Hi, I’m Peter Blair and if you’re receiving this email it’s because you’ve signed up for The Pelican, a bimonthly pro-life newsletter. If you like what you read, you can subscribe or share just below; if you don’t like what you read, well, there’s a button for that too at the bottom of this email.
Immediately after sending this edition, I saw the news about June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo. I’ll be discussing that in the next edition, but for now you can see previous comments I made on the case here.
In this edition:
Opening Notes
State Updates
Pew Data
In Brief
Off-Topic
I last sent this newsletter on May 9th. Since then, a documentary revealed Norma McCorvey to be, at the least, a more complicated figure than many knew, George Floyd was killed with all that has followed, the U.S. failures around COVID-19 have dragged on, and most recently a woman who has occupied a relatively prominent position in the pro-life movement released a video saying that police who would racially profile her biracial son (once he’s grown up) would be “smart” for doing so.
To list all these things together is not to imply that they are all of equal importance or gravity, nor is the list comprehensive. But a lot has happened and a lot could be said. I’ve engaged with some of these realities on Twitter; for now, in this space, I’ll just say the following.
This newsletter is not specifically about Catholicism, but, if you’ll permit me to draw on that for a second—Pope Francis has recently said that “we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life” and in that spirit I would like to link “Brothers and Sisters to Us,” a 1979 pastoral letter on racism from the U.S. Catholic Bishops. “Racism is an evil which endures in our society and in our Church,” the letter begins. Later, in one of many quotes I could extract, it continues: “Let the Church proclaim to all that the sin of racism defiles the image of God and degrades the sacred dignity of humankind which has been revealed by the mystery of the Incarnation. Let all know that it is a terrible sin that mocks the cross of Christ and ridicules the Incarnation. For the brother and sister of our Brother Jesus Christ are brother and sister to us.” Lord, deliver us.
In the midst of everything, efforts are continuing on the state level to restrict abortion. In Tennessee, a fetal heartbeat bill—HB 2263—has passed in the legislature and the governor reportedly has agreed to sign it. In Mississippi, a bill has cleared the legislature that “would ban abortion based on the race, sex or genetic anomalies of a fetus.” In Iowa, “lawmakers have approved establishing a 24-hour waiting period for abortions.” And in Colorado, Initiative 120, known as Due Date Too Late by its supporters, has received enough signatures to be put on the ballot in November. This ballot measure “would prohibit an abortion after 22 weeks gestational age of the fetus.” Babies born at 22 weeks are capable of surviving outside the womb; Colorado is currently “one of seven states that don't put a gestational limit on when a woman can get an abortion.”
These laws represent different legal/political strategies with different histories, and some of them are more plausible then others. The Colorado ballot measure seems especially worth watching. The state Democratic Party released a statement opposing Initiative 120, but according to the Coalition for Women and Children—who organized the initiative—37% “of those who signed the [original] petition [were] Democrats or Independents,” while of the 48,329 signatures collected in their last push to meet the 124,632 qualifying signature limit “26% were by unaffiliated voters and 6.5% were from registered Democrats.”
These numbers can be added to some recently released Pew data about abortion and the extent to which respondents agree with their political party on the issue:
Overall, roughly one-third of Americans who identify as Republican or as Republican-leaning independents do not agree with their party on abortion (35%), including 12% who say they agree with the Democratic Party on abortion and 23% who say they do not agree with either party. Among Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents, three-in-ten do not agree with their party on abortion, including 7% who say they agree with the GOP and 22% who say they don’t agree with either party […]
In a short piece about Initiative 120, published before the measure had received enough signatures to move forward, Michael New noted that “during the rest of the 1980s and 1990s, pro-lifers made relatively little use of direct democracy to attain their policy goals. The cost of collecting the necessary signatures and running effective statewide campaigns was often prohibitive. However, in recent years, pro-lifers have enjoyed some success in conservative states using this tactic…”
The observation that all these years after Roe neither party fully captures American attitudes towards abortion is a commonplace. The possibility that, therefore, having a conversation with—and making your case to—another person not totally sold on his or her party’s view might actually go somewhere is perhaps less acknowledged. Perhaps processes like ballot measures, which require such conversations to get off the ground in the course of collecting signatures and the like, can in that respect do some good. Though, of course, all of that is fraught under COVID.
More from this Pew data:
“Among Democrats, 56% of those with a high school diploma or less education agree with their party on abortion, compared with 84% of college graduates who say this. In addition, roughly six-in-ten black (58%) and Hispanic (59%) Democrats support the party on abortion, compared with eight-in-ten white Democrats.” This too is common knowledge, but a reminder is always welcome.
Michael New draws attention to one polling result tied to age that isn’t, perhaps, what you’d expect. For Democrats 65 and older, 76% of respondents agree with their party on abortion, 4% agree with Republicans, and 19% don’t agree with either party. For Democrats 18-29 years old, those numbers are 68%, 8%, and 22% respectively. However (which New doesn’t note), for Republicans 65 and older, 74% agree with their party, 6% agree with the Democrats, and 19% don’t agree with either party. For Republicans aged 18-29, those numbers are 55%, 15%, and 30% respectively. According to this data anyway, 18-29 year olds on both sides of the aisle are more likely to disagree with their own party and agree with the other party than those 65+, though the swings are bigger for Republicans. Any encouragement pro-lifers might take from these Democratic numbers should be balanced with reflection on the causes of the Republican numbers.
In brief:
From the NYT, a piece on telemedicine and medical abortion, h/t Leah Libresco Sargeant. Leah highlights one aspect of the piece. Another aspect: Two women profiled in the piece mention opting for medical abortion via telemedicine rather than going to a clinic because of the possible presence of pro-lifers outside clinics. Though consultations for medical abortions through telemedicine are currently constrained by F.D.A. regulations, if those regulations are eased or a more expansive workaround is found, pro-life sidewalk counseling and the like could become increasingly irrelevant.
From the NY, a piece on nursing home evictions which also comes h/t Leah. “With nursing homes not allowing visitors, there is less outside scrutiny of their practices. Fifteen state-funded ombudsmen said in interviews that some homes appear to be taking advantage of that void to evict vulnerable residents.”
From The New Atlantis, Brendan Foht on why the U.S. government must “[commit] to the development of a fetal cell–free vaccine”—that is, one not produced from fetal tissue derived from an abortion. H/T @Go_Oat
From The Week, Matthew Walther on the new social conservatism. “Unlike the pro-life movement, whose unfulfilled ambitions have remained the same since 1973, the new culture wars require no obvious conditions for victory. What does it mean to love the flag or to dislike campus snowflakes or to suggest that #MeToo has gone too far? Any politician can serve these causes because they are not really causes but clichés”
Off-topic:
In July, I’ll be helping to lead the fourth session of this offering from the newly relaunched Christian study center at Dartmouth. We’ll be looking specifically at St. Thomas on curiositas and studiositas. I asked Twitter for some recommendations on literature on the topic, and it obliged. You can see all the replies here; I’ve compiled here some of those recommendations shared on Twitter, along with a few items I found or knew of through other means (the resources complied at the link are ones I think I could realistically have access to and look at before the session).
Currently I’m reading through The Vice of Curiosity: An Essay on Intellectual Appetite by Paul Griffiths. I’m enjoying it, with reservations. "This appetite for novelty prevents contemplative rest,” he writes, “and because of this it also prevents curiosity's gaze from seeing the vestigium aeternitatis, eternity's trace, in the things at which it looks."