669 - Peace & Life: CLE in the media - June 30, 2023
CLE Media Coverage
Rev. Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest, is a frequent columnist for The New York Times. We’ve quoted her several times (and again below). Her latest is unfortunately online in a subscribers-only newsletter, but has also gotten wider readership by being in the print edition: “You can’t protect some life and not others.”
National Catholic Register details the some of the legislation for life-affirming policy that has followed abortion bans in ‘Build a Pro-Life State’: Funding Bills Put Money Where Values Are.
One example is of the Texas legislature's approval of extended Medicaid coverage for mothers and babies: "It’s a marrying of Democratic-backed social spending and Republican-backed opposition to abortion."
“Democrats came to me and said, ‘You guys have always been with us on this. Now that abortion is behind us, let’s work together,’” said Allmon, who represents the state’s Catholic bishops. “And I had Republicans saying, ‘You know, we should have been funding some of these things. Let’s do it now. So we built a package intentionally that will be reflective of Catholic social teaching and a consistent ethic of life, and that won,” Allmon said.
See also a short discussion of the CL in Catholic Standard: Archdiocesan Office of Life Issues renews Pro-Life Grant Program.
Also of Interest
The New York Times deliberately expands its opinion column pool (as seen above with Rev. Warren). David French, a conservative who also writes for The National Review, is one of these, and he’s recently written The Importance of Hope in the Pro-Life Movement. He’s always been disgruntled with Trump, and notes that the downward trend in abortions reversed under Trump. He details this and makes the case that many couples are avoiding having children due to an absence of hope.
The Hill, which describes itself as “"nonpartisan reporting on the inner workings of Government and the nexus of politics and business" has published On Dobbs’ anniversary, bracing for more violence against pregnancy resource centers. The news itself is disheartening, and brings to mind the backlash that also occurred after Brown v. Topeka Board of Education that overturned legal segregation, but it’s good that it’s getting coverage. This is a good source for documenting the problem.
Our Latest Blog Post
John Whitehead considers how many peace organizations who do good work nevertheless attract only people who agree with causes typically identified with the left, and suggests Imagining a Different Type of Peace Organization.
Quotation of the Week
Tish Harrison Warren
The New York Times, June 18, 2023
The link in the quotation goes to our website.
People like me, who hold to what the Roman Catholic cardinal Joseph Bernardin called a “consistent ethic of life” and what the Catholic activist Eileen Egan referred to as “the seamless garment” of life don’t have a clear political home . . . Bernardin, who died in 1996, argued that a consistent ethic demands equal advocacy for the “right to life of the weakest among us” and “the quality of life of the powerless among us.” Because of this, it combines issues that we often pry apart in American politics.
The whole life movement , for instance, rejects the notion that a party can embrace family values while leaving asylum-seeking children on our Southern border in grave danger. Or that one can extend compassion to those children, while withholding it from the unwanted child in the womb. A whole life ethic is often antiwar, anti-abortion, anti-death penalty, anti-euthanasia and pro-gun control. It sees a thread connecting issues that the major party platforms often silo.