713 - Peace & Life: Referendums/Around the Web/Hiroshima - August 16, 2024
Referendums
Our Project Website: Peace and Life Referendums
New Videos:
Just published are two new parallel videos, one for peace activists and one for prolife voters, making the case for ranked choice voting. Rachel MacNair explains, and Thad Crouch did the technical work.
We also have versions of each on the Missouri page, since Missouri will be having the first election where legislators ask voters to ban ranked choice voting. Please pass on the appropriate links to your Missouri friends.
Each video will of course mainly be used with different audiences, but the Consistent Life Network is where you’d expect to find them together.
Abortion Referendums:
This is the time of year when petition ballot measures either make it onto the ballot or are definitely off. Enshrining abortion as a right has now made it to the ballot in Arizona and Missouri, and is being contested in court in Arkansas and Montana, In Nebraska, they’re still verifying, but there are two dueling abortion measures. Several other states already had them on; see the list with history and commentary.
A New Way Forward for Democrats
On the occasion of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, our member group Democrats for Life is hosting an in-person event August 19 at 10 AM in Chicago. To RSVP for more details: A Party for Everyone: A New Way Forward.
From Around the Web
The New York Times, in re-stating its opposition to the death penalty, is publishing a series of videos with personal stories about its impact:
The American Conservative is making a basic case for a little more sane policy on nuclear weapons: Time to Adopt a ‘No First Use’ Nuclear Policy.
In this video, JD Vance takes a strong position in favor of the “make birth free” proposal promoted by our member group Democrats for Life along with Americans United for Life. That in itself is good to hear, but when discussing how to fund it, he points out that it could come from money that’s providing war weapons. Funding life-affirming services out of funds otherwise used for killing in war is a common thought in the peace movement, but unusual to hear from Republicans. He also shares a personal story that shows the value of having such a policy.
Our Latest Blog Post
Published on the anniversary day of the bombing of Hiroshima, John Whitehead collected personal stories of personal experiences there and in Nagasaki three days later. (Pictured are the two cities’ official memorials.)
On a recent matter of legislative urgency, Sarah covers how lethal proposed cuts to what was once called the food stamp program would be in SNAP Cuts? More Poverty, More Abortion.
Quotation of the Week
Pope Francis
Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home, paragraph 120
Since everything is interrelated, concern for the care of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away.
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