[Beliefnet, September 28, 2000]
Observers of the abortion debate disagree about nearly every topic, but for the last decade, one prediction has won pretty near consensus: when RU 486 arrives, it will change everything. Now that the FDA has approved the “abortion pill,” we'll get our first experience of an all-chemical abortion--what some pro-lifers call a “human pesticide.” Previous methods involved a direct surgical removal of the child, but RU 486 will be an inside job.
[Citizen, July 2000]
She wrapped her baby boy in a crib bedsheet covered with tiny balls and bats. He wore an angel necklace and a felt diaper. Carefully she laid him where someone was sure to find him, near a parked car, 200 feet from the entrance to the Indianapolis Community Hospital.
[Beliefnet, February 1, 2000]
You have to imagine, first, the seven babies curled and fitted around each other like puppies in a basket. Each has his or her separate water-filled sac, and within these sacs they rest or exercise, sometimes jostling their neighbors.
[Beliefnet, January 24, 2000]
When I saw the pink earplugs in his hand, I felt older than I’ve ever felt in my life.
I had been invited to be a speaker at an all-day rock concert, and the host had warned me in a prior e-mail that the groups following me would be pretty loud. The afternoon bands, I was told, were “kind of mellow -- my mom likes these bands.” (Reading that sentence was the second oldest I’ve felt.) But “the bands at night are hardcore, which is very loud and the lyrics are basically screamed out.”
[Focus on the Family, January 2000]
Susan B. Anthony is a hero of the feminist movement, and with good cause; she was a trailblazer in the women's movement of the late 1800's. A Quaker who never married, Anthony devoted her energy
[Regeneration Quarterly, Fall 1998]
This speech was given at “Engaging Common Ground,” the second national conference of the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice, held in Syracuse, NY on May 14-17, 1998. The Network was organized in 1993 and based in Washington, DC, and worked to enable discussion between pro-choice and pro-life advocates. The Network lost its funding in 1999 and had to disband.The topic we were assigned for this plenary session was, “What is the broader context of meaning and beliefs in which we engage with the abortion issue?” Though I was in on the discussion to choose this topic, I now find myself in the embarrassing position of wondering “What in the world did we mean by that?” As a result, I've written several different versions of what I would say this morning, and last night when I got up for my regular prayer time I took one more look at the topic, threw out all previous versions, and started over from scratch.
[World, February 26, 1994]
Good news on the pro-life front recently: both Pennsylvania and North Dakota have overcome judicial hurdles to putting abortion laws into effect. Pro-life victories are rare enough that activists are celebrating.
The Pennsylvania laws were enacted in 1990, but abortion advocates brought repeated challenges that carried them all the way to the Supreme Court.
[Religion News Service, June 27, 1995]
Baby Katherine has it lucky. She’s dying.
When she was born three months ago, problems suspected during pregnancy were confirmed. Katherine has Trisomy 18, a tripling of the eighteenth chromosome. Down Syndrome, in comparison, triples the twenty‑first. But, unlike Down Syndrome children, few Trisomy 18 babies grow up; those that make it to birth live about two more months. Katherine is racing to double that allotment.
[National Review, December 31, 1997]
“This week is anti-choice week at UB,” wrote Michelle Goldberg, a staffer with the University of Buffalo (NY) student paper, the Spectrum. “If you see one of them showing their disgusting videos or playing with toy fetuses, do your part and spit at them. Kick them in the head.”
The lively Ms Goldberg demonstrates one of the reasons that it is always bracing to go onto a college campus as a pro-life speaker. In my travels--Yale, Princeton, Bryn Mawr, Brown, Wellesley, et al--no pro-choicer has actually kicked me in the head, but a few have looked as if they'd like to. A few more have delivered dark imprecations in the question and answer period, occasionally disguised as questions. And a few more have just glowered at me threateningly, like the wicked witch before the bucket of water hit her.
[World, March 12, 1994]
It was ”almost providential."
This is a cautious man speaking. Governor Bob Casey is not given to effusive pronouncements. His lengthy form is folded behind the ornate desk, but his long arms sometimes escape to chop the air in emphasis. White hair and black eyebrows lend him an intense appearance, but his manner is plain-spoken and unaffected, and always marked by caution.
