Conscience articles from March 2004

Conscience archives from March 2004

Editor's note.(Editorial)
March 22, 2004... WITH THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION RATCHETING UP ITS attacks on women's and civil rights domestically and internationally, the March for Women's Lives in Washington, DC, comes at a timely juncture in the political process, just months before the...

The Vatican and condoms.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2004... THE DEBATE ABOUT CONdoms and the Catholic hierarchy ("Is the Pope Crazy?" Katha Pollitt, Winter 2003-4) has generated a lot of media coverage in the UK since Panorama, a BBC television program, revealed in October 2003 that the Catholic church...

'Reprogenetics'--author's reply.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2004... THE ASSOCIATION OF INDIvidual choice in reproductive matters with a market in reproduction runs through many if not all of the responses to my article ("'Reprogenetics': Hype, Phobia and Choice," Winter 2003-4). Barbara Katz Rothman warns of a...

The war is far from over.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2004... IN HER REVIEW OF BEARING Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War, (Winter 2003-4), Cecile Richards describes how the antiabortion movement has made significant political gains over the years by concentrating on organizing and training its...

The sexual abuse crisis.(In Catholic Circles)
March 22, 2004... JUST OVER TWO YEARS AFTER the sexual abuse crisis hit the front pages, a series of reports has come out assessing the scope and causes of the crisis and examining how the hierarchy might prevent similar abuses in the future. A full report...

Bishop ignites row over separation of church and state.(The Church and State)
March 22, 2004... BISHOP RAYMOND BURKE OF La Crosse in Wisconsin has instructed diocesan priests to withhold communion from prochoice Catholic lawmakers until they "publicly renounce" their support of abortion rights. Since signing the decree in November...

Roman Catholicism classes compulsory in Spain's schools.(The Church and State)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... SPAIN'S FORMER GOVERNment, under Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, passed a law requiring all students to take a religion class. For most students, this means a class in Catholic dogma, taught by church officials. There is a secular alternative...

Bishops oppose gay marriage.(The Church and State)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... ARCHBISHOP SEAN O'MALLEY of Boston and three other bishops in Massachusetts have called on Catholics in their dioceses to oppose granting marriage rights to same-sex couples. They have initiated a direct mail campaign to 1 million households,...

California Court rules against Catholic charities in contraceptive equity case.(Catholic Health Care)
March 22, 2004... THE CALIFORNIA SUPREME Court has ruled that a Catholic charity must provide employees with contraceptive coverage. In a six to one decision, the first of its kind in the US, the court ruled that while religious employers are exempt from the...

Mexican Government licenses emergency contraception.(The Church and Contraception)
March 22, 2004... THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT has decided to permit the sale of emergency contraception as part of an overall review of family planning guidelines. Advocates immediately welcomed the decision, saying that it will transform family planning and cut down...

<Move to ease abortion laws in Poland.(The Church and Abortion)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... LAWMAKERS IN POLAND ARE set to present a bill easing the abortion law, which ranks with Ireland and Malta as Europe's most restrictive. As well as easing the law surrounding abortion, the bill would permit sex education, guarantee access to...

John Paul II canonizes woman who died rather than have an abortion.(The Church and Abortion)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... POPE JOHN PAUL II HAS Announced that he will canonize Gianna Beretta Molla on May 16. Molla was a pediatrician who, pregnant with her fourth child, died of cancer rather than seek treatment for a tumor in her uterus. She refused to have the...

Catholic University to continue use of cells from aborted fetuses.(The Church and Abortion)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY Medical Center, a Catholic institution in Washington, DC, has announced that it will continue to use cells from aborted fetuses in research. After a complaint from an antiabortion group, an internal ethical review made the...

Portuguese parliament refuses to re-examine abortion law.(The Church and Abortion)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... DESPITE MASSIVE PUBLIC support for a referendum on easing abortion legislation, the Portuguese parliament refused to revisit the situation, despite a court acquitting seven women accused of having abortions, the doctor involved and nine...

Bishops come out in favor of condoms.(The Church and HIV/AIDS)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... CARDINAL GODFRIED DANneels of Brussels and Mechelen (Belgium), in an interview with the Dutch Catholic broadcaster RKK argued, "When someone is HIV-positive and his partner says, 'I want to have sexual relations with you,' he doesn't have to do...

Brazilian government promotes condoms in expanded AIDS program.(The Church and HIV/AIDS)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... THE BRAZILIAN GOVERNment has decided to ignore the protests of the Catholic hierarchy and expand its campaign to promote the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. The director of Brazil's anti-AIDS program went further, stating in...

Leading from the front.(Interview)
March 22, 2004... AS KATE MICHELMAN STEPS DOWN FROM THE LEADERSHIP OF NARAL Pro-Choice America, she spoke with Frances Kissling, executive editor of Conscience, about the March for Women's Lives, leadership, the impact NARAL has had on reproductive rights and...

The next step: what should abortion rights activists in the US be aiming for?(Roundtable)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... ON APRIl. 25, 2004, HUGE CROWDS WILL MARCH FOR WOMEN'S Lives in Washington, DC. But is this show of strength a defensive response to antichoice activists and an antichoice administration, or is it the start of a new movement that will reclaim...

Where is our vision?(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... PROTECTING THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS of women is a long, arduous struggle. For more than three decades, those who refuse to accept the Supreme Court's constitutional recognition of reproductive rights in Roe v. Wade have waged an effective,...

Mincing words, not actions.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... A DOZEN OR SO YEARS AGO, I WAS ASKED by a high school student "can one be prolife and be a feminist?" "Absolutely not," I responded, unwavering. Insecure in my role as a feminist spokesperson, I deferred to what I perceived to be the feminist...

Making lost battles winnable.(The Next Step)(the abortion rights movement)
March 22, 2004... THE ABORTION RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN the United States has secured a situation of partial victory and partial defeat. It has won the battles in which public opinion is on its side. It has lost the battles in which public opinion is on the other...

Progressive religious voices are key.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... AS A PROCHOICE CATHOLIC FEMINIST, I sit in a precarious position. I'm "too feminist" to be Catholic and "too Catholic" to be feminist. I am often casually dismissed by the institutional arm of the church because I support women's equality in...

Choking the antichoice minority.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... ABOUT 1980 THE REPUBLICAN PARTY was hijacked by a band of dedicated and vocal antichoice fanatics. Not so long ago those same fanatics hijacked the high road on the abortion issue itself. They creatively constructed a public relations strategy...

Stasis in the abortion debate is an opportunity.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... AN ENTIRE DECADE HAS NOW PASSED without any fundamental change in US abortion politics. That's right. Ever since the prochoice movement's last significant victory., the 2994 enactment of the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE)...

There's more to choice than Roe.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... A LOT OF CRITICISMS HAVE BEEN LEVELED at the reproductive rights movement for its inability to incorporate and attract support from young people. To give young women and men a stake in the movement, we need to expand the definition of...

Flagging in the face of insanity, but we will triumph.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... YOU ASK THAT I WRITE A PIECE ON abortion and I don't want to. There is nothing I can say that hasn't been said by others, or by me, many times before. We have advanced cogent cutting arguments citing the absolute necessity for legal abortion,...

Apathy? Not here!(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... THOSE MAKING DIRE PRONOUNCEMENTS about the state of the reproductive choice movement have not been paying attention. In the last five years, the movement as a whole has made youth a priority and has dedicated more resources to organizing on...

Widening our base, incorporating future leaders.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... PERCEPTION AND UNDERSTANDING OF abortion rights as it relates to human rights have been distorted by the far right. The message of the prochoice movement is stale and simply outdated--leaving room for one of the most callous antichoice debates...

A valentine to liberty.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... IN 2003, THE SUPREME COURT ISSUED the most significant decision on the right to privacy since Roe v. Wade. As the Court's term was winding down, there was substantial concern that a justice would resign and an antichoice replacement would be...

A prochoice nation.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... SOME OF THE MOST INTRIGUING political questions of the last decade have been: How strong is the prochoice majority? Is choice a voting issue in America today? How do young people feel about this issue? While developing conventional wisdom...

From feminism to humanism.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... MY SISTER CALLS HERSELF A "HUMANIST." She is not a feminist, she says. Oh no. She believes in a woman's right to choose, yes, but she also believes in a worker's right to earn a fair wage and in villagers' rights to have clean drinking...

Fight forward for reproductive rights and health care.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... WHEN I SAT DOWN TO WRITE THIS, I was feeling a kind of runner's euphoria after our recent court victory in Planned Parenthood v. Ashcroft. Federal judge Phyllis Hamilton had just ruled that Attorney General John Ashcroft overreached in...

Building a Latina movement.(The Next Step)
March 22, 2004... CURRENTLY, THERE ARE MORE THAN 18 million Latinas in the United States, comprising almost 52 percent of the total Latino population. Moreover, by the year 2050, one out of every four women in the US will be a Latina. (US Census Bureau, "Current...

Framing the debate: saving women's lives.
March 22, 2004... ABORTION RIGHTS AND ACCESS TO CONtraceptives won public acceptance in the 1970s in part because supporters managed to frame the debate. Our spokespeople asked Americans to support decisions about abortion and family planning to be made by each...

Caveat lector: the true results of polling are in the small print.
March 22, 2004... THE SUPREME COURT DECISIONS v. Wade (1973) and Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992) clearly established that abortion is a legal option for women, not to be restricted in the first trimester of pregnancy, but the decisions do allow states to add...

Bad faith makes bad politics.
March 22, 2004... For some years now, Catholics for a Free Choice and Conscience have been monitoring and reporting on religious conservatives, mostly Catholics. It has always been challenging to decide just how much importance to place on the "work" of these...

Is that it? The bishops are still looking to weasel their way out of the sexual abuse scandal.
March 22, 2004... ONE OF THE SMARTEST things someone on the run from the law can do is to hide in plain sight. Move to a big city, walk your dog, eat at restaurants and do not bring suspicion on yourself by acting guilty. The United States Conference of Catholic...

The church of Burke: the Catholic church should listen to catholics and remember its own history.(Opinion)(Column)
March 22, 2004... THE LEADERSHIP OF THE Catholic church and I have never made any secret of our political disagreements. My stands on reproductive health and end-of-life choices have clashed loudly with the political proclamations of the church hierarchy,...

A $25 million bully pulpit: The Passion of the Christ.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2004... "It's only a movie, Ingrid." --Alfred Hitchock to Ingrid Bergman WHAT IS THERE LEFT to say about Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004)? Can there be a sentient being anywhere who's unfamiliar with this phenomenon? Ideologues...

Celebrating a lack of vision.(book review)(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... The Transformation of American Religion: How We ActuaLly Live Our Faith Alan Wolfe (Free Press, 2003, 309pp) ISBN: 0743228391, $26.00 AT THE END OF ALAN Wolfe's optimistic but dispiriting The Transformation of American Religion, a reader...

An enlightening and invaluable guide.(book review)(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... Reproductive Health and Human Rights: Integrating Medicine, Ethics and Law Rebecca J. Cook, Bernard M. Dickens and Mahmoud E. Fathalla (Oxford University Press, 2003, 554pp) ISBN: 0199241333, $29.95 TO BE ASKED TO PASS COMment on the work...

Bookshelf.(book review )(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... American Catholics and Civic Engagement: A Distinctive Voice Margaret O'Brien Steinfels (ed.) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, 293pp) Part of the American Catholics in the Public Square project sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, this...

Reproduction: are women mad to try it?(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... Abortion, Motherhood, and Mental Health: Medicalizing Reproduction in the United States and Great Britain Ellie Lee (Aldine De Gruyter, 2003, 293pp) ISBN: 020230681X, $25.95 THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN women's reproductive systems and their...

Hungering for more.(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... Gendering the Spirit: Women, Religion and the Post-Colonial Response Durre S. Ahmed (ed.) (Zed Books, 2002, 244pp) ISBN 1842770276, $19.95 THIS GEM OF A BOOK IS essential reading for anyone engaged with issues of women and religion. While...

Looking back, looking forward.(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... Reconciling Catholicism and Feminism? Personal Reflections on Tradition and Change Sally Barr Ebest and Ron Ebest (eds.) (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003, 288pp) ISBN: 0268040206, $25.00 SALLY BARR EBEST AND RON Ebest have crafted a...

Postscript.
March 22, 2004... "I did not come here to celebrate the birth of Christ with you but to ask you why you are not in mourning for his death inside this place. God has been a witness to the corruption of his leadership, of the exploitation and abuses... by the...