ProWomanProLife and other good places to look

Regular readers (all three of you) will have noticed an added feature to this blog. You can now click on to the thoughtful blog ProWomanProLife directly from here. I don't know anyone connected with that particular life site. I don't necessarily always agree with what they say. But I think that they are raising important issues in a far more balanced way than do many other commentators on life issues. So I commend the blog to your attention.

I would have also added the Feminists for Life blog had they provided the necessary feed. Regrettably they don't, so you'll have to look them up for yourselves at http://www.feministsforlife.org/. I urge you to do so.

The site I check every day is Big Blue Wave. It is a self-styled so-con (social conservative) site, and carries all kinds of things, some of which I enjoy and some that I personally have no interest in. But its woman of affairs, Suzanne Fortin, somehow manages to track down the most amazing number of news items from around the world, providing a smörgåsbord of issues to consider. You can pick and choose for yourself which ones are of use to you. There is always something.

Certainly one of the most inspirational life bloggers is Mark Pickup, who lives just south of Edmonton, Alberta. His blog is called Human Life Matters. The title is particularly significant in Mark's case because he suffers from M.S. Here is an excerpt from his blog profile:

I am disabled (triplegic) with advanced multiple sclerosis. As my disability increases I have become interested in discovering Christian meaning in suffering. My priorities are faith, family and sanctity of human life. I will dedicate whatever energies I have left to these things. I am now convinced that if a society does not embrace the sanctity, dignity and equality of all human life (and North American society does not) then any barbarity is possible. A truly civilized society includes in its tender embrace every human life.

To say that he is a good read is to grossly understate the case. Find Mark at http://humanlifematters.blogspot.com/.

Alex Schadenberg is doing some excellent work in the rather gloomy field of euthanasia. He runs an organization out of London, ON called the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and blogs at http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/ Give him a look, if for no other reason than the poor bloke just turned 40 and needs a lift :).

Pro-Life Blogs (http://www.prolifeblogs.com/) is an independent news site that "disseminates unique news and commentary on life oriented issues and events that are ignored or under reported by traditional news sources." It originates in the U.S. but Canadian issues are not ignored. It appears to favour conservative political views.

LifeSiteNews (http://www.lifesitenews.com/) is a Canadian-based news site. It is described as the "portal of news stories about pro-life issues in Canada, the United States and the UK." This site also pulls together a large number of articles and commentary. Its choice of subjects does reflect the Catholicity of its leadership, and it indulges in what I consider a good deal of gay bashing. That doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out for items of interest, however.

For those who want to venture far outside your comfort zone (certainly far outside LifeSiteNews' comfort zone), you might want to look at http://www.plagal.org/, the site of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, and its sister site called Christian Gays (http://www.christiangays.com/). I know virtually nothing about either site other than what I picked up lately in a cursory glance at each. But if one wants a different look at familiar issues, there's no better place to start than here.

I also bring to your attention two sites devoted to the trauma that women (and often men as well) experience as a result of abortion. These are Canada Silent No More (http://www.canadasilentnomore.com/ and Silent No More Awareness (http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/).

Finally, I appreciate the integrated worldview of the Consistent Life Ethic people. They take the sanctity of life to what they consider to be its logical conclusion, resulting in the following mission statement:

We are committed to the protection of life, which is threatened in today's world by war, abortion, poverty, racism, capital punishment and euthanasia. We believe that these issues are linked under a 'consistent ethic of life'. We challenge those working on all or some of these issues to maintain a cooperative spirit of peace, reconciliation, and respect in protecting the unprotected (http://www.consistent-life.org/).

For those of you for whom this movement is new, I provide the following information from that invaluable source, Wikipedia:

An important early proponent of the Consistent Life Ethic was Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, though he did not coin the term. Bernardin and other advocates of this ethic sought to form a consistent policy that would link abortion, capital punishment, economic injustice, euthanasia, and unjust war. Bernardin sought to unify conservative Catholics (e.g., who opposed abortion) and liberal Catholics (e.g., who opposed capital punishment) in the United States. By relying on fundamental principles, Bernardin also sought to coordinate work on several different spheres of Catholic moral theology. In addition, Bernardin argued that since the 1950s the church moved against its own historical, casuistic exceptions to the protection of life. "To summarize the shift succinctly, the presumption against taking human life has been strengthened and the exceptions made ever more restrictive."

In the United States, several organizations have promoted the "consistent ethic of life" approach, including both Catholic groups (e.g., the National Conference of Catholic Bishops), and broader coalitions, such as Consistent Life, founded in 1987 as the Seamless Garment Network. The ethic and its organizational expressions are difficult to define in terms of the conventional U.S. political spectrum, since those who subscribe to the ethic are often at odds with both the right wing over capital punishment, war, and economic issues, as well as the left wing over abortion, embryo-destructive research, and euthanasia.