Real Needs of Real Women           The connection of poverty as a cause of abortion has always been clear. There’s now a petition to the organization “UN Women,” expressing alarm at the group's abortion advocacy. It says in part: “I am concerned that abortion is being raised as a ‘right’ and a tool to advance gender equality. As you know, abortion has never been considered as a human right in any treaty or international agreement. . . . It's time to focus on the real needs of real women—such as ensuring access to food, clean drinking water, shelter, employment, and quality maternal healthcare—instead of wading into contentious issues like abortion where there can be no consensus.”     ^^^^^^^   War on Drugs Began by Targeting Anti-war Protesters and African-Americans           The April issue of Harper’s magazine has a fascinating quote from John Ehrlichman, one of the Nixon administration men convicted in the Watergate scandal. He made an unusual connection between war and racism: “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. . . . We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”   ^^^^^^^   Upcoming Events   ∞ CL member group Feminists for Nonviolent Choices is sponsoring an evening event called “Disability Justice” on April 7 at 6 PM in Rochester, New York. They’ll have a screening of “Lives Worth Living” and a panel discussion with Q&A. If you don’t live in the vicinity, pleas consider forwarding the information to your friends who do.   ∞ Reminder: Life Matters Journal is holding their second conference, the Life/Peace/Justice Conference, April 22-24 at Villanova University in Philadelphia. When registering, you can use coupon code 5OFF to save $5.   ^^^^^^^   Quotation of the Week Ryan Bomberger   Bloody Sunday: How My Visit to Selma, Alabama Shaped My Pro-Life Perspective on Abortion March 7, 2016         It was a powerfully quiet moment for me as I stood, alone, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The struggle for human dignity and the depravity that tried to suppress it happened right beneath my feet.         It was hard to hold back my tears.         As someone who is half white and half black, my heart is for racial reconciliation. We’re all part of one human race, yet are inclined to finding all kinds of ways to separate ourselves…to dehumanize ourselves. . .         I was born as a result of the horrific, yet redeemable, act of rape. My life was spared from abortion by a courageous birthmom who enabled me to be adopted and loved . . .         I was in Selma to speak at a banquet for Safe Harbor Women’s Medical Clinic, a pregnancy care center that values the intrinsic worth in mother, father and child (born and unborn). The large racially diverse audience was a testament to how much things have changed in the city immortalized in books and film. They all understood what I felt earlier that morning on that historical site. Black and white Americans didn’t risk their very lives to march for equality across that bridge only to have millions march into abortion mills and have equality ripped away by violent injustice. And as we all know, that violence is not being televised.

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