Regardless of how tone-deaf their comments, how regressive their policy positions, or how simply ill-informed their beliefs, conservative leaders continue to bristle at the notion that they might be contributing—in any way—to the war on women. As members of a party with, at best, “image problems” when it comes to connecting with young voters, African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, members of the LGBT community, and, yes, women, they are particularly sensitive about anything they think might cast them in an unfavorable (and unfair) light. The “war on women,” then, is regarded as a red herring that is tossed out any time liberals want to score cheap points. As such, conservatives have had to come up with more and more creative rebuttals to the accusations, and the responses tell us as much—if not more—as the accusations themselves. Case in point: Governor Mike Huckabee’s recent head scratcher about Democrats, birth control pills, and women’s libidos.

In an address at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, Governor Huckabee sought to turn the tables on Democrats by essentially asserting, “We’re not the ones hurting women; they’re the ones hurting women!” (This is known in rhetorical circles as the “I know you are, but what am I?” move. It’s very crafty.) He went on to demonstrate his point by characterizing the way Democrats characterize women: “[I]f the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it.”

Okay, so let’s see if we can untangle this. Governor Huckabee thinks that Democrats believe that women should have access to government-subsidized birth control because, as Democrats see it, women can’t control their sex drives, and therefore need pills on hand so they can have all the unprotected sex they want. The thought process on display here is impressive for the sheer number of ways in which it gets this situation wrong.

First and foremost is the fact that Huckabee is leaning on one of the oldest stereotypes about contraceptives in the book: birth control pills are whore pills! The reasoning behind this belief, of course, is that, if women can have sex without the risk of getting pregnant, then they’re going to give into their insatiable desires and—gasp!—have sex for pleasure rather than procreation, probably outside the bonds of a sanctioned marriage. This theory has been in vogue since the pill’s debut in the 60s, when it was believed to have sparked, liked the storming of some pharmacological Bastille, the sexual revolution. The one tiny problem, though, is that the evidence for this claim is ambiguous at best. As studies on the pill’s impact have shown, married women were the biggest beneficiaries of the pill because they could now better plan for and space out pregnancies. The pill afforded women in stable, heterosexual, monogamous, God-and-state sanctioned marriages (i.e. women who should “naturally” vote Republican) a degree of control over their bodies, their families, and their economic well-being.

Now here we are, some 50 years later, and Democrats have the temerity to say, “Hey, maybe every respectable medical professional is right and all women, regardless of class or means, should have access to medication that will help them to have a degree of control over their reproductive choices.” Only the most warped of minds could listen to that reasoning and instead hear, “Women are so incapable of self-control, we’d better give them free contraceptives so they can have all the unprotected, pre-marital sex we know they’re dying to have.” And with these comments, that’s what Mike Huckabee has chosen to do. He’s decided to follow the likes of Rush Limbaugh who notoriously said that, if his tax dollars were going to be paying for Sandra Fluke’s birth control pills, then he had the right to watch all the sex she’d inevitably be having. (Never mind the fact that the pill doesn’t work like a condom; you don’t just pop one before the act to be all set. So, despite Limbaugh’s creepy fantasies, the fact that an unmarried woman is taking the pill regularly doesn’t mean that she’s having sex all the time—and even if she is, what the hell business is it of ours?!)

So tell me, which is the party that is obsessed with women’s sex habits? Which is the party that wants to impose its values—i.e. “We believe that good women have self-control and have sex only when they’re ready to conceive!”—on the population? We can debate whether or not it’s in the best interest of a person, a community, or a country for women to have universal access to birth control. But let’s be clear about one thing: Democrats don’t think women need access to birth control because we believe they’re too weak to resist their own insatiably lascivious impulses. We think they should have that access because we believe women should be free to choose whether or not to engage in sex, and to decide for themselves whether that sex is for procreation or pleasure.