Reproductive Control & Anti-Abortion

During Wednesday’s hearing on Arizona Representative Trent Franks’s proposed 20-week abortion ban, Franks claimed “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.” Using the same pseudo-scientific reasoning as Todd Akin (who infamously said pregnancy by “legitimate” rape was unlikely because “the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down”), Franks joined the ranks of conservative rape-deniers who privilege “fetal personhood” over a pregnant person’s autonomy.

The absence of historical and sociological context for atheist politics, and its disconnection from social justice activism, will keep it in the lily-white one-percent column.

The ‘morning after’ Gosnell: Can we agree on some of the basics?

But he does seem to be a hero.

A discussion of Kathryn Joyce’s new book.

The notion that the news media is a secularist cabal ignoring stories that challenge its shibboleths is wrongheaded. The media is not sentient and its decisions are not logical. It reacts more than acts, often driven by random factors (What did my husband say over breakfast? Who’s trending on Twitter? When was the last time I read a story about ____?). Equally mistaken is the premise that if there were more believers in the nation’s newsrooms things would be different.

Four years later, the church doesn’t speak to the media about the murder. “They put that in the past,” an administrator told me, handing back my card. But they may be the only ones who can say that in Wichita, which for 20 years has been the epicenter of America’s fight over abortion.

It’s still too soon to say social conservatives are finished.

In the 40 years since the passage of Roe v. Wade, the struggle for reproductive justice has evolved and intensified. We must be prepared to deftly confront right-wing attacks and advance reproductive…

Rebuffing the religious right? Don’t count on it.