Category: Sanctity of Life

VOICES
My family fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba, where ‘cancel culture’ was deadly serious.
First Amendment protections won’t make a difference if we don’t have a culture of free expression among young people.
Kristina Arriaga
Opinion contributor

During my first week in college, a hallmate called me a slur for Spanish-speaking people. Because I learned English at an all-girls’ Catholic school in Puerto Rico, I was not well-versed in racial slurs. In my culture, a nickname signals acceptance, like “Maverick” and “Goose” in “Top Gun.” So, instead of being offended, I was pleased to have earned a “call sign” so quickly. I received the slur as a warm welcome.

Poland’s high court effectively bans abortion

by Michael Cook | 24 Oct 2020 | 4 comments

Protesters against Court decision fill streets

A ruling by Poland’s highest court has effectively banned most abortions in a country where there are only about 2,000 a year.

In an 11 to 2 decision, the Constitutional Tribunal declared that abortion due to foetal defects is unconstitutional. It will only be permitted in cases of rape, incest or threats to the mother’s health and life. These constitute about 2% of legal terminations in recent years — 1,074 of 1,100 abortions performed in 2019 – and are mostly Down syndrome babies.

Capital punishment is always a bioethical issue – but there are few cases more strikingly related than Lisa Montgomery, who is scheduled to be executed with a lethal injection in a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, on December 8.

Ms Montgomery’s crime was horrific. In 2004 she drove from Kansas to neighbouring Missouri to meet a pregnant woman named Bobbie Jo Stinnett. She strangled Mrs Stinnett, cut the baby out of her womb and returned home where she claimed that the baby was her own.

She was quickly arrested and charged with “kidnapping resulting in death”, which is a federal crime. She will be the first woman to be executed in a federal prison in 67 years.

For The Bulwark, Michael Stokes Paulsen argues that pro-lifers should “vote against Donald Trump’s reelection.” I don’t have any blanket view of how pro-lifers should vote in 2020. Personally, I subscribe to Ramesh Ponnuru’s and Robert George’s view that Joe Biden has practically precluded himself from earning my own vote. He promises to repeal the Hyde amendment — which bars federal dollars from being used to fund abortion — and his running mate has enthusiastically endorsed a bill in the Senate to do just that. Per the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, the Hyde amendment saves around 60,000 unborn lives every single year. The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute claims that “approximately one-fourth of women who would have Medicaid-funded abortions instead give birth when this funding is unavailable.” In his argument, Paulsen makes no mention of the Hyde amendment or what the consequences of its repeal would be.

People across Poland stayed off their jobs and huge crowds poured onto the streets for a seventh straight day of protests Wednesday, enraged over a top court ruling that bans abortions in cases of fetal abnormalities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge for everyone, but evidence suggests that few demographics are suffering more than young people. Data show they’re suffering more economically, and emerging evidence shows that many are less equipped to deal with the “collateral damage” of forced lockdowns mentally.

A new report from the Wisconsin State Journal examining mental health trends in Dane County, the second most populous county in Wisconsin, shows that many are struggling to cope with the mental toll of social isolation precipitated by the economic lockdowns.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch has once again petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review that state’s ban on aborting babies after 15 weeks’ gestation.

In March 2018, the Mississippi State House passed the House Bill 1510, the Gestational Age Act. That law was temporarily blocked from enforcement by a federal judge within 24 hours of its passage, and then permanently blocked in November of that year. The state governor at the time, Phil Bryant, pledged to fight the ruling all the way to the Supreme Court.

So, Kanye West — 2020 presidential candidate, rap artist, and (recently) self-described Christian — headed over to Texas for a conversation with Joe Rogan, and it was quite the ride. West talked about how he plans to create stadium churches; his brawls with the music industry executives; his (very American) path from hip hop to church and sort of back again; and his apparently very real political aspirations.

Intolerable and hopeless (meaning without prospect of improvement) suffering is an eligibility criterion for euthanasia/assisted suicide in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada. Despite having been used as such a criterion for decades (at least in the Netherlands; shorter periods in other countries), it is still widely debated as to its meaning and applicability as an operational criterion.

Tens of thousands of Polish women defying lockdown rules in the streets. Cathedrals invaded by chanting crowds. Handmaids walking down church aisles. Banners with slogans like: “You Have Blood on Your Hands” and “You are Building Women’s Hell.”

Since Canada’s law on euthanasia and assisted suicide came into effect four years ago, health-care costs have dropped millions of dollars, according to a Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) report.

The report on assisted dying calculates that since becoming legal on June 17, 2016, Canada’s health-care costs have dropped C$86.9 million.