#448 NY & VA, Hawaii Scare, Price of Violence - February 15, 2019
New York and Virginia Law & Bill: More Comments from Our Member Groups (See last week’s issue for other comments).
Kristen Day of Democrats for Life of America was interviewed on TV network EWTN, which is noteworthy because it includes a clip of Rep. Tran of Virginia being asked whether the bill she was sponsoring there would allow babies to be killed as they were exiting the birth canal. While she was clearly uncomfortable, she answered “My bill would allow that, yes.” When pro-lifers are accused of lying about the bill allowing killing at time of birth, we can document that the sponsor of the bill has herself said so.
Damian J. Geminder of Feminists for Life writes about the New York law: “I Don’t Love New York”
Serrin M. Foster of Feminists for Life writes about the Virginia bill: “Kittens get care, babies left to die, and women left to cry in Northam’s world.”
Note on Numbers: A figure of 13,000 yearly abortions over 20 weeks in the U.S. is based on applying the CDC report of late-terms being 1.3% of abortions to the Guttmacher Institute’s report of around a million abortions. The Guttmacher Institute itself, however, has reported 15,000. Official figures have been as low as around 10,000. These figures are comparable to gun-related homicides in the U.S., which few think are “rare.” But guns are used in the majority of criminal homicides, whereas late-term abortions are in fact only a tiny proportion of the roughly one million total abortions – a number which should horrify us.
The Hawaii Scare on Nuclear Weapons Jason Scott Jones was producer of the 2006 pro-life film Bella, and has had leadership roles in several pro-life organizations plus a “whole life” view on several threats to human life. He tells his personal tale in “38 Minutes in Hawaii: My Family and the False Missile Alarm.” It includes a poignant discussion with his son on why we couldn’t just nuke North Korea into oblivion. Jason refers to a white paper he wrote on nuclear weapons (with CLN president John Whitehead and Rehumanize International’s Aimee Murphy).
Latest CLN Blog Post Julia Smucker uses two recent news editorials to make her case in: “The Price of Violence: When Dehumanizing the Vulnerable Hurts One’s Own Causes.” In one, a man who’s an abortion defender nevertheless details how Roe has hurt other causes he cares about. In the other, the author is an abortion opponent and shows how the case against abortion is hurt unless there’s consistency on other issues as well. They come from different political perspectives, which makes the case all the stronger: consistency in opposing killing across the board is crucial in opposing each individual type of killing.
Quotation of the Week Michael Sean Winters Liberal Catholics have work to do to support consistent ethic of life National Catholic Reporter, January 18, 2019 Liberals excoriate those who deny the science about climate change, and appropriately so. We insist, rightly, that science yields important knowledge that must be respected as such, and not subjected to ideological censors. We value education, believing that ignorance is a curse akin to a plague, and in a democracy, a lethal curse. Yet, strangely, liberals seem unable to discuss what happens in a surgical abortion. They surround the procedure in euphemisms. Yet no one can truthfully deny that abortion is a violent act, gruesome even. On this issue, and this issue only, liberals are encouraged to turn away from the reality of the thing itself.
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