PEACE & LIFE CONNECTIONS

News on Defunding Violence The defunding of Medicaid dollars for Planned Parenthood was legislatively set to last one year, and so expired at midnight on July 4. Congress can still extend that defunding, but needs to be encouraged to do so. Legislators inclined to have such defunding need to have it stressed to them how important this is. See also our blog post on Planned Parenthood’s Financial Fraud. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has an amendment to H.R. 8595, the State Departme

Republican Governor Calls For Death Penalty Abolition In a press conference on June 16, 2026, Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio declared that "The moral justification I had for voting for the death penalty simply no longer exists.” He went into great detail (in the first 20 minutes) to make the case: it doesn’t deter; the victims’ families suffer with the unavoidable delays; it traumatizes the execution team members, etc. Some find this surprising from a former prosecutor who in 1

June 12, 2022: The End of the Roe Era Now that four years have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, where do we stand? Our headline at the time was “Major Obstacle Removed.” We knew we had plenty of work ahead. The only problem solved was the reign of the Roe v. Wade decision; the reverberations of Roe continue even if it’s no longer in force. We still need all hands on deck. It was always going to be true that some states would pass abortion bans and others

A Fantastic Article in Commonweal In a May 22 article in Commonweal, a Catholic journal, Timothy Kirchoff mentions the consistent life ethic several times, and opines from the perspective of Democratic Party electoral politics: Reviving the Pro-Life Democrat While a couple of prominent people have suggested Democrats would have a better winning strategy if they weren’t so dead set against pro-life Democrats running in districts where that’s more likely to win, Kirchoff points

Mainstream Media Attention to the Consistent Life Ethic We recently mentioned the idea that Donald Trump’s rant against Pope Leo might help those stuck in an opposing-camps mindset to see in the pope a better role model for being pro-life. Now we see this dynamic happening in an article in The Atlantic, whose sub-title says it well: “Pope Leo’s Pro-Life Challenge to Conservative Catholics: The Church’s resistance to war and its support for migrants stem from the same principl

Dobbs and Draft Steve Kennedy of Slate offers a highly interesting article behind a paywall: Trump just automated draft entry. It’s time for the Supreme Court to step in. Daniel Hampton of Raw Story discusses this in a free article with what for us is a more on-point title: Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade may have made the US military draft illegal. The idea is, as Hampton puts it: The legal hook is the Roberts court's own "history and tradition" test, introduced i

Trump and Pope Leo Donald Trump has ranted against the pope at length, and as would be expected the pope has stood firm. Though not explicitly stated, there are ways the consistent life ethic is doing good work behind the scenes: Many Trump opponents are cheering the pope in his anti-war stance and defense of the marginalized. If they harbor animosity toward the anti-abortion pro-life cause because of the divided camp they’re in, they now have in the pope a better role model

No Kings #3 This set of over 3,000 rallies on March 28, 2026 was estimated at over 8 million people. These events are especially known for attenders’ creativity with home-made signs. The photos below were taken in Maine by Julia Smucker. There was much more anti-war sentiment this time. This is easily explained by the outrages happening in Iran. Media coverage of the signs was extensive. While there were undoubtedly some signs promoting abortion and its euphemisms, they were

Colorado Referendum Targeting Migrants Most referendums cover just one issue, and a narrow aspect of that issue, so our Peace and Life Referendums project website lists a diversity of such measures that are on the ballot, or have good potential to be, in different states and localities. We finally have a referendum which, while narrowly focused as usual, manages to be covered under four of our issues. Colorado has Measure 95, to require that people charged with (not convicte

In War, Children Get Killed: Girls’ Elementary School in Minab, Iran War planners like to brag their technology precisely targets the people they understand to be killable while minimizing civilian casualties. In the case of the Minab Girl’s School Air Strike on February 28, 2026, a map showing a military target was outdated, and when they aimed at the spot, they hit a girls’ school. At least 85 girls ages 7-12 were killed and about 60 injured (so the initial death toll may r