For years, I've heard through print, television, and internet news that the March for Life is a small event that happens to take place every January to no consequence, but anecdotal evidence has shown this to be an underestimate in the extreme. This year (2012), I'm going to find out for myself.
I find it sad that my grandmother was condemned to be a maid when she became pregnant with my mother at the age of 16. I find it sad that in turn my mother was also condemned because she was a “maid’s daughter” who was too “dumb” to be anything better (even though she was…
By making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother, the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father.
Instead of two parents being responsible for the children they conceive, an expectation that was held up by social norms and by the law, we now take it for granted that neither parent is necessarily responsible for their children. Men are now considered to be fulfilling their duties merely by paying court-ordered child-support. That’s a pretty dramatic lowering of standards for “fatherhood.”
(Source: ourladyg, via doubtingansley)
I was rather impressed with this article from the Washington Post.
Two of the top news stories this week have revolved around reproductive rights, though both raise far more troubling issues than a woman’s right to contraception or abortion.
The more compelling questions concern a person’s or an institution’s freedom of conscience and the right to act upon one’s moral beliefs without fear of intimidation and/or government coercion.
Both cases — one involving the Catholic Church and the other, Susan G. Komen for the Cure — deal with the ongoing conflict between the pro-life and pro-choice camps. And both are exposing the dangerous extent to which some pro-choice advocates, including the president of the United States, are willing to tread on fundamental freedoms in order to impose and secure ideological purity.
To recap: Komen created a firestorm with its recent decision to stop donating about $680,000 a year to Planned Parenthood. (On Friday, Komen released a statement noting that Planned Parenthood will be eligible for future grants, although they won’t be guaranteed.) The bulk of that money was supposed to be used for breast cancer screening. Most Planned Parenthood affiliates don’t do mammograms but refer women elsewhere, sometimes reimbursing them using Komen funds.
Komen CEO and founder Nancy Brinker has offered a couple of reasons for the decision, including the preference to directly fund mammograms, but insists that it had nothing to do with politics or abortion. Not everyone is buying her varying explanations, especially critics who point to Komen’s senior vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, a well-known GOP pro-lifer. A former Georgia secretary of state, Handellost her run for governor in 2010 in part, ironically, because pro-lifers didn’t see her as quite pro-life enough.
Whatever one believes about the motivation behind its decision, the larger point is that Komen has no binding responsibility to allocate any part of its $93 million in grants to any organization. Komen is a nonprofit, free agent, and the good it has performed for millions of underserved women around the world is staggering.
Nevertheless, given the rabid response from abortion-rights supporters, you’d think that Brinker and her organization were running puppy mills for soup vendors. Even if their real reason for ending funding is because they no longer want to be associated with an organization as politically controversial as Planned Parenthood — or even if because some of their potential donors want the relationship severed — it is inarguably their right to change course.
Don’t like it? Don’t run in Komen’s fundraising races. Don’t buy a pink blender. Give directly to Planned Parenthood. In fact, both organizations have enjoyed a surge in donations since news of the break erupted. Note to fundraisers: Create an enemy, enjoy a bonanza.
On a far more serious level, Catholic institutions are under siege by the federal government vis-a-vis the Affordable Care Act, which requires nearly all employers to provide health insurance that covers contraception, including in some cases abortifacient drugs. The Obama administration insists that these offerings are part of women’s health and should be made easily available; Catholics, both liberal and conservative, believe that these requirements are the edge of the wedge.
Essentially, the new law forces them either to forfeit their most fundamental beliefs or to face prohibitive penalties — or to close hospitals, schools and other charities, with catastrophic consequences for millions who depend them. For perspective, one in six patients in the United States is cared for in a Catholic hospital.
The Obama administration has given Catholics a year to adapt to the new rule, which is a laughably obtuse approach. The Catholic Church is a 2,000-year-old institution that has faced more severe persecutions than a government mandate to provide funding for morning-after pills. But this politically inept and morally fungible step does reveal utter disregard for religious liberty.
The war is on. Nearly 150 bishops (almost 80 percent of dioceses) have spoken out against the Obama mandate. Catholic voters, who helped put Barack Obama in office (54 percent to 45 percent) in 2008, may not be with him this time. Even those who supported his 2009 Notre Dame commencement speech against the protests of other powerful Catholics are protesting now.
These immediate battles may be about abortion or contraception, but ultimately they are about whether we stand firm on our nation’s core beliefs in freedom of conscience and religious liberty. The stakes could not be higher and, though surely political, the endgame shouldn’t be about Republican or Democratic war spoils.
The fundamental question is: Who are we? As we individually search for the answer, we know this much: Coercion and intimidation are the tools of mobs and tyrants and have no place in this calculus.
(via mellymodolls)
As far as I can tell, the real story at the center of this week’s Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Foundation / Planned Parenthood debacle is not that Komen cut off Planned Parenthood from existing funding. (They didn’t. Existing grants were to be honored for over a year.)
Nor is it that Komen excluded Planned Parenthood from any possibility of future funding. (Again, they didn’t. Rather, they suspended future funding pending the outcome of a congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood. Critics charged that the investigation was a fig leaf and Komen was actually responding to pressure from pro-life groups. It is worth noting that new Komen senior vice president Karen Handel is professedly pro-life, and in 2010 pledged as a gubernatorial candidate for Georgia to defund Planned Parenthood.)
Nor is it that Komen has now reversed its earlier decision and promised to continue to fund Planned Parenthood. (Again, they haven’t. They’ve simply reversed their decision to consider Planned Parenthood ineligible for further grants. They haven’t promised that Planned Parenthood will actually get further grants. Clearly their latest statement is a defensive one; whether or not there will be further grants to Planned Parenthood remains to be seen.)
The real story, it seems to me, is the swiftness and ruthlessness of the Culture of Death Left backlash against Komen.
John Podhoretz coined the phrase “liberal blacklist” to describe Komen’s instant non grata status this week (HT for this and much of what follows: Rod Dreher). It’s too soft a phrase.
I’m sure Komen executives expected to take some heat in the media for their decision. They probably weren’t anticipating that the American Association of University Women would immediately bar Komen from approved community service opportunities for college women at the AAUW’s annual leadership conference.
That’s right: As far as the AAUW is concerned, volunteering to raise money to help fight breast cancer for an organization with a 30-year history of doing just that doesn’t count as “community service” unless Komen also supports Planned Parenthood. Fighting breast cancer isn’t enough. You have to fund America’s largest abortion provider.
Likewise, Komen founder Nancy Brinker probably wasn’t expecting to find her long career of public service called into question by institutions like the Yale School of Public Health, which told WaPo journalist Sarah Kliff that its commencement speech invitation to Brinker was “under careful review.”
In 2009, President Obama, despite a clear history of outspoken abortion advocacy and in the face of outspoken opposition from dozens of bishops, was allowed to give the commencement address at Notre Dame, and even received an honorary degree. Komen hasn’t even criticized or spoken out against Planned Parenthood or abortion in any way, let alone given aid or comfort to the pro-life enemy. Nevertheless, the slight to Planned Parenthood was so grave that its founder was instantly grey-listed, if not outright blacklisted. It’s like one side knows there’s a war on and the other side doesn’t.
Also from Kliff’s Twitter feed, I discover that the company Honest Tea announced on Facebook that despite its “strong supporter of cancer education and research,” it was “in the process of evaluating our 2012 partnerships, including reviewing the recent changes to Susan G. Komen’s policies.”
Was there ever any suggestion that Komen wasn’t going to continue to be active in fighting breast cancer? Doesn’t matter. You can’t stop giving to Planned Parenthood and not expect consequences. (“Giving to Planned Parenthood is like going on a date THAT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE, EVER,” tweets Daily Caller contributing writer Mary Katharine Ham.)
A few good things have come from this mess. Now at least many more people will be aware that Komen supports Planned Parenthood. (It’s also worth remembering, as a friend pointed out online, that Komen spends up to seven figures every year suing smaller charities that have the temerity to be “for the cure”—and their CEO makes half a million a year. In his words, “as long as the CEO of a ‘charity’ makes many times my annual salary, they don’t need any of my money.”)
And it’s been a moment of clarity for everyone about how ruthless the pro-death forces are, and how sacred abortion and its largest American purveyor are. I can’t do better than to quote Dreher:
[Planned Parenthood and its supporters] could have denounced Komen’s decision, but in light of all Komen has done, and still does for women, turned their ire on the Republicans, the Religious Right, and so forth. But no, Komen broke ranks, and it must be dealt with harshly. And the sympathetic mainstream media is helping them do the job. All this reminds one of exactly what we’re dealing with here: what John Paul II called the culture of death. It is helpful to be reminded which side you’re on.
What do you think?
(Source: ginnyjake, via badwolfcomplex)
