Women won a small and still-incomplete victory in Virginia yesterday when Governor Bob McDonnell, a Republican, changed his position to oppose a bill that would have required women seeking abortions to undergo a vaginal ultrasound. But why is the GOP, which theoretically supports limited government, pushing for measures that would probe the most private parts of female bodies in the first place? Appearing on The Ed Show last night, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, answers this question and others.

—Elizabeth Whitman