A roundup of news and commentary from around the interwebs.
***
Over at National Review, Kathryn Lopez posted my article on the aborted children of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda.
***
If you’re interested in getting a sense of what “de-transitioners”—those who attempt to change genders before transitioning back—watch this video, by a girl who attempted to transition to male. Her story, unfortunately, is an increasingly common one.
***
According to C-FAM, Joe Biden has asked Congress to circumvent restrictions on funding abortions overseas with federal tax dollars:
Despite leaving in place language from established federal restrictions on abortion funding abroad, mainly from the Helms and Siljander amendments, the proposal states that funds for women’s empowerment and gender equality “may be made available notwithstanding any other provision of law.”
The addition of “notwithstanding” allows for the waiver of any provision of Federal law for activities to promote gender equality overseas. This sweeping “notwithstanding” authority for funding “to promote gender equality” could bypass the Helms Amendment and Siljander amendments, to potentially allow taxpayer funding for abortion or abortion lobbying overseas.
A federal appeals court has refused to reinstate North Carolina’s twenty-week abortion ban. As always, all roads lead to Roe.
***
U.S. bishops continue the discussion on whether or not President Joe Biden, who is the sort of Catholic who goes to church but believes that killing babies in the womb is a human right, should be allowed to receive Communion. As a non-Catholic, I don’t have a theological dog in this fight, but it seems pretty obvious that Biden should be publicly rebuked for his relentless attacks on everything the Catholic Church purports to believe in.
***
Christianity Today has a fascinating story on Project Pearl, a massive smuggling operation bringing Bibles into Communist China:
Forty years ago, late in the evening of 18 June 1981, a barge called Gabriella emerged from the darkness with a crew of 20 and its cargo of a million Bibles. Waiting on the shore were Chinese Christians ready to receive the Bibles and distribute them to fellow believers throughout the country.
Jonathan Kay, one of those rare liberals who refuses to swallow the gender Kool Aid, notes that the Toronto Public School Board is peddling unmitigated nonsense to push the trans agenda. Unbelievable, really, to consider how fast the trans movement colonized the education system.
***
From Life Institute on the spectre of assisted suicide in the United Kingdom:
Disability rights activist and Silent Witness star, Liz Carr, has spoken out of her opposition to legalising assisted suicide in the UK, after The Sunday Times expressed their support for making assisted suicide legal.
One thought on “Joe Biden wants to use American tax dollars to fund overseas abortions (and other stories)”
Navi says:
The USCCB debate is an interesting one. On the one hand, the late Cardinal O’Connor openly considered denying communion to Governor Mario Cuomo and likeminded politicians but ultimately didn’t go through with it. Many Catholic clergy are indeed squishy on abortion, including members of the hierarchy (going up to arguably, the current Bishop of Rome). But no serious person would say such a thing about Cardinal O’Connor, the de facto face of the Catholic Church in the US through the Reagan-Bush-Clinton era, founder of Sisters of Life community and namesake of the March for Life’s annual student conference. That alone should at least give serious thought to proponents of the idea.
On the other hand, a president that professes to be a devout Catholic while doing everything he can to expand abortion on demand (though he never actually says the word “abortion” for some reason) is much more significant than anything O’Connor had to deal with. By virtue-signalling about how devout of a Catholic he is, President Biden sends the message that one need not actually follow the church teachings on abortion to be a “very Catholic president” (as reported by sympathetic media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times, the latter of which went as far as equating Biden’s positions to the pope’s). This message is sent down to politicians at other levels and laypeople. Defending the inherent human right to life for the youngest and most vulnerable human beings is just one of those weird idiosyncratic doctrines that Catholics can’t and shouldn’t impose on other people, rather than being a core mission that the Church has stood up for pretty much since day one (when the preferred method of killing was “exposure”, often because the baby was a girl). Denial of communion would clearly indicate that someone who constantly, publicly and unapologetically undermines pro-life efforts is not in fact in a state of grace (though could become capable of receiving it if he goes to confession and publicly renounces his support of abortion). Perhaps making this clear overrides whatever pragmatic concerns Cardinal O’Connor had that made him go the other way. It will be a very interesting one to watch, in any case.
The USCCB debate is an interesting one. On the one hand, the late Cardinal O’Connor openly considered denying communion to Governor Mario Cuomo and likeminded politicians but ultimately didn’t go through with it. Many Catholic clergy are indeed squishy on abortion, including members of the hierarchy (going up to arguably, the current Bishop of Rome). But no serious person would say such a thing about Cardinal O’Connor, the de facto face of the Catholic Church in the US through the Reagan-Bush-Clinton era, founder of Sisters of Life community and namesake of the March for Life’s annual student conference. That alone should at least give serious thought to proponents of the idea.
On the other hand, a president that professes to be a devout Catholic while doing everything he can to expand abortion on demand (though he never actually says the word “abortion” for some reason) is much more significant than anything O’Connor had to deal with. By virtue-signalling about how devout of a Catholic he is, President Biden sends the message that one need not actually follow the church teachings on abortion to be a “very Catholic president” (as reported by sympathetic media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times, the latter of which went as far as equating Biden’s positions to the pope’s). This message is sent down to politicians at other levels and laypeople. Defending the inherent human right to life for the youngest and most vulnerable human beings is just one of those weird idiosyncratic doctrines that Catholics can’t and shouldn’t impose on other people, rather than being a core mission that the Church has stood up for pretty much since day one (when the preferred method of killing was “exposure”, often because the baby was a girl). Denial of communion would clearly indicate that someone who constantly, publicly and unapologetically undermines pro-life efforts is not in fact in a state of grace (though could become capable of receiving it if he goes to confession and publicly renounces his support of abortion). Perhaps making this clear overrides whatever pragmatic concerns Cardinal O’Connor had that made him go the other way. It will be a very interesting one to watch, in any case.