Protestant and Catholic balance in the pro-life movement

In a column in First Things online, Mark Tooley uses the recent March for Life as an occasion to discuss what he sees as a shift within evangelical Protestantism to pro-life beliefs.

Links:

Essay in First Things (January 27, 2014): Protestants March for Life

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RETURNING WITH NEW POSTS ON SEPTEMBER 1, 2015

Due to work and research commitments, I will not be posting anything new until next year. In the meantime, use the links and the news feeds and still feel free to email me if you want to discuss reproductive politics. Thanks for your continued interest.

Medically necessary abortions: The battle of the experts

Apparently, Representative Joe Walsh is not entirely alone! The assertion that an abortion is never medically necessary has been floating around in the pro-life universe for at least a little while. We are now witnessing a battle of the experts. One the one side is Joe Walsh and friends. Walsh himself released a pdf document with quotations from several doctors-- including some historically prominent pro-choice doctors, like Alan Guttmacher-- making the 'never medically necessary' claim seem quite reasonable. Also on Walsh's side are several doctors who particpated in a recent "International Symposium on Maternal Health" in Dublin. Ireland, despite a European Court of Human Rights ruling in 1992 , has a total ban on abortion. Irish pro-lifers want the country's politicians to resist pressure to implement even a life exception, so the question of medical necessity is directly relevant there. The "Dublin Declaration," released after the S...

The exception of Scott DesJarlais

The news about Republican House member Scott DesJarlais just gets worse and worse. As it turns out, not only did he cheat on his wife with a patient and pressured his pregnant patient-girlfriend to have an abortion, he cheated on his wife six times, with patients and co-workers, prescribed drugs to one of his patient girlfriends, and successfully advocated for his own wife to have an abortion. For a 'family values' and 'pro-life' conservative, that is quite a record. The great irony in all this, of course, is that Representative DesJarlais was reelected, despite all of the things he's done, while Republican Senate and House candidates ( Akin, Mourdock, Walsh, and Koster ) lost their races not for what they did but what they said (inflammatory, insensitive, and just plain factually incorrect things about abortion and/or rape). In this election season, words spoke louder than actions. Is there anything to be learned from the utter hypocrisy of Representative...

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