Conscience articles from December 2006

Conscience archives from December 2006

Editor's note.(Editorial)
December 22, 2006... RARELY HAS A COVER PHOTO ENCOMPASSED SO PERFECTLY WHAT we wanted to discuss in the current issue. For too long now, many prochoice advocates have had difficulty confronting what has become more and more apparent over the past few years: the...

Sex Talk.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 22, 2006... I WAS RAISED BY A SELF-defined feminist mom who had a consciousness-raising group, prominently displayed Our Bodies Ourselves on our bookshelf and sent me to the pediatrician at 14 with permission to get "anything I might need." Most of my...

Abortion in Eastern Europe.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 22, 2006... I ENJOYED READING THE Annie Hillar article ("Counteracting the Antichoice Threat in Eastern Europe," Summer 2006). I know Ms. Hillar from her time at Global Fund for Women and respect her work. The younger women that I know from our work in...

Operation rescue west loses tax-exempt status.(The Church and State)
December 22, 2006... ON SEPTEMBER II, 2006, the IRS announced that it had revoked the nonprofit 501(c)(3) status of Youth Ministries, Inc., which did business as Operation Rescue West (ORW). While the IRS does not provide information on the circumstances that lead...

CFFC complaint, IRS probe force catholic answers' hand.(The Church and State)
December 22, 2006... THE CONSERVATIVE U.S. apologetics group Catholic Answers has announced that in April it was forced to create a new branch, Catholic Answers Action, so that it could continue to publish a voter guide that was the subject of a Catholics for a...

Ex-IRS official challenges Missouri bishops' election pressure.(The Church and State)(Internal Revenue Service)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... THE FORMER HEAD OF THE U.S. Internal Revenue Service's Tax Exempt Organizations Division asked the tax agency to investigate whether the Missouri Catholic Conference was violating its tax-exempt stares by pressuring candidates for state offices...

Polish Bishops, Cardinal Trujillo come under fire for overblown criticism of stem-cell research.(The Church and State)
December 22, 2006... POLAND'S BISHOPS IN JUNE voiced opposition to a European Parliament vote to fund research on human embryonic stem cells. The bishops called on the E.U. Council and Commission to block the measure, calling instead for research on adult cells....

Five convicted in Portugal.(accused of abortion)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... AN APPEALS COURT IN JULY convicted five people of violating Portugal's abortion law, which allows the practice only in cases of rape and health problems and never after the 12th week of pregnancy. The five people convicted--a doctor, a nurse...

E.U. court to hear polish abortion appeal.(The Church and Abortion)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... A POLE WHO SUFFERED retinal hemorrhage after bringing a pregnancy to term against her will is challenging Poland's strict abortion law in the European Court of Human Rights. Warsaw resident Alicja Tysiac, a 35-year-old single mother, was unable...

Mentally impaired Argentine granted abortion after rape.(The Church and Abortion)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... THE TOP COURT OF ARGENTINA'S most populous province ruled July 31 that a mentally impaired woman who had been raped could have an abortion. The ruling overturned two lower courts' decisions in a case that sparked rallies by both sides in the...

German bishops cut ties with lay counselors.(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... THE GERMAN BISHOPS IN July banned people "acting in the Church's service" from working with Donum Vitae, a pregnancy counseling operation that is affiliated with the Central Committee of German Lay Catholics and participates in Germany's...

British cardinal's spokesman quits amid abortion reports.(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE head of the English and Welsh church hierarchy stepped down in July amid reports he pressured one girlfriend into having an abortion and broke up with another while she was pregnant. As a close adviser of Westminster...

U.S. politicians' communion still up to their bishops.(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... THE U.S. CONFERENCE OF Catholic Bishops decided in June not to promulgate a new policy on communion and prochoice politicians, instead reiterating an earlier decision that left individual bishops to decide when to accord and deny the sacrament....

English principal suspended after antichoice presentation.(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... ST. LUKE'S COLLEGE IN London suspended principal Maria Williams in July after an antichoice presentation by U.S. evangelist Barbara McGuigan that, according to a student quoted by the Times Educational Supplement, "was just disturbing and went...

The sexual abuse scandal.(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... * The English and Welsh bishops announced in July that abuse allegations in their jurisdiction were down to 60 in 2005 from 100 in 2004. Church employees and volunteers underwent 18,000 criminal record checks in 2005, up from 14,000 in 2004,...

Call for China to release barefoot lawyer.(Chen Guangcheng)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... MORE THAN 100 LEADERS in the fields of human rights, bioethics, reproductive health and religion from more than 30 countries and six continents have protested the treatment and trial of Chen Guangcheng. In a letter, coordinated by Catholics for...

Antigay Maryland official fired.(Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... MARYLAND GOVERNOR ROBERT Ehrlich in June fired a Catholic transit official who had said on television that homosexuality was "sexual deviancy." Architect Robert Smith made the antigay remarks as a panelist on a local political program. A week...

U.S. Catholics still back birth control.(End Notes)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... U.S. CATHOLICS REMAIN indistinguishable from the general public in strongly supporting contraception. Wall Street Journal-Harris pollsters found in June that 88 percent of Catholics supported more access to birth control information, 81 percent...

Prevention drives today's prochoice agenda: after decades on the defensive, prochoice leaders decide that common ground is better than losing ground.
December 22, 2006... WHEN SENATOR HILLARY Clinton, a longtime supporter of abortion rights, marked the anniversary of Roe v. Wade in January 2005 by suggesting that abortion was a "sad, even tragic choice" and that it was time to seek "common ground" with...

Should abortion be prevented?(reproductive rights)
December 22, 2006... IF ABORTION IS A MORALLY NEUTRAL act and does not endanger women's health, why bother to prevent the need for it? After all, the cost of a first-trimester abortion is comparable to the cost of a year's supply of birth control pills--and...

Reducing unintended pregnancy in the United States.
December 22, 2006... JUST UNDER HALF OF ALL PREGNANCIES in the United States are unintended. There were more than 3 million such pregnancies in 2001, according to a recent study in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. Seven years earlier, these...

Prevention, and support for new parents, will reduce the abortion rate.(reproductive rights)
December 22, 2006... THERE ARE FEW ISSUES IN THE political realm more difficult, with greater moral complexity, than that of abortion. For some, it is a choice between protecting the life of unborn children; for others, it is about protecting women's capacity--not...

Some messages can't be massaged.(abortion)
December 22, 2006... COMMUNICATIONS AND "MESSAGING" PLAY A LARGER part in politics and social policy than at any time in history. In the U.K., as in the U.S., it seems that policymakers spend more time trying to work out how to "sell" initiatives to the public than...

Going positive on prevention: American voters are becoming aware of threats to the values represented by Roe.
December 22, 2006... THE POLITICAL ARENA DOES not always afford Americans the luxury of a philosophical debate. It can be difficult to discuss privacy and reproductive freedom amid a barrage of 30-second TV ads distorting candidates' records or advancing...

Talking the talk on abortion.(reproductive rights)
December 22, 2006... THE DEBATE OVER ABORTION IS NOT ONE THAT IS going away soon, and there is much discussion about which side, if either, is winning or losing. Conscience asked leaders in the reproductive rights movement to send us their thoughts as to whether...

Abortion and Human Rights: legal developments in Europe may open the door to wider availability of abortion in Ireland.
December 22, 2006... THE EUROPEAN COURT OF Human Rights has been examining the abortion issue in two cases against Ireland and Poland. In D v. Ireland, the applicant was expecting twins. After a scan, she learned that one twin had died in utero. An amniocentesis...

Women need Amnesty International to support abortion rights.
December 22, 2006... AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL IS IN THE MIDST OF considering whether to include access to abortion in the list of rights that it supports. Many other organizations and individuals have long made the case that access to safe abortion services is a basic...

How to reach a consensus on abortion.
December 22, 2006... The following is an excerpt from The Human Drama of Abortion: A Global Search for Consensus by Anibal Faundes and the late Jose Barzelatto Vanderbilt University Press, 2006, 0826515266, $24.95). IN 1997, I (AF) HAD THE OPPORTUNITY to...

Modern challenges, modern responses.(Where Human Rights Begin: Health, Sexuality, and Women in the New Millennium)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... Where Human Rights Begin: Health, Sexuality and Women in the New Millennium Edited by Wendy Chavkin & Ellen Chesler (Rutgers University Press, 2005, 309pp) 0-81535-3657-X, $62.00 "Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small...

Painful stories demand political reforms.
December 22, 2006... Governing China's Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics Susan Greenhalgh and Edwin A. Winckler (Stanford University Press, 2005, 412pp) 0804748799, $65.00 "China's parliament has scrapped a proposal that would criminalize...

American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century Kevin Phillips (Viking, 2006, 462pp) A former Republican strategist uses the lessons of history and his command of contemporary...

Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women Susan Faludi (Three Rivers Press, 2006, 592pp) This 15th anniversary edition of one of the earliest and most insightful contributions to third-wave feminism comes complete with a new preface,...

Chronicle of the Popes.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... Chronicle of the Popes P.G. Maxwell-Stuart (Thames & Hudson Inc., 2006, 248pp) Chronicles of the Popes provides a social and political history of the papacy, including concise accounts of the reign of every pope from St. Peter to Benedict...

The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth Edward O. Wilson (W. W. Norton & Company, 2006, 160pp) Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist and longtime critic of religious communities' attempts to use Intelligent Design theory to...

Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman (Pantheon Books, 2006, 199pp) Ethical Realism is a collaborative effort by researchers from the New America and Heritage foundations that draws from...

God Hates Fags: The Rhetorics of Religious Violence.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... God Hates Fags: The Rhetorics of Religious Violence Michael Cobb (New York University Press, 2006, 208pp) Cobb uses the case of Mathew Shepard's gruesome murder as an entry point into an exploration of how right-wing zealots such as Rev....

Good Hearts: Catholic Sisters in Chicago's Past.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... Good Hearts: Catholic Sisters in Chicago's Past Suellen Hay (University of Illinois Press, 2006, 394PP) Hay utilizes in-depth interviews, secondary sources and primary documents to trace the vitally important social rote that nuns played by...

The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief Francis S. Collins (Free Press, 2006, 304pp) The leader of the Human Genome Project defends his faith in Christianity and rational science, arguing that one should not...

Medical Care at the End of Life: A Catholic Perspective.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... Medical Care at the End of Life: A Catholic Perspective David F. Kelly (Georgetown University Press, 2006, 172pp) Kelly brings his expansive knowledge of Catholic health care ethics, church teachings and legal precedent together to...

Piety and Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... Piety and Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom Rev. Barry W. Lynn (Harmony Books, 2006, 257pp) The executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State argues that the only way to protect intellectual...

Preventing Unsafe Abortion and its Consequences: Priorities for Research and Action.(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... Preventing Unsafe Abortion and its Consequences: Priorities for Research and Action Ina K. Warriner and Iqbal H. Shah (Guttmacher Institute, 2006, 243PP) Once again the prochoice lobby fosters the most serious and applicable of discussions...

Prophetic & Public: The Social Witness of U.S. Catholicism.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... Prophetic & Public: The Social Witness of U.S. Catholicism Kristen E. Heyer (Georgetown University Press, 2007, 228pp) Prophetic & Public explores the reaches and potential of Catholic public theology in 21st century America. As the role of...

Women connecting faith.(Still Believing: Jewish, Christian, And Muslim Women Affirm Their Faith)(Book review)
December 22, 2006... Still Believing: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Women Affirm Their Faith Edited by Victoria Lee Erickson & Susan A. Farrell (Orbis Books, 2005, 154pp) 1-57075-582-5, $20.00 ARE YOU WONDERING whether belonging to a religious tradition can...

Postscript.(behavior)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... "The presence of such personalities as Franco, Salazar or DeValera in European politics guaranteed Europe's preservance of traditional values. We lack such men of action these days." --Maciej Marian Giertych, a Polish MEP from the League of...