It took more than 125 years after the nation’s founding for women to win the right to vote. Another 53 years passed before they gained full control over their reproductive rights with the Roe v. Wade decision. Not until 2009 were women paid the same as men for the same work.

GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan say they’ll do away with most all the progress women have made and especially anything having to do with women’s reproductive rights.

Michelle Malkin doesn’t want women voting with their “lady parts,” but they’d better.

Romney, who tried to block emergency contraception for rape victims as governor of Massachusetts, today favors legislation that would permit states to ban contraception.

Ryan’s Catholicism forbids the use of birth control, a dogma he thinks should apply to every American.

They both back the Blunt amendment that would restrict a woman’s access to birth control if the employer providing her health insurance objects on “moral” grounds.

The Republican candidates want Roe v. Wade overturned and Ryan has said he wants abortion banned even in the cases of rape and incest.

Romney endorses Indiana senate candidate Richard Mourdoch, who said this week rape-induced pregnancy is “something God intended to happen.”

Paul Ryan, meantime, thinks rape is just another method of conception. The candidate didn’t indicate how he’d feel if his wife or daughter were raped and became pregnant.

Romney said his Massachusetts individual mandate is the model for the nation, but he’ll repeal Obamacare anyway, which recently began providing eight preventive health care services at no cost to millions of women enrolled in insurance plans.

When he ran for governor in 2002, Romney told voters, “I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose.”

“I’m a pro-life candidate and I’ll be a pro-life president,” Weathervane Romney says now.

When the wind changed and his support among women was tanking, Romney, as always, reversed himself: “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that … would become part of my agenda.”

Yet last year Romney promised to support radical “personhood” legislation that even ultraconservative Mississippi voters rejected.

If elected, Romney and Ryan will lead the war on Planned Parenthood, which provides preventive care, including cancer and HIV screening and counseling to 3 million low-income women every year. Contraception accounts for 35 percent of its services while abortions represent just 3 percent.

“I’ll … remove funding for Planned Parenthood,” Romney proclaimed.

Planned Parenthood receives federal funding under bipartisan legislation signed into law by President Richard Nixon, who said — 42 years ago— “No American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.”

Romney dismissed women who rely on Planned Parenthood for reproductive healthcare, saying they “can go wherever they’d like to go. This is a free society.” But in places like Tennessee and Texas, there is nowhere else to go.

How out radicalized is Romney? According to a poll from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 91 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of independents, and 66 percent of Republicans believe the government should help women access birth control if they can’t afford it.

Asked if he supported equal pay for equal work in the second presidential debate, Romney talked instead about “binders of women.” In true Romney fashion, a staffer later said Romney would not have been for or against the law.

For his part, Paul Ryan voted against the equal pay law Obama signed. “Paul Ryan scares me,” said Lily Ledbetter, whom the legislation was named after.

Like Ms. Ledbetter, American women should be afraid of the GOP ticket — very afraid.

Kevin Foley is a public relations executive, author and writer who lives in Kennesaw.

Kevin Foley is a public relations executive, author and writer who lives in Kennesaw.