The Safety of Incredibly Dangerous Things
by Rachel MacNair A common method used to try to justify violence is to make comparisons to innocent-sounding things, saying that the violence being justified is actually safer than things that people don’t normally fear much. Here are three examples Nuclear Weapons and Radiation In my youth, when we were opposing nuclear weapons as…
Racism and Planned Parenthood: Documentation
compiled by Rachel MacNair More documentation, including the court documents for individual lawsuits, can be found at Problems at Planned Parenthood. That website has an index page for specific problems – in addition to racism, there are health code violation documents, malpractice suits, 911 calls, sexual abuse, employee rights, etc. Planned Parenthood itself offers detailed…
Words as One Root of Killing
by Rachel MacNair One of the books we recommend that’s foundational for understanding the consistent life ethic is one that William Brennan wrote called Dehumanizing the Vulnerable. The first edition had the subtitle: When Word Games Take Lives. A later edition had the subtitle: The War of Words against Victims. Both subtitles give the connection:…
Tragedy Spreads: The Impact of Veterans’ Suicides on Families
by Sarah Terzo The suicide rate for veterans is 57.3% higher than for non-veterans. Each veteran who dies by suicide leaves behind grieving loved ones. A Disabled Husband and a Sick Daughter Barbara Chism’s husband Mack lost both his legs in Vietnam. He would stay up at night chain smoking, drinking, and watching war movies. When…
Depicting Fatal Violence: A Double-Edged Sword
by Ms. Boomer-ang How can depicting fatal violence and its results discourage and prevent such violence? Are there ways one can ensure that such depictions will generate mourning rather than excitement? That they will turn people off from such violence rather than whet appetites for more? Following are examples of comparable fatal-violence depictions for contrasting purposes…
The Kate Cox Case in Texas
We’re obviously not giving advice in a particular case since we don’t have medical details about the diagnosis or its accuracy. Still, this case offers at least a scenario to consider. In December of 2023 this case was a major media story for several days. Kate Cox asked for an abortion in Texas under the…
If You Can’t Explain the Opposition to Your Case
by Rachel MacNair Our student group organized a program explaining what was wrong with nuclear energy back in the late 1970s at Earlham College, a Quaker school where I majored in Peace and Conflict Studies. We did such a fine job of explaining the dangers that a student in the audience asked a very sensible…
A Complex Man’s Complex Legacy: What the Movie Rustin Leaves Out
by John Whitehead The great civil rights activist and thinker Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) has received renewed attention thanks to the recently released movie Rustin. The movie is an engrossing look at Rustin’s role as an advisor to Martin Luther King and the organizer of the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, DC. Rustin…
Rehumanize Conference 2023
Comments and screenshots from Consistent Life Network board members who attended: John Whitehead In her introductory remarks for the 2023 Rehumanize International conference, Creative Director Maria Oswalt offered some valuable practical advice for Consistent Life Ethic advocates. She emphasized the importance of working across differences, whether political, religious, or philosophical. She gave examples of…
Heartbreakingly Common: Suicide Among Veterans
by Sarah Terzo As of 2012, more active duty military personnel and veterans have died from suicide than from combat. Here are more statistics that show how large the problem is: Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have the highest suicide rate.1 Twenty-five percent of people who die by suicide in the US are veterans, but…