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 In a post-Roe world, predictions (hypotheses) can be made to test claims of differing perspectives. What’s coming is a huge “natural experiment.” A natural experiment, unlike a lab experiment, wasn’t arranged in advance. An 1854 London cholera outbreak had differing patterns of water sources – cholera could be caused by contaminated water….
Unholy Trinity: The Terrible Consequences of the First Nuclear Test
We publish this in observance of the upcoming anniversary of the test. by John Whitehead The nuclear age began when the United States conducted the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. That day, years of work by civilian and military personnel involved in the Manhattan Project culminated in a…
Reaching Out Needs Compassion
by Sarah Terzo We consistent life ethic supporters can become frustrated with those who commit acts of violence. But we must reach out to them with compassion. Harsh words only further entrench them. Here are two examples. The Trauma of a Soldier One example is that of a veteran named Don, who was…
Post-Roe Life-Affirming Help
by Rachel MacNair Now that we can refer to the Roe era in the past tense, we have some different considerations for building a Culture of Life (and a Culture of Peace, which I see as the same thing). Abortions Going Down A commonly expressed fear in the media is that abortions can only be…