Tag Archives: law

Vote Yes for Life

We interrupt the choir to recommend a donation in support of South Dakota’s Referred Law #6. Apparently Planned Parenthood is throwing its considerable, federally subsidized, and out-of-state blood-money resources to defeat the proposed abortion ban. Out-of-state prolifers should feel free to play at that game too. (Knit cap tip: Amy.)

I Have a Question for the USCCB

Oak or mahogany?

The USCCB: Criminalizing the Use of Church Documents

(Fedora Tip: Mark Shea)

We used to include many significant documents in our database from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, but not any more. The USCCB goes after web sites which make use of USCCB documents, threatening legal action for copyright violations. This policy is in marked contrast to that of the Vatican, which enforces copyrights only to prevent others from releasing advance copies of documents before their official promulgation dates.

Where to Go with Roe: Taking a Second Look

Pop quiz:

  1. Is abortion on demand the unchangeable law of the land?
  2. Does the American public overwhelmingly support the 1973 decision Roe v. Wade, or its companion case Doe v. Bolton?
  3. Does abortion actually provide pregnant women with more “choices”

If your answer is to any of these is “yes” you may be surprised to learn you’ve been misinformed, and a conference being held at CMU is just what you need.

Continue reading

Plan B is Not Abortifacient

As any regular reader of this blog is well aware, I’m strongly pro-life. However, I’m ticked off at my own movement right now because of crap like this [emphasis mine]:

"President George Bush shocked the pro-life movement with his support for over-the-counter access to abortion-drug Plan B, also known as the morning-after pill, for adults. However, Plan B ‘ought to require a prescription for minors,’ he said.

[…]

"’President Bush’s implied support of over-the-counter status for the abortion-causing drug Plan B is a betrayal of the pro-life principles he claims to support,’ said Stephen Peroutka, Esq., chairman of the National Pro-Life Action Center."

Let’s get with the program, people. Plan B is not abortifacient. Repeating "abortion" and "Plan B" in the same sentence over and over won’t make it so. As a devout Catholic, I’m no more a fan of Plan B than I am of condoms (or any other form of contraception), but since neither kill unborn children, there’s no just reason for banning them. Unless someone can provide evidence that Plan B causes abortions, I suggest we stop saying it does and move on to other matters. This is a poltical albatross.

[cross-posted at RedBlueChristian]

Update: Apparently, someone at Netscape.com saw fit to link to me as one of the "pro-life advocates [who] acknowledge that use of Plan B is not akin to abortion". I’m flattered by the publicity, but I really hope the inane and fruitless "conversation" going on in the comments over there doesn’t come here. I haven’t read such consistently belligerent and vapid comments since the last time I stopped by Eschaton. I don’t always agree with my readers, but I’m almost always appreciative of them and their ability to discuss matters reasonably and intelligently in the comboxes.

Update: Let Publius know whether you think I’m a "[d]ebunker of [a] commonly-held misconception or [an] advocate of netkookery".

Addendum: Serge at LTI Blog has begun a series of posts about Plan B.

  1. Emergency Contraception: A Review of the Literature
  2. Information from the Manufacturer
  3. Proposed Evidence of Post-Fertilization Effects
  4. Does it Work if Taken After Ovulation?
  5. No Morphological Changes Found in Endometrium
  6. EC: What is its Real Effectiveness?

Sovereign Nations?

I was recently at a family function of my in-laws on my wife’s father’s side. We were discussing the concept of right and wrong in government as it related to sovereign nations. In other words, if a people, say those of France, say capital punishment is wrong, shouldn’t it be wrong everywhere? Should they fight to defend this belief everywhere?

My response was yes and no since other countries are sovereign nations and they have a right to make laws as they see fit, while the moral object can be right or wrong.

It then begged to question what a sovereign nation was. I likened it to accreditation of a university. If a governing body of recognized universities came together to decide what criterion was needed for an applying institution to become a university (or chartered a third party entity), that body could declare what was and was not a university. Likewise, sovereign nations can set criteria by which other countries could be judged as actual sovereign nations.

I was sort of pulling this out from under my seat, so I was wondering what yous guys thought.