Coming January 15: New CLN Podcast!
Peace & Life Conversations
The Consistent Life Network will launch a podcast series, “Peace & Life Conversations” on January 15th. It features interviews on life-issue-related topics such as getting young people involved in activism. The podcast gives activists across the spectrum of life issues a chance to discuss their work. We invite activists, particularly from member groups, to join us for future conversations.
You’ll be able to listen to the Peace & Life Conversations podcast on our website and through Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and Overcast.
Meanwhile, we have a 9-minute trailer here.
January 14th: Webinar on Opposing the Death Penalty
The Consistent Life Network is co-sponsoring a webinar on “The Pro-Life Call to End the Death Penalty,” from 7-8 pm ET on January 14th. The webinar will feature a conversation between Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director turned pro-life activist, and Demetrius Minor, national manager of anti-death penalty group Conservatives Concerned. The two will discuss how they came to be holistically pro-life, with particular attention to links between abortion and the death penalty.
You can register and submit questions beforehand online.
Good News (Mainly) on the Death Penalty
In previous issues, we twice offered as an action item to ask President Biden to commute the death sentences of everyone on federal death row.
President Biden did commute sentences to life imprisonment for 37 of the 40 inmates.
CL Board member Bill Samuel comments: “Looking at this from a CLE perspective, these commutations come from a President who has zealously supported killing humans in war and in abortion. He also has followed the Obama Doctrine that the President has unilateral authority without judicial process to order the execution (assassination) of humans in other countries. The U.S. had engaged in assassinations before, but it was only under the Obama-Biden Administration that a Presidential right to do so was promulgated. The 3 death penalties he did not commute were the ones that could most easily be compared to war, and commutations of these death sentences would have been hard to square with the Obama Doctrine and war itself. It should also be noted that one of these was requested and obtained under the Biden-Harris Administration and the other two under the Obama-Biden Administration.”
The Latest on the Blog
Fr. Jim Hewes offers Abortion and the Christian Bible: A Consistent-Life Perspective.
Our Holiday Issue with consistent-life notes on Christmas carols is also published as a blog post.
Quote of the Week
Ramesh Ponnuru
National Review, November 4, 2024
(Reminder: quotes are for consistent-life points, and don’t need to come from full-fledged consistent-lifers.)
I suspect the New York Times does not see the bias in the headline of Kate Zernike’s latest news-page foray into abortion politics: “Late Abortions Rarely Happen, but They Still Dominate Politics.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 0.9 percent of abortions take place after 21 weeks. Combine that with the Guttmacher Institute’s estimate of the total number of abortions — 1,037,000 — and it yields about 9,300 abortions after 21 weeks.
Whether that’s “rare” is a judgment call. Last year, the country saw 23 school-shooting deaths. The Times could run the headline, “School Shooting Deaths Rarely Happen, but They Still Dominate Gun Politics.” How likely is it, do you think, that it will do so?
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