Churches for
Abortion
RCRC, formerly known as the Religious
Coalition for Abortion Rights, was founded in 1973 with funding
from the Playboy Foundation (and later from the Ford Foundation),
to organize religious supporters of legalized abortion. RCRC
is absolutist in its rejection of any restriction on abortion,
defending the legality of partial-birth abortion, and opposing
parental-notification laws, as well as other sensible restrictions…
In all their unctuous demonstration-marching
and statement-making, the pro-abortion-rights church community
has not considered the effect of their advocacy on their own
demographic health.
Conservatives have often chided
the mainline Protestant denominations for their dramatic membership
losses, faulting the controversial liberal political advocacy
of their churches' officials. No doubt there is truth in this.
Most mainline Protestants are still conservative leaning, despite
the chronic leftism of their church hierarchies. Many react
in frustration by leaving.
But the demographic implosion may
also have other, deeper contributing factors. One out of every
six Americans belonged to a mainline denomination 40 years ago.
Today it is one out of every 15. Writing for The American
Journal of Sociology several years ago, Catholic priest
(and romance potboiler author) Andrew Greeley, with two other
sociologists, asserted that mainline Protestant decline is actually
created by decades of declining birthrates in comparison to
those for conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics.
Though Greeley et al. did not address
it directly, mainline Protestant hierarchs long championed legalized
abortion before Roe v. Wade, culminating in their
founding of RCRC in 1973. Undoubtedly this had some impact on
abortion rates among their own flocks. The lower birth rate
among mainline Protestants can probably be explained, at least
partly, by some level of increased moral ease with and resort
to abortion (the "Roe Effect").
So perhaps unrestricted abortion
is fueling the decline of the very same churches who have most
championed it. The irony is a sad one.
Mark Tooley
National Review
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/tooley200602100924.asp
--
The Gatekeepers
Who decides who can teach at
religious schools?
Tabloid readers might have noticed
the case of Michelle McCusker, fired in November from her job
teaching at a Catholic school in Queens, N.Y., for becoming
pregnant out of wedlock. She has filed a complaint with the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and her attorneys at
the New York Civil Liberties Union say that, regardless of the
commission's findings, Ms. McCusker plans to sue the school.
There is no scarlet letter involved, but the whole business
has created a rare modern moment: a scandalous pregnancy.
Further along in such a legal proceeding
is Michele Curay-Cramer, fired from her job teaching at a Catholic
school in Wilmington, Del. She had signed a petition supporting
abortion rights and volunteered at a Planned Parenthood facility.
Ms. Curay-Cramer's case was just heard by the Third U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals.
There
are a number of differences in the cases of the two Michelles,
but they both illustrate some legal confusion in the matter
of "religious liberty." The words usually bring to
mind individuals who wish to do something as an expression of
their faith — pray in school, wear a beard at work — and find
themselves prevented from doing so by an institution's policies.
But the reverse is becoming more common: institutions claiming
that their own religious liberties are being violated by individuals
who insist on wandering outside religiously guided rules and
requirements.
Frank DeRosa, a spokesman for the
diocese that oversees Ms. McCusker's school in Queens, explains
the reasoning this way: "The parish reluctantly dismissed
Ms. McCusker because, as a nonmarried woman who was expecting
a child, she could not adequately convey the faith to the children
in her charge." As a religious institution, the school
is legally allowed to discriminate in its employment practices
on the basis of religion.
But the NYCLU charges that the
school engaged in gender discrimination, not the religious kind.
"Our view," says executive director Donna Lieberman,
"is that the school only applies its religious doctrine
regarding nonmarital sex to women." The McCusker case "is
not about whether a school can impose its religious beliefs
on its teachers." It's about whether a religious school
is applying its doctrine "even-handedly." Sensibly,
Ms. Lieberman notes that a woman can't sue for being denied
a position as a priest.
But Anthony Picarello, a lawyer
at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, believes it is not
the business of courts to decide how and when its principles
may be applied to employees.
Naomi Schaefer Riley
Opinion Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007948
--
The Impact of Feminism
Feminism arose on the left, but
it succeeded in large part because its primary goals were so
congruent with the broad sweep of capitalism: eroding barriers
to market production. Today, thanks to feminism, anything a
woman wants to do that she can do on her own — or with the help
of the market — she is now more free to do. But anything that
requires social support to accomplish — such as getting stably
married and having children — has become immeasurably harder.
The problem that feminism has never
yet named is that women want to have children, and children
compete with our ability to throw ourselves wholeheartedly into
market production. Our children, by turning us into mothers,
make us vulnerable, economically and emotionally.
Orthodox feminism's most persistent
answer to this problem has been to call for a network of daycare
centers. Well, we have them now. Certainly affluent, educated
women have no problem with access to child care,
and yet the problem of motherhood remains. The problem is that
love, care, connection and intimacy with our children compete
for our time and energy with ambition, power, glory and money,
in ways that are different for mothers than for fathers.
Orthodox feminism's secondary solution,
to make men more involved in children's lives, has been stymied
by its simultaneous commitment to divorce, unwed parenting,
and female sexual "autonomy" as signs of social progress.
If men aren't in the home, they can hardly do any of the housework,
can they?
Until feminism can come to grips
with sexual reality — with the ways in which men and women differ
— it will remain flummoxed and silent about some of the most
important problems women now face.
We come into this world not only
as human beings, but as boys and girls who long for and need
a culture that affirms the value of both male and female. The
sex roles of the 1950s were unsatisfying to too many women,
and so in need of reform. But to jettison the idea of sex itself,
to make androgyny the goal, was feminism's fatal mistake.
We are still waiting for the next
generation's Betty Friedan to lead us anew.
Maggie Gallagher
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/column/maggiegallagher/
2006/02/08/185802.html
