Obama campaign plans big push for women

President Obama’s re-election campaign is beginning an intensified effort this coming week to build support among women, the New York Times reported.

The paper reports that his team plans to focus on issues traditionally important to women voters such as health care and will focus on the recent political clashes over birth control and abortion.

Officials say they will target about one million women in more than a dozen battleground states in a comprehensive mailing starting on Monday.

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Then on Wednesday, according to the Times, a campaign called “Nurses for Obama” will help nurses enlist as advocates for local health care laws in their hometown.

Obama won 56 percent of female vote in 2008. Women narrowly went for Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections and some say that cost Democrats control of the House.

The Christian Science Monitor writes that as the presidential election approaches, Republicans will have to shore up their support among women, as well as, Hispanics.

As the Monitor points out, the Republicans lost both to Obama in 2008, and are not doing well in current polling in either area for the upcoming election.

Recent GOP pushes for Virginia's pre-abortion sonogram law and Rush Limbaugh's recent scandal in which he called a female law student "a slut" for supporting birth control have led some to worry that the Republican party could lose women voters to the Democrats in 2012.

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