“Vote like your lady parts depend on it.”

That was one of President Obama’s charming campaign slogans that many women took to heart. Asinine Tea Partiers who decided that the law should force women to carry the child of their rapists gave the impression that a Romney administration would be just a knife’s edge away from a theocracy. Wave goodbye to your contraception, ladies! One-piece burqas are all the rage this year. Mitt’s a Mormon, you know. Surely arranged polygamist marriages, probably with Orrin Hatch, will be the first thing on the agenda if the GOP seizes power again.

Idiocy. Sheer idiocy.

In the first place, nothing that had anything to do with lady parts was at risk in this election. Nothing at all. Contraception will remain safe and legal and easy to obtain for now and forever, regardless of who wins the White House. As for abortion, Roe v. Wade lifted that debate entirely out of the legislative arena, which means no president or Congress can pass any laws to undermine it as long as that precedent stands.

Yes, Romney could have appointed Supreme Court justices that might overturn that precedent, although that’s extremely doubtful, given the current makeup of the court. Still, that unlikely event would have exactly the same legal impact as President Obama’s newfound support for gay marriage: i.e. none whatsoever. Congress has already codified the principles of Roe v. Wade into federal law, so the absence of a judicial ruling would have zero effect on practical abortion policy.

In order to change that federal law, the Republicans would have to control the White House, Congress, and 60 votes in the Senate, something that has never happened in the history of the republic. And even if they did have a filibuster-proof majority, not all Republicans are pro-life. So the odds, then, of sufficient congressional will to make the Todd Akin sick fantasy world of rape legitimacy a legislative reality are about the same as the odds of Joe Biden’s bald patch spontaneously erupting into an afro.

So no matter how you voted, female citizens, your lady parts did not depend on it.

You know what did depend on it? The fiscal solvency of your nation. We are less than a decade away from a Greece-style meltdown. (That’s like Gangham style, only much more sucky.) Call me out of touch; call me chauvinistic; call me unable to empathize with the great women of America. For the life of me, I cannot conceive of anyone of any gender voting to prevent a phantom, illusory threat to contraception and abortion rights instead of voting to ward off the very real and compelling prospect of irrecoverable economic disaster. And won’t the absence of a viable Medicare system have a deleterious effect on lady parts? That seems obvious to me, but what do I know? Maybe when I join the party of Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John Edwards, and all other honorable champions of womanhood, I’ll understand.

As you can see, I’m still not particularly pleased with the election results.