R.I.P. Walter Jones (1943-2019)
U.S. Representative Walter B. Jones. Jr. (R-NC), who passed away February 10, didn’t endorse the consistent life ethic (he supported the death penalty, for example). He did, however, challenge the usual left-right political divide through his opposition to both abortion and, in his later years, war. Originally a Democrat, Jones became a Republican partly because of his anti-abortion views. Originally a hawk who voted for the 2003 Iraq War, Jones became a fierce critic of U.S. military interventions abroad. Repenting of his support for the Iraq War, Jones once said “I helped kill 4,000 Americans, and I will go to my grave regretting that.” To atone, he wrote thousands of letters to the families of Americans killed in Iraq. To honor Jones’ memory, a bill has been proposed to repeal the 2001 authorization of military force that made possible so many American military interventions of the last 17 years.
Rape and the Abortion Business
Now and then we hear of an abortion doctor convicted of sexual abuse of his abortion patients. The most prominent is Brian Finkel; when one woman finally accused him, over a hundred more accusations came. He was convicted and sentenced to over 34 years. Renee Hobbs Scattered documentation on 30 such abortion doctors is now pulled together by Mark Crutcher and Renee Hobbs (with the customary strident language of Life Dynamics) in Report: Rape & Sexual Assault in The American Abortion Industry, released February 5.
Grassroots Defunding Developments Planned Parenthood (PP) has by far the largest chain of abortion facilities in the United States - depending on how you count abortion facilities, between a third and half of them are PPs. Thinking in terms of nonviolence strategies, we’re finding potential alternatives within 5 miles of each PP center for actual (non-abortion) medical services. See Grassroots Defunding: Finding Alternatives to Planned Parenthood. We had already added links from Check My Clinic, one of the projects associated with our member group And Then There Were None, who found PP centers with health code violations. They recently found several more, and those have been added. For PP’s roughly 80 centers with no alternatives found within 5 miles, we’ve added a new page with the U.S. Representatives for the 57 districts in which they’re located. We include sample letters to these legislators, encouraging them to support developing Community Health Centers in their district.
Latest CLN Blog Post: Black Panther The Oscars award ceremony is coming up this Sunday, which makes it a good time to comment on Oscar-nominated movies. Andrew Hocking offers his review of How Black Panther Promotes a Consistent Life Ethic.
Other Oscar-nominated films that clearly address themes of racism are Green Book and BlacKkKlansman. Not nominated, but good movies from last year that include themes of lethal racism are The Hate U Give and Gosnell.
Quotation of the Week
T. Brian Callister, medical doctor
Commentary: Candy coating physician-assisted killing
Las Vegas Review-Journal, February 9, 2019 Since [Physician-Assisted Suicide] PAS became legal in California and Oregon, I have experienced firsthand the abuses that PAS incentivizes. I cared for two patients in my hospital in Northern Nevada who were seeking transfers to their home states of California and Oregon for lifesaving treatments. With these particular treatment options, both patients had an excellent chance of cure. Without the treatments, both would likely die from their diseases. When I spoke with the medical directors of the patients’ insurance companies, both of them told me they would cover assisted suicide but would not approve coverage for lifesaving treatment. Neither the patients nor I had requested assisted suicide, yet it was readily offered.
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