New Title X Rule: Planned Parenthood Defunding Title X provides U.S. government funding for family planning, and was never supposed to cover abortion. Yet family-planning outfits – most notably, Planned Parenthood – have abortion so mixed into their practice that it might indirectly support abortion. A rule to fix this was proposed under President Reagan, was taken to court, and finally found constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Rust v. Sullivan.
Yuval Levin explains another attempt happened in 2006 under President George W. Bush, but “the administration also wanted to avoid alienating potential congressional allies from both parties at a particularly sensitive moment for its Iraq-war strategy.”
So a war was one of the reasons this pro-life rule got delayed another 13 years.
There’s encouraging news in the government’s fact sheet on the new rule: “This final rule includes a stronger focus on protecting women and children from being victimized by child abuse, child molestation, sexual abuse, rape, incest, intimate partner violence, and trafficking. The regulation requires all Title X clinics to provide annual training for staff and to have a site-specific protocol in place to report crime and protect victims.” What is the impact on our campaign, Grassroots Defunding: Finding Alternatives to Planned Parenthood? Title X provides about 13% of PP’s taxpayer funding, with 87% from Medicaid payments on behalf of women who choose to go there. Persuading women to take their Medicaid dollars elsewhere is therefore a needed nonviolent action.
Nuclear Weapons Defunding Continuing the theme of nonviolent action by noncooperation, taking the profits out of one more form of horrific violence, another organization has a campaign to encourage banks to withdraw from nuclear weapons production financing by encouraging their customers to bank elsewhere if they don’t. See Don’t Bank on the Bomb, sponsored by PAX.
New Member Group: American Solidarity Party We welcome a new member group into our network, the American Solidarity Party. Founded in 2016, Solidarity is a political party dedicated to the “sanctity of human life, the necessity of social justice, our responsibility to care for the environment, and promotion of a more peaceful world.” Members have long been active partners in our quarterly peace vigils in Washington, DC. We look forward to working with them further now that they’re part of the network!
CLN is a nonpartisan organization which welcomes as a member group any group which supports our Mission Statement. Our network now includes two partisan groups; the other is Democrats for Life. We’d love more diversity and we welcome any group of Republicans, Greens, and others identifying with political parties, when those groups embrace the consistent life ethic.
Life Matters Journal - February
Published by our member group, Rehumanize International, February's issue: "Why We March Consistently," unpacks the many intricate considerations surrounding what it means to be anti-abortion.
Latest CLN Blog Post While the recently-deceased Republican lawmaker Walter Jones wasn’t a total consistent-lifer, he actively opposed both abortion and war. Patrick O’Neill offers: Remembering Rep. Walter B. Jones, Jr.
Quotation of the Week Michael Sean Winters Liberal Catholics have work to do to support consistent ethic of life National Catholic Reporter, January 18, 2019 Liberals claim that they speak for the voiceless, but how can anyone believe there is moral consistency when their voices are silent in defense of the unborn? We defend the undocumented. We defend the unemployed. We defend all those who are defined in our society by what they lack, all those "un's," but not the unborn? How is that morally consistent?
Responses/News Tips/Questions to share are all welcome.
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