Louisiana To Require Ultrasounds Before Abortions

It was a unanimous 79-0 vote: Women seeking abortions in Louisiana will be required to get an ultrasound first, even if they are a victim of rape or incest, under a bill that received final legislative passage Wednesday. The bill by Democratic state Sen. Sharon Broome of Baton Rouge was sent to the governor’s desk [...]

More On Sister Margaret McBride, The Nun Who Approved A Life-Saving Abortion

This is mostly previously reported information, but it does include an appearance by Canon lawyer Kevin O’Rourke, a priest who both sides with Sister McBride and admits that the Church’s policy of automatically excommunicating anyone who permits an abortion but not automatically excommunicating pedophile priests “doesn’t look good”: My views on the ethical issues raised [...]

Should Religions Be Exempt From Laws Otherwise Applicable To Others?

ProfMTH explores the issue with a wealth of information, siding against such exemptions: The second video is chock full of legal information.  The most interesting bit in here is where he discusses Antonin Scalia’s strong case against religious exemptions and Sonia Sotomayor’s general support for them. 1. Regarding Christian Legal Society v. Martinez– –the decision [...]

Moral Actions, Moral Sentiments, Moral Motives, and Moral Justifications: More On The Nun Excommunicated For Approving A Life-Saving Abortion

In reply to my post on the story of Sister Margaret McBride whom the Catholic Church “automatically excommunicated” for helping to give the go-ahead to an abortion claimed necessary for saving the life of an 11 week pregnant mother, I have already received two interesting replies.  The first challenged the medical argument for the necessity of [...]

Legalism Over Life: Nun Supports Life-Saving Abortion And Gets Excommunicated

Feministing: Sister Margaret McBride has been demoted from her position at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, AZ after participating in the approval of an abortion for a critically ill patient in 2009. McBride was part of the hospital ethics committee that approved an abortion for a patient with pulmonary hypertension, which can be [...]

Logic, Numbers, and Mary’s Conception

Numbers 5:14, 18, 44: If feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure—then he is to take his wife to the priest…. After the priest has had the woman stand before the LORD, he [...]

Is It Wrong To Advertize Abortion Services On TV?

Is The Christians’ God Pro-Life?

Daniel Florian sums up the case that indeed he is not: Dear Pro-Lifer, Your God is not pro-life. You might find that statement surprising, but I know this from your own holy book. Despite what you may have been told, the Bible is not a pro-life document. It is, in many parts, pro-death. In one [...]

The Pope Not Interested In “Perfect Ideological Conformity?”

Russ Douthat has a strange column in The New York Times today arguing that because the pope’s views cross the standard political lines of America’s left and right wings (denouncing both environmental destruction and embryonic) that he shows “that truth may not be served by perfect ideological conformity.” The church is not a think tank, [...]

Obama’s New Science Czar’s Controversial Prescriptions

Zombietime has the excerpts from new “science czar” John Holdren’s 1977 book, in which he advocates the following: • Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not; • The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food; • [...]

Pope Benedict XVI In League With “Liberal Communists”?

Anthony Paul Smith has an interesting response (one that seems to be deeply influenced by Zizek’s remarks on those whom he dubs “liberal communists” here) to the Pope’s new encyclical.  An excerpt from Smith: Apparently any use of technology in relation to life, from birth control to abortion to in vitro to cloning, is a [...]

Graphs Suggest Secular Countries Less Corrupt, More Peaceful

An interesting graph: Here’s Tom Rees’s interpetation of the data: the graph (as shown on the right) shows a dramatic and strong relationship between religiosity and corruption. This does not mean that religion causes corruption. A more likely explanation is that a common, third factor explains both. And the obvious explanation is wealth. Rich countries [...]

The Theocratic Mindset of James Dobson

As something of a Rawlsian about public discourse, I have no problem with religious people arguing in government for application of ideals that they personally discovered through their religion or their sacred texts, their religious institutions, etc. as long as they respect the need to give reasons that are publicly accessible, reasons that do not [...]