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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

June 1999

--"A New Breed of Seminarians: An Interview with Bishop Allen Vigneron, Crisis, May, 1999

PRO-LIFE ACTIVIST HELEN ALVARE has traveled to all 50 states as a speaker and fundraiser. She finds that she often has to try to energize pro-lifers discouraged at the plight of their cause -- except in Michigan....

Michigan is a national model. After holding steady throughout most of the 1980s, the abortion rate there has taken a nosedive, falling by more than 40 percent sice 1987, compared with a national decline of roughly 12 percent....

In a 1995 survey of legislators and lobbyists in Lansing, Right to Life of Michigan was rated the state's second-most-influential organization behind the Chamber of Commerce. "Some people would argue that they're even more powerful than the Chamber," says Betsy DeVos, the Republican state chairman....

Yet the group's national reputation has more to do with an ongoing media campaign than with politics. "They own the rights to the best pro-life literature out there, " says Mary Spaulding Balch of National Right to Life. At a nominal cost, Right to Life of Mihaigan sells posters, billboards, bumper stickers, books, and other items to an international client list of 15,000. It also has a strong presence on television, regularly placing ads meant to improve the image of pro-lifers, rebut assisted-suicide advocates, and condemn abortion-clinic violence. The production values of the ads are outstanding -- they are slick, Madison Avenue-quality work, not the blurry, muffled cable-access ads typical of special-interest groups.

--"Baby Steps," National Review, May 17, 1999

I RECENTLY SPOKE AT THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE'S CAREER DAY, addressing students on becoming a writer. This encounter proved so inspiring, so motivating, and so illuminating that some deeply held viewpoints were changed forever....

A simple incident changed my mind. Sitting in the cafeteria with TAC professor Andrew Seeley, I noticed a large textbook, The Works of Aristotle, near his elbow. "Doing a little light reading?" I asked.

"No," he said, "it probably belongs to a student who'll come back and get it later."

I glanced around. Books lay unattended on several tables. Against the wall was a large wooden frame with dozens of square, open cubbyholes. Most were filled with books, jackets, calculators, and other school items.

It suddenly dawned on me -- these kids weren't worried about other students stealing their things.

--James Bemis, "Dispelling Stereotypes... My Meeting With Students at Thomas Aquinas College," Wanderer, April 22, 1999

....[D]O WEALTHY CATHOLICS, AS THEY DIE OR SET UP FOUNDATIONS, fund organizations that promote and teach the moral teachings of the Catholic Church? Rarely. For the most part, wealthy Catholics leave their charitable cause money to places like universities and similar Catholic-in-name-only institutions that are truly the greatest opponents of Catholic teaching regarding personal morality and the great friends of Planned Parenthood.

--John F. Kippley, "Pro-life Forces Need to Out-Pray the Forces of Evil, CCL Family Foundations, March-April 1999

ACCORDING TO SULVIA NASAR IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, Princeton University's hiring of Peter Singer, advocate of animal rights and infanticide, for a chair in bioethics has created an academic stir not seen in this half of the American Century.

Sorry, Ms. Nasar, but you're wrong. Alas, Mr. Singer's appointment has been anything but controversial. It has been met with none of the mainstream outrage that surely would greet the appointment of, say, a right-to-lifer at Princeton's Center for Human Values. Few of Ms. Nasar's readers knew that Princeton had, in fact, hired a eugenicist, a man who believes that dogs have a greater claim to life than an infant with hemophilia. Indeed, this grotesque business has passed without notice in the major media, although The Times' dispassionate front-page feature on Mr. Singer (oh, sure, he thinks it's O.K. to kill disabled infants -- but he gives so much money to charity!) on April 10 may help stir things up a bit.

--Terry Golway, "Times Finally Notices Princeton's Eugenicist," New York Observer, April 26, 1999

....THE NUMBER OF ABORTIONS PERFORMED IN THE U.S. REMAINED RELATIVELY STABLE from 1996 to 1997 at about 1.36 million. Yet the number of abortions performed at Planned Parenthood clinics rose for the third straight year, to an all-time high of 165,174. This figure represents one out of every eight abortions performed in the U.S.

Planned Parenthood referred an additional 47,550 women to other facilities for abortions, making it complicit in the deaths of over 200,000 unborn children in 1997.

--Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D., "New Rhetoric, Same Old Sad Story at Nation's Top Abortion Chain," National Right to Life News, April 8, 1999

COME ELECTION TIME, THERE ARE USUALLY VOTER-INFORMATION COLUMNS in various Catholic diocesan newspapers, usually based on a statement issued every four years by the U.S. Catholic Conference (U.S.C.C.) in the name of the U.S. bishops. The columns usually come fairly late in the game, just before election day, and they contain some variant of the "seamless garment" argument, also deployed by the U.S.C.C. The columns usually begin by announcing a firm, orthodox Catholic opposition to abortion, and then go on to list, say, fifteen other issues that should be of concern to Catholic voters. The columns usually end with the suggestion that one should not be a single-issue voter but should instead take all the issues listed into account, which is what the U.S.C.C. says.

The subtle verdict of the presumably nonpartisan election-eve columns is that, given the way politicians usually line up on the issues, the pro-life cause loses fifteen to one.

"The Bishops' New Statement on Abortion," New Oxford Review, May 1999

HOW CAN WE EFFECTIVELY STAND UP FOR THE PRO-LIFE CAUSE in such circumstances?

(Father Matthew Habinger:) When the bishops are clear and convinced, the priests will follow, and the religious will follow, and the people will listen. Clarity of thought and courageous witness at the top is what is required. When there is confusion at the top, there is bound to be confusion at the bottom.

"How To Export Pro-Life Activism," The Catholic World Report, May 1999