Roman Catholic church versus American women: the new face of the U.S. election?

Has the U.S. presidential vote turned into a referendum on the conservative positions of the Roman Catholic church?
With both Ryan and Romney public opposed to abortion, and on record as firmly committed to passing a law that would make abortion a criminal offence, and with the Tea Party representatives in the Republican party already committed to the requirement of an ultrasound for any woman considering an abortion, including the requirement that the mother witness the images of the ultrasound, and now with Missouri Republican Senate candidate, Akin having gone on public record, not only opposing abortion for women who have been subjected to both rape and incest, as a "pro-life" candidate, has the Republican party, despite the best efforts of their "senior" suits to disown both Akin and his outrageous comments and to force his withdrawal from the Missouri race, not only fallen into the trap of their own design by turning the campaign into a referendum on pro-life versus a woman's right to choose, and access to therapeutic abortions?
Certainly the Democrats have emboldened their "speaker list" for their convention to include more leading women as featured speakers, believing that President Obama, currently leading Romney by a sizeable percentage among women voters, speaks for the majority of American women, and that the Republican ticket is now saddled, permanently with a plank in their party's platform that would outlaw abortion completely.  Democrats want to ride this horse all the way to the vote in November, believing rightly, from the evidence of the various polls, that women and blacks and Latinos hold the key to the re-election not only of the President, but also of the many Democratic candidates for both Senate and the House of Representatives.
Isn't it rather ironic, that the most powerful country in the world, with the largest and strongest economy among world economic powers, is being reduced to a parochial issue like abortion, an issue that certainly unites the religious right, the Tea Party and many members of the Roman Catholic church(Romney panders to this slice of the electorate also.) However, if I were a betting man, and I had to wager on a fight between the Roman Catholic church and the women of America, many of whom are also practicing Roman Catholics who have already abandoned the church's position on birth control, I would bet on the women rejecting the church's position on abortion as well. This Republican party, that so vehemently seeks a smaller, less invasive government, is parading their campaign as one to establish the government's option to remove a fundamental right from women, the right to choose. So much for their "smaller and less invasive government" or is that argument only appropriate when they want to delete government programs from the most needy among the nation's poor, less educated, under-employed, sick and elderly?
So much also for the high-minded debate that was to be offered by the selection of Paul Ryan as Vice-presidential nominee for the Republicans, given his personal support for a bill, already in the house, that would outlaw abortion, except in the case of rape, incest or if the woman's life in endangered by the potential delivery.
So much for the debate on tax policy, on defence spending, on foreign policy and on the need to generate jobs in the clean energy sector and to protect the environment from the ravages of global arming and climate change in this, the hottest decade on record in North America....all of those debates are for a presidential race in 2032, I guess.