Abortion

The Peremptory Definition of a Child

By Justin Katz | October 10, 2009 |

It’s a delicate story, but beyond the strength of Matthew Milliner’s witness is a telling anecdote. Milliner’s unborn child has died in the womb: The next day our doctor called in a rushed tone, and said something must quickly be done. We were to go to our local “Women’s Center” for a procedure. This did…

How About Memory; Does That Bestow Personhood?

By Justin Katz | October 8, 2009 |

Turning, again, to Joseph Bottum, we find this bit of information… just so’s you know: Researchers have learned that unborn babies at thirty-weeks gestation are forming short-term memories. By the time unborn children reach thirty-four weeks in development, they are “able to store information and retrieve it four weeks later.”… The “unless” to that finding…

Psychopaths and Public Debate

By Justin Katz | September 13, 2009 |

The horrible story of senseless killings in Owosso, Michigan, clarifies social dynamics that were the subject of debate after the murder of abortionist George Tiller: Harlan Drake or “Hale” as he is known to friends is now charged with 2 counts of 1st Degree Premeditated Murder for the killings of James “Jim” Pouillon and Mike…

When She Chooses the Scarlet Letter

By Justin Katz | September 9, 2009 |

Oft overlooked, at the end of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, is Hester Prynne’s resistance to calls for her to become a sort of feminist messiah. Having turned toward prudence, she suggests that the archetypal woman will not conquer through deviancy, but through fulfillment of her feminine character. A recent letter from Don Rittman of…

Where the Progressive View of Life Becomes Very Narrow

By Carroll Andrew Morse | August 14, 2009 |

There are many nits to be picked with David Scharfenberg‘s article in this week’s Providence Phoenix anticipating the growth of progressive power in the Rhode Island legislature, but the one that really leapt out at me was near the end…Public opinion on abortion and same-sex marriage seem destined to catch up with the state’s political…

Abortion Insinuates Itself in a Leftward Government

By Justin Katz | July 31, 2009 |

Barth Bracy, executive director of the Rhode Island Right to Life Committee, makes an interesting observation in the current issue of the Rhode Island Catholic: In less than six months Obama has appointed dozens of extreme pro-abortion ideologues to key positions in government, nullified the Mexico City Policy, and authorized taxpayer funding for embryo-killing experimentation,…

A Tin Ear Is a Thing to Behold

By Justin Katz | June 1, 2009 |

Approximately three hours after the murder of George Tiller, Nancy Green left this comment on RI Future: When persuasion and the democratic process did not convince a majority of Kansans to make abortion illegal, they resorted to the bullet. This is terrorism and a subversion of democracy. About twenty minutes later, this post appeared on…

All in the Service of Evil

By Justin Katz | May 31, 2009 |

Only evil was served by the killing of abortionist George Tiller. Just as one can imagine the phrases by which Satan guided Tiller to see his barbarous work as righteous, one can imagine the whispers that brought the killer to Tiller’s church — leading him perhaps to see as poetry a setting that should have…

Gallup: “More Americans ‘Pro-Life’ Than ‘Pro-Choice’ for First Time”

By Marc Comtois | May 15, 2009 |

I greet Gallup’s most recent poll indicating that there are more Pro-Life Americans than Pro-Choice with qualified optimism. Qualified, because the split essentially flipped from 50% pro-choice and 44% pro-life last year to 42%/51% this year. I wonder why? Gallup has some theories: With the first pro-choice president in eight years already making changes to…

Can Non-Persons Be Gendered?

By Justin Katz | May 13, 2009 |

The intellectual dissonance of this is achingly painful: The Local reported in February that a woman from Eskilstuna in southern Sweden had twice had abortions after finding out the gender of the child. The woman, who already had two daughters, requested an amniocentesis in order to allay concerns about possible chromosome abnormalities. At the same…