pro-life

Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar of TLC's "19 & Counting" fame announced on TODAY they are expecting baby #20 - due in April 2012. The flip side of the Quiverfull ideal of "trusting the Lord with our family planning" which Jim Bob Michelle embrace and promote through their TV Reality show, website, and is that Michelle also accepts the possibility of her own or her baby's deaths, should such tragedy occur, as God's will.

In just one dinner at a random restaurant having greasy food and a couple of beers we scratched the surface of the potential that exists.

There  are so many surveys about abortion that it's practically a cottage  industry, but the newest - by The Public Religion Research Institute of  Washington, DC - suggests intriguing and fresh approaches that can help  advocates make a more compelling case.

From the “guerrilla activists” trying to take down Planned Parenthood to the state and federal legislators (from both parties) further restricting women’s access to abortion, 2011 has seen more assaults on women’s most fundamental rights yet – even more even under the Bush years. There are 3 anti-abortion federal bills and more than 200 state level bills restricting access to abortion (and cutting funds for birth control, cancer screenings and other basic care for women into the attacks for good measure). Many of the state-level bills pose fundamental challenges to Roe v. Wade, paving the way for Supreme Court challenges down the line.  What we need is an outpouring of resistance to this assault on the humanity of women!

The refusal of Senate Republicans, nearly all of whom identify as "pro-life," to support the 9/11 First Responders bill gives the question of what it means to be "pro-life" new urgency.

Some of us think that a civil public dialogue on abortion based on values, facts and outcomes would result in better public policy and less tea party rage.