Good News on Tennessee’s Question 1
 
         In the U.S. state of Tennessee, the state’s Supreme Court had ruled a “fundamental right to abortion” in the year 2000 ruling of Planned Parenthood of Middle Tennessee vs. Sundquist. This meant that even women who wanted reforms that would have prevented their own negative abortion experiences were barred from petitioning their state government for redress. Abortion clinics were to have free rein, a situation that has proven to have horrific results for the safety of women – because once killing is seen as a problem-solver, the downward spiral into heartlessness is likely.
         But despite being badly outspent, the Yes on 1 vote prevailed. Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics poured in millions, but the Yes campaign relied on local community organizing.
 

 
Analysis: Democrats Alienating Much of Their Base
 
        CL member group Democrats for Life offers a post-election analysis detailing how the abortion-asserting agenda has hurt Democrats this last election – overall, and in specific races.
        Executive Director Kirsten Day says: “We are once again hopeful the national Party elites will reassess their pro-abortion stance after the disastrous results of Tuesday night. They are costing us elections and abandoning our founding values of protecting and advocating for those who need a helping hand.  At the top of that list should be helping protect the rights of the unborn.”
 

 

 
Open Letter to Brittany Maynard
 
        We are sad to report that Brittany Maynard, who publicized her desire to commit suicide on November 1 and took advantage of Oregon’s law to do so, did in fact kill herself on schedule.
        On October 29, Maggie Karner (pictured), who also has glioblastoma multiforme brain cancer, offered a video of a heartfelt open letter to Brittany, gently showing the nonviolent alternative.
 

 
    

Awards
 
     CL Endorser Ron Sider has just received Yale University’s William Sloan Coffin Peace and Justice Award. Among his many books is an explicitly consistent-life-ethic book which was cited in the text accompanying the honor: Completely Pro-Life: Building a Consistent Stance on Abortion, the Family, Nuclear Weapons, the Poor.
 

 
Quotation of the Week
Matthew Scully
Pro-life, Pro-animal
National Review, October 7, 2013
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/359761/pro-life-pro-animal-matthew-scully
 
         Cruelty is less a vice in its own right than it is a cost exacted by other vices — greed and arrogance, just to start with. Victims of cruelty are the wreckage left by selfish desire. So often the easiest, most helpless victims are children and animals. Cruel people often quite sincerely protest a feeling of innocence, expecting to be judged by intention rather than by objective consequences — by what they prefer to think they’re doing, instead of what they are doing in reality. Wrongs get endlessly rationalized, power turns to tyranny, so that even Kermit Gosnell, somewhere in the back of his mind as he was killing infants who had survived abortion attempts, may have felt himself to be a faithful servant of Progress and Reproductive Choice, doing work the world approved of even if it preferred not to know all the details.