What History Shows: The Consistent Life Ethic Works for the Pro-life Side in Referendums
This post is also a page on our Peace & Life Referendums site. by Rachel MacNair Before the Roe v. Wade decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, there were three referendums to legalize abortion in individual U.S. states: 1970- 56% voted yes 1972 – 61% voted no 1972…
Book Review – Rehumanize: A Vision to Secure Human Rights for All
by Lois Kerschen If you want to understand the theory behind the Consistent Life Ethic (CLE) as well as how to practice it, Aimee Murphy’s book, Rehumanize: A Vision to Secure Human Rights for All, is a vital resource. Remarkably, she manages to explain CLE with clarity and simplicity. Its multiple references to philosophers,…
Fallout at Home Base: Nuclear Testing within the United States
This month is the 30th anniversary of the last nuclear test, September 1992. by John Whitehead The United States conducted the world’s first test of a nuclear weapon in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The test was followed in August by the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although the wartime…
Is an Embryo More Important than a Woman?
by Rachel MacNair As I wade through the avalanche of post-Dobbs media coverage, I note the familiar pattern of being totally oblivious to what the objection to induced abortion is: that it kills a human being. While there exist arguments that what’s killed isn’t a human being, and other arguments that such killing is…
Abortion and People with Disabilities
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990. This anti-discrimination legislation should have had a positive effect on perceptions of the disabled. For those well beyond infancy, it did. But there was a dramatic decrease in the birth rate for Down Syndrome babies. A study on media framing, 1998-2006, showed disability was presented in negative terms. There were…
Roe v. Wade: Legal Scholars Comment
These quotations, in chronological order, come entirely from legal experts who approve of abortion legalization. The Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe v. Wade John Hart Ely, Yale Law Journal, 82, 920, 935-937 (1973) Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”…
Beneath Layers of Lies: The Surge in Efforts to Legalize Euthanasia
by Sonja Morin Euthanasia has returned to legislative consideration in Massachusetts, my home state. For as long as I can remember, an attempt to introduce euthanasia into our state laws would rise up every couple of years like clockwork. And every time, the bill would be struck down soon enough, even if it was…
The Persisting Threat of Nuclear Weapons: A Brief Primer
by John Whitehead The anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings mark 77 years since the only wartime uses of nuclear weapons. We should be profoundly grateful that such weapons have never been used again in this way to date. Yet our increasing distance from the bombings carries a risk with it. As the nuclear…
Abortion: A Restorative Justice Response
by Jim Hewes This is a response to the question of what states will now do after the Dobbs decision when women procure illegal abortions. There was a joint letter from more than 70 leading pro-life organizations stating that “criminalizing women who have abortions is not pro-life.” Many pro-life leaders and politicians have publicly stated…
Post-Roe Stats: the Natural Experiment
by Rachel MacNair Rachel notes: On April 7, 2026, I went through the predictions below published on July 19, 2022; Dobbs was decided June 12, 2022. I update the information on how Questions 1 and 2 turned out, since the documentation is clear. For the remaining three questions, it’s still too early to tell. All…