Life Links 3/3/09

In Kathleen Sebelius nomination news, Dan Gilgoff has an excerpt of the transcript from an address Gov. Sebelius gave to Kansans for Faithful Citizenship conference addressing her position on abortion.

Americans United for Life blog makes the case that Sebelius is unfit to serve as the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and George Weigel notes the problems Sebelius nomination could cause for serious prolife Catholics.

Then there is the challenge posed by those pro-Sebelius Catholics. Their strategic goal seems clear: to nail down the “pro-life/pro-Obama” position pioneered by Douglas Kmiec and others, and indeed to extend it by arguing that the “universal health care” to which the Obama administration proposes to lead us is the real and overarching pro-life position, irrespective of the administration’s reversal of the Mexico City policy, its likely assault on the conscience rights of Catholic health care professionals, and what one can reasonably assume will be its refusal to revisit the RU-486 controversy or to examine the abortion/breast-cancer link.

This attempt to spin and redefine the pro-life position, such that one can claim to be a pro-life Catholic while supporting candidates or nominees who have taken extreme pro-abortion positions, must be publicly repudiated by the appropriate Catholic authorities at Gov. Sebelius’ hearings so that, no matter what the fate of her nomination, a clear, bright, and unmistakable line is drawn.

A drug court in Pennsylvania lent a woman $275 so she could have an abortion.

District Attorney Richard Consiglio said he was so upset when he learned of the decision that he met with President Judge Jolene G. Kopriva, who oversees Adult Drug Court.

He said if Drug Court ever again funds an abortion, he will refuse to recommend individuals for participation, "effectively shutting down Drug Court."

....

The money typically is used to help people stabilize their lives. For example, the court paid $75 for lead testing one participant with a child needed before she could obtain a particular apartment.

An anonymous donor repaid the money used for the abortion to Drug Court.

Canadian pro-choice activist Nick Van der Graaf encourages the Canadian Federation of Students to stop supporting Canadian students which don't share resources with prolife student groups. I'm glad Van der Graaf is speaking up for the free speech rights of prolife students and some of his arguments even sound similar to prolife arguments I've heard.

Here’s the thing about rights: it’s not as though they’re personal. They’re not things we can hold close to our chests to protect. We all share our fundamental rights, equally.

Does that include the right to life?

And that brings me to my second point. The last thing you want to do is endanger the rights to free speech that pro-choicers have and exercise. If our opponents’ rights can be infringed upon, so can ours.

Replace free speech with right to life and pro-choicers with unborn human beings and Van der Graaf's argument is basically a prolife argument.