#306 Excellent Articles, Referenda & Quotes - April 15, 2016
Some Excellent Articles
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This week has seen several magazines educating about matters of importance to consistent-lifers: Time has an article on the “secret war crime” of massive rape. It starts out making the connection to abortion quite clear, with a presumption that rape victims need it. The article doesn’t sufficiently explore whether abortion would add to the pain or if there might be nonviolent alternatives. Still, it’s crucial for the public to understand how widespread the problem is, since the obvious best solution to prevent the rapes is to prevent the wars. Commenting on two candidates’ mis-steps on abortion as we mentioned last week, Salon has an article by Camille Paglia, in her own words a pro-abortion woman, who nevertheless sees the problem with extremism and gives some interesting history: Feminists Have Abortion Wrong, Trump and Hillary Miscues Highlight a Frozen National Debate. Its conclusion: “Progressives need to do some soul-searching about their reflex rhetoric in demeaning the pro-life cause. A liberal credo that is variously anti-war, anti-fur, vegan, and committed to environmental protection of endangered species . . . should not be so stridently withholding its imagination and compassion from the unborn.” A Dutch doctor who had participated in euthanasia committees has second thoughts on his experience in Rushing Toward Death?, cover story in the March issue of the Christian Century. The same issue looks at Dying in Oregon, and finds that it’s not excruciating pain so much as lack of social networks and loneliness that’s driving most requests for Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) there. Conclusion: “In the end, the best way to undermine PAS is to show that there is a better way—one of love, service, and virtue.”
Referenda News The US state of Nebraska will be voting on the death penalty this November. The legislature voted to abolish it and overrode a veto, but the governor led a petition drive to put it on the ballot. The vote will not be yes/no, but it will be either to retain or to repeal what the legislature did – that is, not to retain the death penalty, but to retain the abolition of it. Because this wording could be confusing, the main group working against the reinstatement of the death penalty calls themselves "Retain a Just Nebraska" to clarify the vote that’s needed. We’re delighted to find a piece on their website, originally published in the Omaha World-Herald, that explicitly makes the case from a consistent life point of view.
Meanwhile, signatures are being gathered in Colorado for a pro-euthanasia referendum.
Anyone with news on other referenda on our issues, in any country, please let us know at weekly@consistent-life.org.
Quotation of the Week
RECHAZAMOS el ABORTO porque SOMOS de IZQUIERDA
English translation: We Reject Abortion Because We Are of the Left Spain’s Solidarity Party, March 30, 2005 Due to the confusion provoked by the current deluge of propaganda, we need to make it clear that it is because we are left-wing that we strongly disapprove of abortion, and its overt or surreptitious legalization. Likewise, we are against any assault on life, such as death penalty, torture, hunger, armament, war, destruction of the environment. We therefore proclaim that associating the left-wing with abortion's “legitimacy” is first and foremost a lie, and in addition, it directly contradicts the values that the Left vindicates. . . . we fight against any form of exploitation of human beings, because we are against the oppression of the people by any imperialist power. But also because we defend human life as a supreme value, and we claim that nobody, in anybody´s name, can put an end to it.