{"id":2522,"date":"2006-04-28T16:13:24","date_gmt":"2006-04-28T16:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-left-flank-of-life.html"},"modified":"2006-04-28T16:13:24","modified_gmt":"2006-04-28T16:13:24","slug":"the-left-flank-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-left-flank-of-life.html","title":{"rendered":"The Left Flank of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jody Bottum on the Andrea Clark case:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The conservative pro-lifers moved this story, through the network and quick responses put in place by the death of Terri Schiavo. But the appeal for Andrea Clark originally appeared on a left-wing website<\/u><\/a>, Democratic Underground<\/em>, where the response was strong and heartfelt. <\/p>\n

For years, many activists against euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide\u2014Wesley Smith among them\u2014pitched their appeal primarily to the Left. Smith was a Naderite, co-authoring books with Ralph Nader, and he, like many others, originally thought of the fight in leftist terms: the struggle of citizens against large-corporation hospitals, insurance companies, and HMOs. But they got very little traction on the Left, and gradually found themselves preaching to the pro-life community on the Right.<\/p>\n

That the pro-life political connection isn\u2019t necessary seems to be proved by the reaction to Andrea Clark\u2019s story on Democratic Underground<\/em>. But maybe that\u2019s too strong a conclusion. Abortion has so badly skewed American politics, it\u2019s hard to see what natural groups would be formed. Still, it does suggest there is a constituency for Democrats who could successfully buck their party on the life issues.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jody Bottum on the Andrea Clark case: The conservative pro-lifers moved this story, through the network and quick responses put in place by the death of Terri Schiavo. But the appeal for Andrea Clark originally appeared on a left-wing website, Democratic Underground, where the response was strong and heartfelt. For years, many activists against euthanasia…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Left Flank of Life - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-left-flank-of-life.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Left Flank of Life - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jody Bottum on the Andrea Clark case: The conservative pro-lifers moved this story, through the network and quick responses put in place by the death of Terri Schiavo. But the appeal for Andrea Clark originally appeared on a left-wing website, Democratic Underground, where the response was strong and heartfelt. For years, many activists against euthanasia…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-left-flank-of-life.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-04-28T16:13:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Left Flank of Life - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-left-flank-of-life.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Left Flank of Life - Via Media","og_description":"Jody Bottum on the Andrea Clark case: The conservative pro-lifers moved this story, through the network and quick responses put in place by the death of Terri Schiavo. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}