Transform Now Plowshares
 
        The Transform Now Plowshares activists were recently sentenced by a judge with at least enough sense to know, despite what they were charged with, the difference between actual saboteurs and peace activists spray-painting Bible verses. One of the activists, Mike Walli, is a CL supporter who was at our 25th Anniversary Conference.
         This case received a lot of publicity because of the media image of an octogenarian nun and her two friends making it inside a nuclear weapons facility – a shoot-to-kill zone that’s supposed to be secured against armed guerrillas – and staying there an hour before being found. See coverage in the Washington Post and CL member group Pax Christi.
 

 

 

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Belgium Extends Euthanasia to Children
 
        Twelve years after legalizing euthanasia for adults, the Belgian Parliament has removed the age limit. CL Board member Richard Stith comments: “Once each person is no longer taken as an unquestionable given, eventually everyone will have to show that he/she has a life of net positive value (is justified in living) in order for it to be thought reasonable for him/her to go on living.  And there is no reason to think that his/her net value will be measured only against the zero value of death; it will be measured against the value that would be generated if the resources now being used to feed and clothe the person at issue were devoted instead to other, perhaps more useful, human beings (or animals, for that matter). It's simple economic rationality. Once the ‘taboo’ against killing humans is gone, it will be the iron logic of euthanasia for us, too.”
 

 
Photo: Richard Stith second from left (left, Lisa Stiller; middle, John Whitehead; 2014 exhibit at March for Life).
 

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Letter to the Washington Post
 
        CL member Tom Taylor had this letter, entitled “U.N. oversteps in criticizing the Vatican,” published in the Washington Post on Feb. 10


        Regarding the Feb. 6 front-page article "Vatican blasted by U.N. on abuse":
        There is certainly much room for criticism of the Vatican's handling of child sexual abuse by clerics, but the United Nations panel exceeded its role when it criticized church teaching, especially on abortion, as a violation of human rights.  On abortion, one can reasonably make the exact opposite argument – that its widespread existence is in itself a violation of human rights – and one does not have to be a Catholic to so argue.
        Many books on ecology issues speak movingly about "respect for all life."  Surely, one can make a strong case that developing life not yet born should qualify as part of "all life."  The debate on this is, of course, one of the most long-standing and polarizing of current times. 
         The United Nations certainly has a right to weigh in on this issue.  But in doing so, it seriously compromises its standing as an impartial arbiter on human rights abuses.
 

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Quotation of the Week
Mary Meehan,
“Abortion: The Left Has Betrayed the Sanctity of Life"
The Progressive, September, 1980
 
        Many liberals have difficulty accepting the idea that Jesse Helms can be right about anything. I do not quite understand this attitude. Just by the law of averages, he has to be right about something, sometime. Standing at the March for Life rally at the U.S. Capitol last year, and hearing Senator Helms say that "We reject the philosophy that life should be only for the planned, the perfect, or the privileged," I thought he was making a good civil-rights statement.