Book Review: “Resisting Throwaway Culture”
by Mary Lou Bennett Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consistent Life Ethic Can United a Fractured People, by Charles C. Camosy. Anyone living in the United States today is acutely aware of the pain and decay that permeate society as a result of contemporary moral issues. With such awareness, feelings of sadness, despair, and disbelief…
When Women Lead: The Pro-life Women’s Conference
by C.J. Williams This year’s Pro-Life Women’s Conference had a theme: WHEN WOMEN LEAD. But what might just as well have been the unspoken theme was unity, and underlying all unity is consistency. As the Consistent Life Network (CLN) set up to table in the enormous Pontchartrain Conference Center in New Orleans, we were surrounded…
The Mirror-Image Counterpart of the Selfish Society
by Richard Stith This 1978 article was originally entitled “What it Means to be Pro-Life: Toward a Political Theory for Our Movement.” It appeared in The New Human, Vol. VII No. 2, March–April 1978, a publication of the National Youth Pro-Life Coalition. It’s been lightly edited. Does being “pro-life” mean something more than being against…
Dorothy Day and the Consistent Life Ethic: Rejecting Conventional Political Paradigms
by Rob Arner As anyone who has embraced the consistent life ethic (CLE) will tell you, the sense of isolation, of not fitting in can be paralyzing. This is all the more true when it comes to the traditional American political spectrum, with its the left-right/conservative-progressive dichotomy. CLE political positions, linked as they are by…
Jasmine, Aladdin, and the Power of Nonviolence
by Rachel MacNair The recent live-action version of the movie Aladdin didn’t deal much with specific consistent life issues. The only one brought up was war, and that was only because the villain wanted it, though never got beyond planning. Yet the fleshing out of the characters, compared to the 1992 cartoon version, led to…
Life-Affirming Doctors
Part 1: Let Everybody be Able to Find a Safe Doctor The author prefers to remain anonymous because, as she indicates, she doesn’t want her medical condition known to her family. My primary care physician retired, so I have to find a new one. This is an opportunity for me to pick a new one…
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill: The Connection between Lethal Injection and Assisted Suicide
by Jacqueline H. Abernathy, Ph.D., MSSW In a recent episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, comedian and host John Oliver offered a scathing (albeit profane) rebuke of lethal injection as a means of execution in U.S. states with capital punishment. He detailed the issues with the drugs employed and…
Brown v. Board of Education and Me
by Bill Samuel The Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, against racial segregation in public schools, will reach its 65th anniversary on May 17. Consistent Life Network Board member and former President Bill Samuel marks the anniversary with this personal reminiscence. I was born in 1947 in northern New Jersey, the youngest of…
“Somewhere Else When the Trigger Is Pulled”: Orwell and War
by John Whitehead This is a follow-up to our post Recognizing Humanity: Orwell and the Consistent Life Ethic, in which John stated that Orwell’s position on war needed to be treated separately. This year is the 70th anniversary of Orwell’s most famous book, 1984. Political language — and with variations this is true of…
Abby Johnson Remembers Dan Berrigan
Both Abby Johnson and Dan Berrigan are Consistent Life endorsers. Abby Johnson ministers to abortion clinic workers to help them leave the industry and heal through her organization And Then There Were None and her book, Unplanned, recently adapted as a feature film, which tells the story of her conversion from Planned Parenthood Clinic Director…