Weekend reading: celebrate Hyde; compare/contrast; victory in New Mexico

This was a tough week to pick only three items from the Best of the Rest pile for your weekend reading. I hope these are three that you haven’t seen yet – enjoy them, and have a happy Independence Day weekend!

Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment

This is a link to a web site, not a single blog entry, but this is can’t-miss information. September marks the 40th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment, which sharply limits Medicaid funding of abortions. (There are exceptions for abortions in case of rape, incest, and life of the mother.) Abortion providers want Hyde eliminated. A pro-life coalition led by Secular Pro-Life wants to celebrate it and expand it:

“Celebrate the lives saved by the Hyde Amendment and the lives of all Medicaid kids. Preserve the Hyde Amendment against attacks from the abortion lobby. Expand the Hyde Amendment to cover children in every state and children conceived through violence, and cut the abortion industry off from all sources of taxpayer funding (not just Medicaid).”

Watch Twitter & Instagram for the #HelloHyde hash tag.

Goldberg: No-Gun list? How about a No-Abort list? (nationalreview.com)

Commentator and occasional provocateur Jonah Goldberg has a modest proposal: contrast anti-Second-Amendment rhetoric with pro-abortion rhetoric. Read the full post. (Don’t blame me. I’m just the messenger.)

New Mexico court rules against against assisted suicide

Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition reports on the unanimous vote by the New Mexico Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision that “found” a right to assisted suicide in the state.

“The original case was based on a word game. The original case argued that ‘aid in dying’, which is also known as assisted suicide, is not prohibited by the New Mexico assisted suicide law because ‘aid in dying’ is not assisted suicide.” Read the full post. 

“…so much good!”: a thought about funding PP

Upon my arrival in Texas for the Pro-life Women’s Conference, I checked my messages and learned that it looks like the New Hampshire Executive Council will indeed grant a retroactive contract to Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. The vote will come on June 29.

I’ve shared that news with some of the women here with me. I added that the pro-PP Councilors liked to emphasize all the “good things” the organization does. One of my listeners in particular, active in Secular Pro-Life, responded thus:

“If a child care contract were up for a vote, and the organization killed only 3% of the human beings who walked in the door, would they approve THAT contract?”

Food for thought there.

Have you contacted your Councilor yet?

The movement is broad: meet secularprolife.org

In the course of writing about the life issues, I’ve communicated with a lot of people I’ve never met in person. Some of us are online pen pals, basically. I just got a little present from one of them.

bumper stickers from secularprolife.org

How’s that for a gesture of good will? I love it.

I believe in God. My correspondent doesn’t. We have in common the knowledge that a preborn human being is nothing less than … well, human.

If you’d like more information about Secular Pro-life, go to http://www.secularprolife.org. Look for their banner at the national March for Life, too.