#326 Hyde, Nonviolence on the Money - September 2, 2016
Hello, Hyde – You’re a Real Life Saver! September 30, 2016 will be the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Hyde Amendment by the United States Congress. This prohibited federal programs, including Medicaid, the program for health coverage for low-income people, from paying for abortions nationally. Women in poverty still got Medicaid coverage for pregnancy and child-rearing, but under the Hyde Amendment, the danger was lessened of being pressured into charge-free abortions by social workers and others. The abortion rate among low-income women dropped dramatically in those states that observed the ban, while not dropping for higher-income women in those states nor for low-income women in states that chose to offer their own abortion coverage. Our member group Secular Prolife is running a campaign called “Hello Hyde.” They’re collecting photos of people who got their prenatal and birth care through Medicaid during all these years when the Hyde Amendment has been in effect.
Get Them on in 2020 Our member group Feminists for Life is sponsoring a petition to the U.S. Treasury Department. The Department has decided to put early feminists and abolitionists Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul and Elizabeth Cady Stanton on the back of the ten dollar bill, but it’s taking some time. Women gained the right to vote nationally in the U.S. in 1920, so 2020 would be the 100th anniversary. Having the bill done in 2020 would be a good way to commemorate this. Anthony, Paul, and Stanton all opposed abortion among their many other oppositions to violence; all five, of course, are well known for nonviolent activism for several social justice issues.
Latest CL Blog: Brave British Oxford Prof The founder of our predecessor group, Prolifers for Survival, Julianne Wiley (a.k.a. Juli Loesch) took an interest in Elizabeth Anscombe, a prominent British philosophy professor at Oxford University. Elizabeth, who always wore trousers at a time when that was unusual for women, took a strong consistent-life position in the middle of the 20th century when both nuclear weapons and the widespread justification and practice of abortion were getting started.
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Quotation of the Week Matthew Tyson We Must be Radically Pro-Life To be radically pro-life is to be exactly as the title dictates: for life - totally, completely, and without reservation. It means to see the preservation of all human life, from the unborn to the elderly, the innocent to the guilty, as the greatest good. It means to exhaust every possible effort to avoid killing at all costs - even in cases where it can be lawfully justified. . . . We have to put an end to this de facto moral code that determines who is and isn’t worthy of living and find the courage to reject violence in all its forms.
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