The election on Nov. 6 is not about appearances or political agenda. This election is about the real issues, but isn’t just about the economy and healthcare, it’s about women’s rights.

If Republican candidate Mitt Romney is elected on Nov. 6, women’s rights are threatened.

The Romney campaign’s stance on abortion is clear, it is pro-life and he supports a ban on abortion. If Romney is elected president, he would do whatever he could to have the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade.

The Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade in 1973 declared that abortion was a fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution and thereby struck down state laws that banned abortions.

“If hypothetically Roe versus Wade was overturned, and the Congress passed a federal ban on all abortion, and it came to your desk, would you sign it? Yes or no?” Anderson Cooper asked Republican candidates in a primary debate earlier this year.

“Let me say it. I’d be delighted to sign that bill,” Romney answered. “But that’s not where we are. That’s not where American is today…But if the Congress got there, we had that kind of consensus in the country, terrific.”

Since that debate, Romney has refined his position on abortion. He is now opposed to abortions except in cases of rape, incest or if the mother’s life is in danger.

Although Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., now claims his views are aligned with Romney’s, his previous bills show that he has a much more radical view of abortion.

In 1998, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Ryan opposed abortions in all cases except in cases where the life of the mother was in danger.

However, last year, Ryan was a co-sponsor of a House bill, HR358, which allows federally funded hospitals that oppose abortion to refuse to perform the procedure, even in cases where a woman’s life was threatened without it.

Recently, Indiana senate candidate Richard Mourdock explained his views on abortion. He said that he believes that there should be a ban on abortion, even in cases of rape.

“Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen,” Mourdock said. He went on to say that “it is a gift from God.”

Although Romney says he does not agree with Mourdock’s beliefs, he still endorses Mourdock for Indiana senate. Romney also won’t pull his television commercials that endorse Mourdock.

Romney supports a man who thinks that God intends for rapes to happen—if it produces a baby.

Romney and Ryan want to take away women’s right to choose. This effectively makes him not a pro-life candidate, but an anti-choice candidate.

“Life begins at conception. That’s the church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life,” Vice President Joe Biden said during the Vice Presidential Debate on Oct. 11. But he was quick to add: “I do not believe that we [the government] have a right to tell other people that women, they can’t control their body.”

“It’s a decision between them and their doctor, in my view. And the Supreme Court — I’m not going to interfere with that,” added Biden.

The vice president is right — no matter what values a person may have, a government does not have the right to tell people what they can and can’t do with their bodies.

If someone has a problem with abortion, then don’t get one.

Obama “believes a woman’s health care choices are personal decisions, best made with her doctor — without interference from politicians.”

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, provides the funding so that women have access to services, if needed.

In addition to vowing to repeal Obamacare on “day one” of his administration, Romney also vows to defund Planned Parenthood, a non-profit organization that provides reproductive health services such as abortion.

Planned Parenthood does not just provide abortion services; it also provides reproductive education, cancer screenings and contraceptives.

By defunding Planned Parenthood, Romney will take away women’s healthcare rights all over the country, especially in states where Planned Parenthood is the only provider for certain services.

Abortion and Planned Parenthood are not the only women’s healthcare rights that Romney opposes; he also opposes the availability to contraceptives.

Romney supported the Blunt Amendment, which would allow employers’ insurance providers to deny women access to contraceptives on the grounds that it interfered with their moral beliefs—the employers’ beliefs that is.

If Romney is opposed to contraceptives, then he is also opposed to improving the economy. Without contraceptives, there would be thousands (if not millions) of unwanted pregnancies; which would ultimately lead to more and more unprepared parents on welfare, draining the economy.

It’s not just women’s rights in the United States that would be threatened, either. Romney has promised to take away women’s rights in other countries, too.

“I’ve indicated I’ll reverse the Mexico City position of the president,” Romney said to reporters on Oct. 10 in Ohio. “I will reinstate the Mexico City policy.”

The Mexico City policy, also known as the Mexico City gag rule, is a policy that prohibits funding for international family planning groups that provide abortions.

On Jan. 23, 2009 President Barack Obama reversed this ban, allowing funding for these groups.

The Romney campaign’s attack on women’s rights is not just about health care rights, either. The campaign is against women’s rights to equal pay for equal work.

Although Romney has said that he would not repeal the Lilly Ledbetter Act, his initial position on the subject is unclear.The Lilly Ledbetter Act Fair Pay Act of 2009, signed by President Obama, further closed the gap between women and men’s wages.

Romney will not outright say that he opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Act, but he will not say that he supported it either. “He was opposed to it at the time,” said one of Romney’s top advisers, Ed Gillespie, after the second presidential debate on Oct. 16.

Yet again, Romney’s running mate takes a more radical view than Romney on the Lilly Ledbetter Act. Ryan voted against it. “Lilly Ledbetter was not an equal pay law,” Ryan explained. “It was about opening up the lawsuits and statute of limitations.”

Even if Romney is for equal pay now, with his inconsistent track record and views, who’s to say that he would not be against equal pay during his administration?

It is clear that defending women’s rights is not a part of Romney’s agenda.

Whether it’s reproductive rights or equal pay rights, Romney does not value women’s rights like Obama does.