategy in the last election.

Which seems an odd objectification and marginalization to me. Because it basically reduces women to their vaginas and their uteruses.

Vaginas, where the birth control comes into play, and uteruses, where abortions are performed.

No brains, where complex matters of governance are pondered. No hearts, where compassion and virtue are housed. No backbones, where strength and courage are personified.

Vaginas and uteruses.

In the world of Democrat stereotyping, women are reduced to their plumbing. A woman’s ability to engage the issues men ponder as they decide how to vote is forestalled by her vagina and uterus and the central role they play in her life.

So a candidate’s fit for the presidency is not determined by his ability to rescue the economy or defend the country, but rather by his views on employer-provided birth control. Three separate presidential debates were held, spread over hours of time and dozens of topics, and all that information was apparently for male voters.

Because women don’t consider or care about those things.

All women care about, the Democratic attack plan reasoned, is free pills, rubbers and abortions.

Vaginas and uteruses.

Which makes you wonder how much the women’s movement truly has accomplished. For all our progress, we still seem pretty barbaric in our understanding of women.

At least as that understanding is exemplified by the deep thinkers of the Democratic Party.

Women are nothing but vaginas and uteruses, if you are a Neanderthal or a Democrat campaign official.