757 - Peace & Life: Dobbs and Draft / good SCOTUS ruling - May 1, 2026
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- 2 min read
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 in the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe. Under that framework, government powers must be grounded in founding-era practice. And the founding era, Kennedy noted, had no national draft, only local militias designed for community defense.
We have no idea of the legal merits of this argument, but we’d love to see it succeed.
SCOTUS Defends Non-Profits
The state government of New Jersey subpoenaed a pregnancy resource center (PRC) for its donor list. They were trying to establish fraud and wanted to ask specific donors if they had been deceived. It’s unlikely donors were deceived; PRCs tend to be quite upfront with their donors. Nevertheless, what the state saw as investigation the center saw as an attempt to intimidate, making donors less likely to donate. This would chill the center’s First Amendment rights.
On April 29, the US Supreme Court sided with the center -- unanimously. The pro-abortion American Civil Liberties Union was also on the center’s side, as were many mainstream media editorials. Some may not sympathize with the anti-abortion activities of the center, but having the state butt in on donor lists is something that hurts the free speech rights of any non-profit.
Nuclear Weapons – Four Virtual Mini-Summits
Pax Christi USA is a member group, and its New England chapter is sponsoring four online sessions with prominent faith leaders, looking at the question of how to get Catholics more involved in abolishing nuclear weapons.
Killing’s Toll on Those Who Kill
We oppose killing on behalf of the victims, but across all our issues, we also oppose killing because of how badly it damages those who’ve engaged in it. When killing is socially acceptable, that just makes the damage all the worse because it makes it happen more. Here’s an article from Haaretz, an Israeli daily newspaper, showing this in the case of Israeli soldiers in Gaza:
Latest on the Blog
Just this last April 24, Pope Leo XIV sent a message to an Illinois anti-death penalty conference re-iterating the Church’s long-standing opposition to executions. We offer the video and a transcript:
Quote of the Week
Ronny Chieng, comedian
(a show with a pro-abortion position on the few occasions it comes up)
This is what I don’t get about guys like JD Vance, OK? How come you have no problem when the pope weighs in on abortion policy, but when he weighs in on your foreign policy, you freak out?
I mean, wasn’t assassinating the Ayatollah just a very, very, very late term abortion? I mean, the man was in his 250th trimester, all right?
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