714 - Peace & Life: Conventions / Laws Ignored - August 30, 2024
Convention News
The two major U.S. parties are both moving away from what small portion of our issues they supported. Just as Trump and Republicans have moved away from opposing abortion, we find now Democrats Scrub Death Penalty Opposition From Campaign Platform. Also, the 2020 platform called for a cut in military spending; that too is absent from the 2024 platform.
Meanwhile, the exuberance for violence commonly seen applied to war, especially in Hollywood movies, was displayed by a Planned Parenthood van which offered free abortion pills. (Also free vasectomies and a giant model of an IUD.) Soon after, a pregnancy help center in Chicago was vandalized. Here’s an explanation involving cognitive dissonance for why such aggressive assertions happen.
Our member group Democrats for Life countered with a diaper drive, with over 40,000 delivered to Chicago pregnancy help centers.
Laws Ignored
The New York Times recently ran an article: Harris Can Change Biden’s Policy on Israel Just by Upholding the Law. The law referred to is Leahy’s Law . From the U.S. State Department, this “refers to two statutory provisions prohibiting the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.” That is, the government need not ban money to the whole country, but must ban it to the specific units causing problems. There are many of those in Gaza right now. The law has been used many times, but not for Israeli forces.
Similarly, the Comstock Act of 1873 forbids sending abortion pills through the mail. It was moot under Roe, and is being simply ignored under Biden. While it also prohibited mailing pornography and contraception, and those aspects are likely to be legislatively changed, there is solid reason not to send abortion pills through the mail. Pills can be sneaked into women that don’t want them and are horrified. Yet they know only that they had a miscarriage, so the killers are able to get away with it. We know of several cases in the news; here’s one example. These are undoubtedly the tip of the iceberg.
We wouldn’t endorse the sponsors of either of these laws – they had both virtues and problems – and both laws could stand improvements. But we don’t always have to pass new laws to get solutions. Sometimes we need to be aware of laws already passed.
Our Latest Blog Posts
One of the common (but not entire) reasons given for late-term abortions is that the unborn child has a disability. One of the pressures used on women to abort is if she has disabilities. Also, it’s often claimed that “only” just over 1% of abortions are third-trimester. Rachel MacNair covers the bigotry against the disabled in Disability Rights - Babies, Women, Numbers. It includes a short video Rachel made for referendums on the topic (pictured).
Sarah Terzo shows that when Abortion Workers Speak Out, we find out a lot about things like body disposal, quotas, and substandard medical care. This also includes a video (pictured).
Quotation of the Week
Pope Francis
Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home, paragraph 117
Neglecting to monitor the harm done to nature and the environmental impact of our decisions is only the most striking sign of a disregard for the message contained in the structures of nature itself. When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities – to offer just a few examples – it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected.
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