{"id":842,"date":"2008-10-24T14:12:14","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T14:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/10\/the-impact-of-the-law.html"},"modified":"2008-10-24T14:12:14","modified_gmt":"2008-10-24T14:12:14","slug":"the-impact-of-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/10\/the-impact-of-the-law.html","title":{"rendered":"The impact of the law"},"content":{"rendered":"

I keep harping on the law because this is election season and the shape at the law is at the heart of many of the disagreements out there.
\nI also keep harping on it because there is so much sloppy thinking and frankly deceptive discourse out there on the subject of abortion law.
\nThe sloppy thinking involves claiming that “the pro-life movement has been obsessed with criminalization to its detriment and at the cost of lives…move on” without specific evidence pointing to the truth of this assertion – either that the movement is obsessed at a great cost or that law is ineffective.
\nThe deceptive discourse involves blowing off the issue of the law, declaring all is lost in order to convince one’s listeners to vote for a favorite candidate.
\nTwo recent articles address the issue of the effectiveness of abortion law in the US:
\nMichael New of the University of Alabama has done much research on the subject. He has a summary article in Public Discourse here and points to the correlation between lower abortion rates and incidence with restrictive legislation. <\/a>
\nRichard Doerflinger of NRLC has a similar piece up at the USCCB site. <\/a>
\nAlso at the USCCB site:
\nBishop Martin Holley’s letter on abortion and the African-American community (pdf)<\/a><\/p>\n

As the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the Guttmacher Institute is shamelessly
\ntrying to build a case for receiving more of our taxpayer dollars. Every year the federal
\ngovernment gives over $300 million to Planned Parenthood. Last year for the first time, Planned
\nParenthood took in over one billion dollars and reported a profit of $51 million. I join my voice
\nwith others in the Black community who have called for the defunding of the abortion industry.
\nWe must demand an end to the victimizing of African American children, women,
\nfamilies and communities by Planned Parenthood and others in the abortion industry. Over 80
\npercent of Planned Parenthood clinics are located in minority neighborhoods. Margaret Sanger,
\nthe founder of Planned Parenthood, began the \u201cNegro Project\u201d to reduce the Black population.
\nWe should be shocked and heartbroken by the findings of a recent phone investigation, that
\nrecorded a fundraiser at an Iowa Planned Parenthood clinic saying she was \u201cvery excited\u201d about
\na donation specifically for aborting Black babies.
\nMy brothers and sisters, we can overcome abortion in our nation. Let us defend our
\ncommunity by rededicating ourselves to family life and marriage, promoting the gift of chastity
\nand marital fidelity, committing ourselves to prayer and service to others and defending the life
\nand dignity of each human person. We can welcome every child as a gift and we can overcome
\nabortion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Defunding Planned Parenthood? A political aim. If we say that we should give up on the political aspect of the abortion issue, does that mean we just sit back and let anything fly? That we should not fight those battles? That the cause, say, of which Bishop Holley speaks is a distraction and missing the point?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keep harping on the law because this is election season and the shape at the law is at the heart of many of the disagreements out there. I also keep harping on it because there is so much sloppy thinking and frankly deceptive discourse out there on the subject of abortion law. The sloppy…<\/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-842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe impact of the law - 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\/2008\/10\/the-impact-of-the-law.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The impact of the law - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I keep harping on the law because this is election season and the shape at the law is at the heart of many of the disagreements out there. 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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\/842","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=842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}