Atheists Are Better for Politics Than Believers. Here’s Why

Atheists are better for politics than believers. Here’s why

As my term as British Humanist Association president comes to an end, a few words of advice to my successor, Jim Al-Khalili

Polly Toynbee

Illustration by Noma Bar

‘If you’re not religious, for God’s sake say so,” we implored, and many did. Over a quarter of the population registered as non-believers: more might have done were the census question unambiguous about whether it meant cultural background or personal belief. My term as president of the British Humanist Association ends this month, but gladly I hand over to Jim Al-Khalili, the distinguished professor of physics, writer, broadcaster and explainer of science. With atheism as the second largest block, he will be in a stronger position to see that unbelievers get a better hearing.

Rows over gay marriage and women bishops bewilder most people. With overwhelming popular support for both, how can abstruse theology and unpleasant prejudice cause such agitation at Westminster and in the rightwing press? Politics looks even more out of touch when obscure doctrine holds a disproportionate place in national life.

The religions still frighten politicians, because despite small numbers in the pews, synagogues and mosques, they are organised and vocal when most of the rest of society lacks community voice or influence. Labour was craven, endlessly wooing faith groups – David Blunkett wishing he could “bottle the magic” of faith schools.

With a third of state schools religious in this most secular country, Michael Gove not only swells their number but lets them discriminate as they please in admissions. As he is sending a bible to every English school, the BHA is fundraising to send out its own Young Atheist’s Handbook to school libraries. Government departments are outsourcing more services to faith groups in health, hospice, community and social care.

But of all the battles Jim Al-Khalili confronts, the most urgent is the right to die. Powerful religious forces block attempts to let the dying end their lives when they choose. Tony Nicklinson was the most public face of thousands in care homes and hospitals condemned to what he called “a living nightmare” by 26 bishops and other religious lords who say only God can dispose – the Bishop of Oxford decreed: “We are not autonomous beings.” The public supports the right to die, but many more will drag themselves off to a bleak Swiss clinic before the religions let us die in peace.

Sensing the ebbing tide of faith since the last census, the blowback against unbelievers has been remarkably violently expressed. Puzzlingly, we are routinely referred to as “aggressive atheists” as if non-belief itself were an affront. But we are with Voltaire, defending to the death people’s right to believe whatever they choose, but fighting to prevent them imposing their creeds on others.

The Abrahamic faiths, with their disgust for sex and women, still exert deep cultural influence. When David Cameron claimed “we are a Christian country”, there are certainly enough cultural relics in attitudes towards women and gays. Baroness Warsi’s letter expressing alarm that schools might teach gay marriage equality causes tremors of that sexual disgust branded into the souls of all three major monotheistic faiths. Are there many gay couples perverse enough to yearn to be married inside religions that abhor them? Humanists can offer them heartfelt celebrations.

In the Lords this week, by a whisker, section 5 of the Public Order Act was amended to remove the offence of using “insulting words or behaviour within hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harm, alarm or distress thereby”.

An extraordinary alliance of extreme religions wanting the right to preach fire and brimstone against gays joined with free thinkers wanting the right to be rude about religions. Liberty and the Christian Institute were on the same side against the government, which was defeated. Now the Commons will have to decide. Some religions argue they have a God-given right not to be caused offence, to give legal weight to fatwas against those who offend their prophets. But in the rough and tumble of free speech, no one can be protected against feeling offended. Jim Al-Khalili can expect all manner of attacks, but no protection for his sensibilities.

For instance, he might take offence at the charge that without God, unbelievers have no moral compass. Hitler and Stalin were atheists, that’s where it leads. We can ripost with religious atrocities, Godly genocides or the Inquisition, but that’s futile. Wise atheists make no moral claims, seeing good and bad randomly spread among humanity regardless of faith. Humans do have a hardwired moral sense, every child born with an instinct for justice that makes us by nature social animals, not needing revelations from ancient texts. The idea that morality can only be frightened into us artificially, by divine edict, is degrading.

The new president will confront another common insult: atheists are desiccated rationalists with nothing spiritual in their lives, poor shrivelled souls lacking transcendental joy and wonder. But in awe of the natural world of physics, he’ll have no trouble with that. Earthbound, there is enough wonder in the magical realms of human imagination, thought, dream, memory and fantasy where most people reside for much of their waking lives. There is no emotional or spiritual deficiency in rejecting creeds that stunt and infantalise the imagination.

Liberated by knowing the here and now is all there is, humanists are optimists, certain that our destiny rests in our own hands. That’s why most humanists are natural social democrats, not conservatives.

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• Stanford gets a chaplain for atheists (sfgate.com)
• Anti-Creationists need to think about tactics (paulbraterman.wordpress.com)
• Why this atheist celebrates Christmas | Jim Al-Khalili (guardian.co.uk)
• Atheists are better for politics than believers. Here’s why (richarddawkins.net)
• Jim Al-Khalili: ‘I’m a cuddly atheist. I don’t need to tell my mum her faith is stupid’ (independent.co.uk)
• How the Godless and Believers Celebrate Christmas Together (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
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• Should the President of a Humanist Organization Be More Aggressive? (patheos.com)

Religious Neanderthal Todd Akin Arrested in 1987 With Radical Anti-Abortion Group

Missouri Caveman Todd Akin Arrested in 1987 With Radical Anti-Abortion Group

Very bad craziness

 Via:-Charles Johnson

It’s easy to laugh at Todd Akin’s ridiculous caveman views, but Akin and the deranged anti-choice fanatics he associates with are really not a laughing matter; they’re deadly serious and willing to break laws: Todd Akin Arrested on May 9, 1987 With Radical Anti-Abortion Group.

We learned from a public records request that Akin was arrested on May 9, 1987 in St. Louis. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch covered the protest and reported the following day that police “arrested 30 anti-abortion protesters” for blocking “the front doors of Reproductive Health Services” while about “50 anti-abortion activists picketed two clinics” in St. Louis County. The Post-Dispatch quoted the spokesman for the protesters, John Ryan, who said the actions “were in honor of Mother’s Day.”

At the time, Ryan was head of the Pro-Life Direct Action League. He and his organization were among those sued by the National Organization for Women in 1986, which sought to “stop what it called a nationwide conspiracy to close abortion clinics.” “We believe there is a reign of terror going on,” said Eleanor Smeal, then president of NOW. She labeled Ryan – who had been “arrested almost 350 times” by then – a “terrorist.”

This is who Akin chose to get involved with in 1987 – and it gets worse. Ryan was pushed out as head of the Pro-Life Direct Action League around September 1987 and replaced by an aggressive, fundamentalist leader, Tim Dreste. Dreste affiliated the group with Randall Terry’s radical Operation Rescue the following summer. This is the same Randall Terry who later said of abortion providers, “When I, or people like me are running the country, you’d better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we’ll execute you.”

Dreste shared a jail cell with Terry in September 1988 and returned to St. Louis under orders to break with the Catholic-dominated Pro-Life Direct Action League. Just one month later, Akin appeared at an event for Dreste’s new group, Whole Life Ministries.

The Post-Dispatch reported on October 29 that Akin, who was elected days later to public office, “spoke to about 35 anti-abortion activists” planning to block clinic doors the next day. He said, “As far as I am concerned, you are the freedom fighters of America.” “My hat is off to you,” he continued.

The article identified Dreste as director of Whole Life Ministries, “a new anti-abortion group in St. Louis.” “We’re going to tell her we’re not going to allow her to kill her baby,” he said. Dreste made clear that protesters would block the clinic doors and refuse police orders to move. “We will tell (police) we will obey God’s law before we obey man’s law.” Sound familiar?

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Catholic Video Gives Pro-Terrorist Christian Fascist Platform To Spread Homophobia and Hate

“Reverend” Donald Spitz from the pro-terrorist anti-abortion group Army of God has been using the Catholic video-sharing site Glora.tv in order to promote his agenda of anti-abortion violence and extreme homophobia.

On Boxing Day, Spitz struck again, releasing a film onto the site repeating anti-gay sections of the bible declaring homosexuals to be “sodomites” and “worthy of death”. There is even a quotation celebrating a Jewish King who “brake down the houses of the sodomites”.

Unsurprisingly, Glora.tv has done absolutely nothing about this latest film, nor about the other (many much, much worse) films which Spitz is distributing on the site. Gloria.tv and its Catholic priest managers, Father Don Reto Nay and Father Markus Doppelbauer, are without excuse. As explained previously, I have repeatedly warned them about what is going on, and even went to the trouble of joining the site myself in order to raise awareness about how the Army of God are using the site for their own ends. The result? My account was disabled (I can no longer post messages etc.) but “Reverend” Don Spitz remains an active member.

Why are Catholics not speaking up on this? One wonders how much sympathy there is for anti-abortion terrorism within the Catholic community. I am beginning to suspect it is more significant than generally believed.

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• Got Breast Cancer? You’re on Your Own (keepwomenhealthy.com)

Christian Terrorists Continue to Attack America

Christian Terrorists Continue to Attack America

By Austin Cline

Bobby Joe Rogers has been charged by police in Florida with firebombing a family planning clinic. If Rogers had been a Muslim who firebombed a synagogue, he’d be immediately branded a Muslim terrorist, leading to even more calls for profiling of Muslims in America.

Because Bobby Joe Rogers is a white Christian, though, no one in law enforcement will label his actions what they clearly are: violent Christian terrorism.

“Rogers admitted to intentionally setting fire to the clinic due to his strong disbelief in abortion,” the affidavit stated, and “he stated (he) was further fueled when he recently witnessed a young female entering the clinic while he was sitting amongst anti-abortion protesters.”

The two-story clinic had been attacked before.

It was bombed on Christmas Day in 1984, and in 1994 a doctor and a volunteer who escorted patients to and from the clinic were shot to death as they arrived. The gunman, Paul Hill, was executed in 2003. Pensacola was the site of other abortion-related violence in 1993 when Dr. David Gunn was shot and killed at another clinic by an abortion protester.

Source: The Washington Post

Terrorism is something that abortion providers have to contend with on a daily basis. It’s not “Islamofascists” who are responsible for that terrorism, though. It’s not strange, foreign, brown-skinned people who force abortion providers to work behind bullet-proof glass, wear bullet-proof vests, and hire bodyguards. No, it’s good, God-fearing, white Christians who are committing terrorism in America. And on a regular basis, too.

But of course the legal system in this country won’t treat them as terrorists and won’t even label their actions as terrorism. That’s how successful their terrorism has been: they have cowed the government into denying that the terrorism is even being committed in the first place.

At the same time, though, they have also cowed the government into treating similar acts from other groups as so “different” that they can’t be handled by the regular criminal justice system. American Christians are thus, in a sense, far more successful at their terrorism than Muslim militants in the Middle East have been.

Related articles

• Man Arrested in Fla. Abortion Clinic Fire (abcnews.go.com)
• Again, Pensacola (abortion.ws)
• Man arrested, charged in Fla. abortion clinic fire (newsok.com)
• Man charged in Fla. abortion clinic fire (cbsnews.com)
• Man Arrested For Setting Fire To Florida Abortion Clinic (tampa.cbslocal.com)
• Apparent Arson Levels Abortion Clinic Hit Many Times Before (dokmz.wordpress.com)
• Violent decades surround burned abortion clinic (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Another day, another ‘pro-life’ terrorist bombs an abortion clinic (dailykos.com)
• The terrorists that got away (miscellany101.wordpress.com)

Maryland Father Newest Target for Anti-Choice Terrorism

Maryland Father Newest Target for Anti-Choice Terrorism

by Kari Ann Rinker [1], National Organization for Women (NOW), Kansas

September 13, 2011 – 11:38pm (Print [2])

Cheryl Sullenger of Operation Rescue, shown here protesting in Iowa against the use of telemedicine for abortions

Cheryl Sullenger appeared before the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) last week [10] to speak out in favor of the abortion regulations known as TRAP (targeted regulation of abortion providers). [10] Fifteen minutes into her commentary, the hearing officer finally saw fit to end her tirade against abortion doctors and physically removed her from the podium.

The litany of alleged abuses and manufactured transgressions of the “abortion industry” in Kansas, for which Ms. Sullenger declared moral outrage, was not unexpected. Cheryl is the Senior Policy Advisor for Operation Rescue [11]. As I watched her being removed from the podium, I wondered how many people listening to her were aware of her background? Ms. Sullenger works for an organization that professionally harasses physicians, clinic employees and their patients. Beyond this, Ms. Sullenger has the ultimate “pro-life” credentials of being a federally convicted terrorist. She has served jail time for conspiracy to bomb an abortion clinic in California.

From Tara Murtha at the Philadelphia Weekly:

In 1987 Sullenger pled guilty to conspiring to blow up San Diego’s Alvarado Medical Center with a gasoline bomb. Sullenger served two years in federal prison. Her name and phone number was found on Scott Roeder’s dashboard after Tiller’s murder. [12]

James McElroy [13], a civil-rights attorney who won the judgment against Jeff White, says both Sullenger and (Troy) Newman had restraining orders filed against them. “Suffice it to say they were in legal trouble most of the time they were in San Diego. They had very little respect for the law,” says McElroy. “Not laws protecting private property or against harassing people or disturbing the peace … They are not the kind of people you want rolling into town.”

And more from the January 04, 1988 [14] LA Times:

Cheryl Sullenger, 32, and her husband, Randall, 35, until recently were resident apartment managers in Spring Valley. Many of the overt acts listed in the federal indictment revolve around Cheryl Sullenger, a longtime activist in the Pro-Life movement. The informant told police that Randall Sullenger, a warehouse worker, conducted moonlight surveillance of possible bombing targets. Cheryl Sullenger gave Svelmoe a woman’s wig to wear as a disguise during the bombing attempt. The Sullengers also collected from Svelmoe the byproducts of the pipe bomb and agreed to destroy them.

From the May 06, 1988 [15] LA Times:

Gillam staggered the sentences so that at least one of the Sullengers could stay home with their two daughters, ages 6 and 4. Cheryl Sullenger will begin her term after her husband has completed his sentence.

This “pro-life” maven was busy doing nighttime surveillance and making bombs with her husband, willfully putting her own children in a situation where they would be without both their mother and father, while they did jail time for their crimes Despite all of this, here she was in front of a crowded room at a high profile state proceeding professing knowledge about what makes an abortion clinic safe, when her knowledge of such clinics consists primarily of conspiracy to bomb one.

Local media has repeatedly sought her for comment and her words have been printed. She has often been treated as a source of reputable authority for the anti-choice movement. The media would be served just as well to seek out Scott Roeder, convicted murderer of Dr. George Tiller, for his take on matters of abortion in Kansas. Her words are sensational and inflammatory, but her personal actions are much worse, having proven violent in the past.

Cheryl isn’t just one bad apple, just as her friend, Scott Roeder, is no lone wolf. Their actions are par for the course within these groups who advocate against abortion rights. Theirs is a family that not only prays together, they harass and conspire together. They pass along information and techniques that have proven successful through the years.

Just months after Dr. Tiller’s assassination, Operation Rescue called for a siege on Dr. Carhart’s clinic in Nebraska. They have since followed this Doctor to his new practice in Germantown, Maryland. They have been at the forefront of a coalition dedicated to driving Dr. Carhart out of town, by any means possible. [16] Another coalition partner called Defend Life has taken up Operation Rescue’s torch while they have been busy here in Kansas. Defend Life has moved their focus to the owner of the building where Dr. Carhart practices medicine. This is a play straight from Wichita, where the landlord of Dr. Mila Means (at the urging of Operation Rescue) took her to court to prevent her from providing abortions within her office space [17]. As she searched for other locations to rent, a prospective landlord was then harassed at her home with phone calls and the empty building itself was picketed.

In typical anti-choice terrorist fashion, Defend Life has included Dr. Carhart’s landlord’s name, photograph, email, home address and phone number in a mass email to their followers. They have even provided the names of his two middle school aged children. They have been in front of his school, greeting the students with a sign with his picture and phone number on it for several days. This is some text from the email that was sent…

 

“_____________ is the building owner and landlord for Germantown Reproductive Health Services. This is where Abortionist LeRoy Carhart conducts his reign of terror killing fully viable 25 – 35 week old preborn babies.

___________ and LeRoy Carhart have turned Maryland into the late term child killing capital of the world, and you can help bring an end to the needless slaughter of these innocent babies. Although ________ and his wife _______ have been blessed with two incredible children, _________ and ___________, he was not raised in an environment that taught him about the sanctity of human life.”

I spoke with the Maryland landlord who is being harassed. His main concern was for his children. This “pro-life posse,” unabashedly obsessed with the unborn, put the lives of school-aged children at risk through the targeting of this father. It is unabashedly dangerous and it is the preferred organizational model of the anti-choice movement.

Source
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/09/13/maryland-father-school-principal-newest-target-antichoice-terrorism-0

Links:
[1] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/user/kari-rinker
[2] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/
[3] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/taxonomy/term/8165
[4] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/taxonomy/term/8167
[5] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/taxonomy/term/8267
[6] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/tag/cheryl-sullenberger
[7] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/tag/operation-rescue
[8] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/tag/scott-roeder
[9] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/taxonomy/term/8269
[10] http://m.cjonline.com/news/2011-09-07/abortion-activists-clash-over-clinic-rules
[11] http://www.operationrescue.org/
[12] http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2009/06/inside_the_car_of_the.php
[13] http://www.jmcelroylaw.com/
[14] http://articles.latimes.com/1988/jan/04
[15] http://articles.latimes.com/1988/may/06
[16] http://www.deaconforlife.blogspot.com/2010/12/operation-rescue.html
[17] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/mila-means-abortion-tiller-wichita
[18] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/files/teaser-images/cherylsullenger (1).jpg
[19] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/user/login?destination=print%2F17407#comments
[20] http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/user/register?destination=print%2F17407#comments

Related articles

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The coming war on women

The coming war on women

by Kaili Joy Gray

A war is coming.

Congressional Republicans have already made clear that their top priority, once they take control of Congress in the next session, is to make sure President Obama is a one-term president.

But there is a second priority that many Republicans in Congress, and in state legislatures around the country, have promised to pursue: the further restriction of women’s reproductive rights.

As Mother Jones reported in December:

If you thought the abortion battle during the health care debate was fierce, just wait until Republicans take over the House in January. Strengthened by congressional victories in the midterm elections, Republican abortion foes plan to push hard in the new year. Their top goals: enshrine tough restrictions on abortion funding into federal law and defund Planned Parenthood.

The incoming Speaker of the House, John Boehner, is a staunch opponent of women’s reproductive rights, with a 100 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee. In fact, last year, he received the 2010 Henry J. Hyde Defender of Life Award for his “extraordinary leadership in the fight to prevent taxpayer-funded abortion and for his work to protect women’s health in his own state of Ohio.” After the November election, his staff held a meeting with terrorist Randall Terry to receive Terry’s list of forced birth demands for the new Republican majority.

And then there is the selection of Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Penn.) as the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. As the New York Times reported:

The selection…presages a major shift on abortion and family planning, according to opponents and supporters of abortion rights.

…

Mr. Pitts was chosen last week as the chairman of the subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over private health insurance, Medicaid and much of Medicare, as well as the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.

In urging Republican leaders to choose Mr. Pitts, the National Right to Life Committee said he had “made the protection of the sanctity of innocent human life the cornerstone of his service in the House.”

Forced birthers acknowledge that even with the additional 45 seats they picked up in the midterms, it will be difficult to enact their desired legislation with a still Democratically-controlled Senate and a pro-choice president. But forced birthers have, in the past, succeeded in passing restrictive legislation with the help of even self-described pro-choice Democrats. In 2003, for example, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act passed with the help of 63 House Democrats and and 17 Senate Democrats, including then-Senator Joe Biden.

And of course, who can forget how Democrat Rep. Bart Stupak held health care reform hostage in order to extort further restrictions on women’s access to reproductive health care?

Last year, state legislators introduced more than 600 bills to restrict reproductive health care rights, dozens of which were enacted into law. Often, the laws are overturned by the courts for their blatant unconstitutionality, but that doesn’t stop forced birth legislators from continuing to introduce these bills in the hopes that they will reach the Supreme Court and ultimately be upheld.

As the Washington Independent reported:

With a wide swath of state legislatures in the GOP’s control beginning in January, Republicans across the country will have a new opportunity to subtly create laws restricting access to abortion.

…

“They have so many things in their arsenal to use — starting with an outright ban on certain types of abortion procedures (saline abortions have been a favorite target in the past) to banning abortion insurance coverage in the still- to-be-developed health care exchanges, to preventing any state funding to go to organizations that provide, refer or support abortions, to overturning the Doe v. Gomez case, which provides funding for abortions for women on Medicaid,” Linnea House of NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota told Birkey.

Every year, the forced birth advocates invent ever more creative ways to chip away at women’s rights to reproductive health care. Like the Personhood Amendment, which was on the ballot in Colorado in the last midterm election.

Personhood is a term that conservative groups have taken to using, arguing that life needs to be defined, essentially, at the most original point possible, starting with the zygote and calling it a person. The restrictions of such amendments like Colorado’s have major implications on a woman’s legal right to choose: If personhood were codified into law, not only would all forms of abortion become illegal, but stem cell research would be banned and women would no longer have access to certain forms of birth control.

The amendment was soundly defeated, but that won’t stop legislators from continuing to push for personhood laws throughout the country. Such legislation is currently being pursued in 30 more states.

And then there are the fetal pain laws.

Abortion rights foes emboldened by a new Nebraska law that restricts late-term procedures based on the disputed notion that fetuses can feel pain after 20 weeks are pushing for similar legislation in other states, particularly those where Republicans won big in November.

National Right to Life held a strategy conference this week in Arlington, Va., to offer its state affiliates guidance for the 2011 legislative session. Indiana, Iowa and Kentucky lawmakers have already started drafting bills similar to Nebraska’s law, and abortion opponents are pushing lawmakers in Kansas, Maryland and Oklahoma to do the same.

Forced birthers have already made clear their intention to use the new health care reform law to deny reproductive health care to women. According to the Guttmacher Institute:

In late July, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and some 165 cosponsors introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Smith argued that the debate over health care reform and its outcome made clear that “it is time for a single, government-wide permanent protection against taxpayer funding for elective abortion.” His solution includes refighting the fight over health care to enact the Stupak amendment to essentially ban abortion coverage in exchange plans. He would further solidify the Hyde amendment and its progeny (affecting all women dependent on the federal government for their health care or insurance), by writing the prohibitions into permanent law, instead of their current form in which they must be—and are—renewed annually on the various relevant appropriations bills. The original Hyde amendment has been enacted annually since 1978; most of the other abortion funding restrictions spanning the federal government were enacted starting in the early 1980s.

The Smith bill would go even further, however, into uncharted territory. It would carry the argument against funding abortion to an extreme by preventing employers from taking a tax deduction for insurance plans that include abortion coverage. Moreover, individuals’ premiums for plans that cover abortion could not be paid with pretax dollars. In addition, any costs incurred by an individual for an abortion would be disallowed under a flexible health spending account or for the purposes of a potential medical care deduction from federal taxes.

Even though President Obama has repeatedly stated his support for women’s reproductive health care, he has already compromised on those issues. And given that he has made clear his willingness to compromise on even his most fundamental principles, there is no way to know what further compromises Republicans will be able to extort, should they decide to again take the American people hostage.

Despite Republicans’ promises to re-dedicate the government to focusing on the “real” problems Americans face, it is abundantly clear that they are, in fact, dedicated to restoking the flames of the culture wars, with the battle to strip women of their reproductive rights front and center in that war. The real question is whether self-described pro-choice Democrats, including and especially the president, will have the strength to fight back. Because this is a war women can’t afford to lose.