March for Life 2020 With beautiful weather this year, we had our normal consistent-life contingent in the March for Life. This included a meet-up right before the March organized by our member group Rehumanize International. We had a table at the two-day Expo and the following day at the Cardinal O’Connor conference at Georgetown University. A couple of us leafleted appropriate sessions of the Students for Life conference that day. Many of our member groups also had tables at some of these events. As usual, we had many productive conversations. Since there was also a national rally against war with Iran on Saturday, we had people attend that as well. Our blog post this week has reflections and photos: March for Life 2020. Welcome to all our new subscribers! We let you know, and remind everyone else, that this is a community e-newsletter, with nothing top-down about it. We encourage you to share information and ideas: weekly@consistent.life.org.
Left: Rosemarie Stith & Mary Meehan at the March. Center: John Whitehead and Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa at our table at the Expo. Right: Amanda Putman, student from Texas, already had a marvelous sign she had made when she came by our table.
News from Ireland
Maria Horan (pictured) reports on developments on the abortion situation in Ireland: I previously wrote to you about how maternity funding set up after Savita Halappanavar's death is now being used to fund abortions. Now a patient advocate has resigned due to this. As Niamh Uí Bhriain put it so well: "The government is not even pretending to care about women’s safety anymore." Pro-life party Aontú has been deliberately left out of a national political party pre-election debate to be televised next week. They’re planning to go to the High Court about this. And the "Abortion Rights Campaign" has issued a guide to journalists on how to ensure pro-life language is censored in the Irish media.
Good News in Lawmaking (U.S.)
Physician-assisted suicide legislation has come up every session for years in the Maryland state legislature. Last year was its high-water mark. It passed the lower house and lost in the Senate only on a tie vote. But this year, legislative leaders say they don't plan to bring it up because they don't think it has a chance of enactment.
Effective January 22, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services granted a waiver to Texas which allows them to do a demonstration project until December 31, 2024. Medicaid funding for family planning services, which includes screening and treating of sexually transmitted diseases, could be denied to “entities that perform or promote elective abortions or affiliate with entities that perform or promote elective abortions.” Assuming this is allowed by the courts to stand, several other states are likely to request the waiver as well. We encourage those of you who can to do the lobbying necessary to see that your state is one of them.
Ron Paul Allow Americans to “Opt Out” of Abortion and War Blacklisted News, November 29, 2018 When government gives taxpayer money to abortion providers, it forces anti-abortion taxpayers to fund something they believe is murder. This is every bit as “sinful and tyrannical” as forcing health plans to pay for abortion . . . Opponents of abortion are not the only Americans who should be allowed to opt out of paying for what they consider murder. The many Americans with moral and religious objections to Washington’s militaristic foreign policy should also be able to redirect some of their taxes from the warfare state to private charities.
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