By Kenneth D. Whitehead
Crisis Magazine
Why has the strategy of a supposed Republican “War on Women” worked so well for the Democrats? It is an almost totally fake issue, yet it has proved to be a potent motivating factor in elections for not a few voters, including especially single women.
One obvious reason for this is that the current virtually universal availability of contraception and abortion is an active concern for a large segment of the population today. People do have to have access to their contraception and abortions, after all; and even though there is not, and never has been, the slightest prospect that these procedures might possibly be curtailed any time soon—how would the Republicans go about curtailing them even if they wanted to?—the fact that they continue to be prominent subjects of discussion in the news of the day in connection with such things as the Obamacare birth-prevention mandate means that, especially in the minds of uninformed voters not seriously following the issues, the fear can arise that maybe those Neanderthal Republicans could actually be contemplating a ban on birth control, as alleged.
Kenneth D. Whitehead is a former career diplomat who served in Rome and the Middle East and as the chief of the Arabic Service of the Voice of America. For eight years he served as executive vice president of Catholics United for the Faith. He also served as a United States Assistant Secretary of Education during the Reagan Administration. He is the author of The Renewed Church: The Second Vatican Council’s Enduring Teaching about the Church (Sapientia Press, 2009) and, most recently, Affirming Religious Freedom: How Vatican Council II Developed the Church’s Teaching to Meet Today’s Needs (St. Paul’s, 2010).
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