#346 Marches, Muslim Ban, Gorsuch - February 3, 2017
Yet More Fantastic Press Coverage
RealClearPolitics: Pro-Life Feminists' Broader Message Is Nonviolence, by Melissa Cruz, January 28, 2017.
BuzzFeed: These People Marched Against Abortion — And Against Trump, by Ema O’Connor, January 28, 2017 “You can call yourself pro-life as much as you want,” one March For Life attendee said, “but if you are keeping refugees out while bombing their countries, if you are sexually assaulting women and … bragging about it, it’s not enough.”
National Public Radio (NPR), Connections with Evan Dawson. Discussing the March for Life and the Movement's Next Steps. Guests include Audrey Sample of Feminists for Nonviolent Choices and Rosemary Geraghty of Life Matters Journal. February 1, 2017.
Our latest blog post, The Marches of January – mainly of photos of our participation in the many marches – has a list of links to mainstream press about consistent-lifers and pro-life feminists.
We Join the Outrage: Anti-Muslim Bigotry is a Disgrace
A case can be made that the protesters of the Executive Order banning certain Muslims from entering the U.S. are doing more for national security than is Mr. Trump. They help undercut the propaganda advantage Mr. Trump has just handed ISIS. This is common; peace advocates often have a more clear-eyed view of what would actually lead to security than those who quickly resort to violence do.
Charles Camosy has written an excellent piece called “Movement needs to make clear that Trump’s refugee order is not ‘pro-life’.” He attended the March for Life and reports (as do many of us who were there) that plenty of the marchers opposed anti-immigrant policies, with signs such as “Don’t Abort / Don’t Deport.”
In addition to ordering this ban on the very day of the March for Life, Trump also signed it on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Jewish refugees to the U.S. were turned back to meet their fate back in Germany, for fear they were Nazi spies.
Where Neil Gorsuch Stands on Consistent-Life Issues The good news is that Mr. Gorsuch, Mr. Trump’s nominee to the US Supreme Court, has devoted so much thought to the issue of euthanasia that he’s written an entire book on it, The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, published by Princeton University Press in 2006. The publisher says the book “builds a nuanced, novel, and powerful moral and legal argument against legalization [of assisted suicide and euthanasia], one based on a principle that, surprisingly, has largely been overlooked in the debate—the idea that human life is intrinsically valuable and that intentional killing is always wrong.”
The bad news is that he’s a strong supporter of the death penalty and generally turns down cases for stays of execution. In a case involving Utah wanting to defund Planned Parenthood, he wrote “human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.” That statement seems to be worded to allow the intentional taking of human life by the government. We encourage him to think through that distinction more carefully, if the principle of valuing human life is truly to be upheld.
Quotation of the Week on the occasion of the latest Supreme Court nomination James Wilson, United States Supreme Court Justice, signer of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. "Lectures on Law," 1791
With consistency, beautiful and undeviating, human life from its commencement to its close, is protected by common law. . . . By law it is protected not only from immediate destruction, but from every degree of actual violence.
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