Tag Archives: pro-life

Politics: Don't Tread on Me
Aug 7 2015

Huckabee, in utero personhood, and unintended consequences

Have personhood advocates really thought this through?

Raw Story posts: Mike Huckabee’s bizarre fetal personhood proposal would criminalize miscarriages

Thought experiment time.

Given: zygote through fetus is a legal person.

For a legal perspective, wouldn’t said person necessarily be “incapacitated” for all practical intents and purposes, thus not competent?

Aside from all the other considerations mentioned in the article, upon becoming aware that she is carrying a legally incompetent person, would the woman have to go to court to petition for guardianship? Continue reading →

Aug 1 2012

Lack of access to abortion threatens the integrity of the family

This author is as dismayed by the pro-life* position as the next progressive. Nor can a middle-ground between pro-life and pro-choice be readily imagined. But, pro-choice advocates do themselves a disservice by denying or dodging the element of extinguishment that, however blown out of proportion by pro-lifers, is intrinsic to abortion. Though not life itself, the preconditions for life are quenched.

Whether or not this concession would have any impact on pro-lifers is doubtful. But it may help remove the blinders from pro-choice advocates and allow them to experience how abhorrent pro-life advocates find the idea of abortion. Continue reading →

Feb 12 2012

Using pro-life to sell nuclear disarmament

What can pro-life advocates have to do with nuclear-weapons advocates. Read this comment by “The Tiny Twig” to a post on nuclear weapons at evangelical site A Deeper Story: Tales of Christ and Culture.

I think that this is another “pro-life” issue that Christians need to get behind if we’re going to be the lead voices in the anti-abortion world. It’s two-faced double speak if we don’t.

She’s responding to a dialogue between site administrator Nish and Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, founder of Two Futures Project, a groundbreaking evangelical disarmament group. The Tiny Twigg’s idea is basically the “seamless garment” or “consistent life ethic” that former Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin made famous in a speech that linked abortion and nuclear war. (Not that he was the first to do so.) The archbishop said:

I am convinced that the pro-life position of the church must be developed in terms of a comprehensive and consistent ethic of life. Continue reading →

Feb 7 2012

Komen VP resigns; an important first step, but a long road to reconciliation remains

The Komen Foundation VP at the center of the Planned Parenthood firestorm, Karen Handel, has resigned.

A few days ago I predicted on Facebook that she’d be gone within a week, but  then retracted the prediction when I learned more about the heavy-Right political leanings of the rest of the board (and the involvement of Ari Fleischer in their strategy development).

On Friday, just before America took its collective brain offline for Super Bowl Weekend, Komen offered up a fake apology that encouraged the public to believe that it had changed its mind and was going to continue funding Planned Parenthood after all, even though its release actually said nothing of the sort. It isn’t clear how many average citizens the ploy fooled, but as I explained on Saturday, it sure as hell clowned the copy desk editors of just about every major news outlet in the country. Continue reading →

Aug 14 2010

Nota Bene #115: RIP No. 32

“If you’re really pro-life, do me a favor—don’t lock arms and block medical clinics. If you’re so pro-life, lock arms and block cemeteries.” Who said it? Continue reading →

Dec 19 2008

"No one with a penis is entitled to an opinion about abortion."

Inspired by Dr. Slammy’s insightful and illuminating piece, Is America ready for an honest conversation about abortion yet?

My wife’s wise words notwithstanding, they’re representative of those who view abortion as a women’s rights issue. But to pro-lifers, that concern is dwarfed by one much larger: preventing murder. Furthermore, to them, a woman’s right to control her own body not only palls before the need to save a life, but is indicative of the me-first syndrome that threatens to rend the fabric of society as sure as abortion does. Continue reading →

Dec 17 2008

Is America ready for an honest conversation about abortion yet?

In this season’s eighth episode, Boston Legal – the relentlessly liberal ABC dramedy starring William Shatner and James Spader – lobbed an absolute bomb at those of us on the pro-choice side of the Roe v. Wade question. The bunker-buster was posed, predictably enough, by Crane Poole & Schmitt’s resident conservative, the gleefully Republican Denny Crane, portrayed by Shatner. BL fans know Crane to be positively Cheney-esque in his politics (although he did finally cross the aisle to vote for Obama because even he couldn’t stomach four more years like the last eight), and he routinely plays the straw man for the passionate liberalism of Spader’s litigator par excellence, Alan Shore.

This time, though, Crane (who’s battling through the early stages of Alzheimer’s) breaks through to a moment of pristine, Emmy-worthy clarity. Continue reading →