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Faith, Family and Life
75 posts, newest first (page 2 of 4).
Before the welfare state, Americans insured each other through lodgesFraternal societies gave working families sickness, burial and life benefits with no government at all, until the welfare state crowded them out. Why a church charity knows things a federal program never willPrivate charity beats government relief where it counts: it knows the person, asks something of him and outlasts any grant cycle. A fair division of labor. The case against assisted suicide that does not depend on religionLegal assisted suicide pressures the vulnerable, and that holds without faith. Autonomy at its strongest, then the enacted laws of Oregon, Canada and the Dutch. Washington v. Glucksberg and the 9-0 refusal to find a right to assisted suicideIn Glucksberg (1997) every justice rejected a constitutional right to assisted suicide, and its history test later shaped Dobbs. The facts and what followed. 'My body, my choice' is a slogan, so let's take it seriously for onceThe slogan assumes the answer to the one question in dispute: whether a second human body is involved. Its history, its best argument and its limits. Fifty years from Roe to Dobbs in twenty dated turns of the lawTwenty dated turns of the law between Roe in 1973 and Dobbs in 2022, each with a line on why it moved the ground under both movements. The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 and what the law requiresA 2002 federal law says an infant born alive at any stage is a person. What the statute says, how it passed, and why the later fight is over enforcement. California told pro-life pregnancy centers what to say, and the Court said noNIFLA v. Becerra (2018) struck California's forced notices for pregnancy centers as compelled speech. The facts, the opinions, and why it protects all sides. After Dobbs, should pro-lifers seek a national law or win state by state?Pro-life conservatives disagree about federal protection versus state action after Dobbs. Both sides get a fair hearing here, then a verdict. From Bracton to 1868, the legal history Dobbs put back on the recordDobbs rests on a historical finding about abortion at common law and in the states of 1868. The authorities, the statutes, Roe's account and the dissent. Dred Scott, Roe and the danger of a Court deciding who counts as a personTwice the Supreme Court drew a line around who counts under the Constitution, and the people undid it. The history, and the honest limits of the comparison. Size, development, location, dependency, the four tests that exclude no oneEvery difference between an unborn child and a newborn falls into four categories, and none decides a human being's worth. The case and the best reply. The famous violinist argument for abortion, and why it never fit the caseJudith Jarvis Thomson's 1971 violinist is the best bodily-autonomy argument for abortion, and it fails on its own terms. Here is the argument and the replies. Eight myths that keep good families from adopting a childCost, age, income and birth parents are the reasons families give for not adopting, and most rest on myths. Here are eight, tested against the record. Baby Moses laws, from one Texas statute in 1999 to all fifty statesSafe haven laws let a parent in crisis leave a newborn with a hospital or fire station, and they spread from Texas to every state with votes from both parties. Baby bonuses, tax credits or cheaper houses, comparing pro-family policiesSix conservative tools to help families form, rated for cost, work incentives and federalism, with both sides of the fight over cash payments. A falling birth rate is a conservative problem, not a culture-war sloganFertility has sat below replacement for years, straining entitlements and signaling that families are harder to start. Where conservatives split, and why. California's 1969 no-fault divorce law and the revolution that followedGovernor Reagan signed the law that ended fault divorce in California, and every state followed. The history, and the conservative fight over repeal or reform. Fathers are not optional, and the culture that says they are is wrongTelevision mocked fathers and welfare rules pushed them out of the house. The record shows what father absence costs, and what men and communities can do. 'The success sequence is just correlation,' answered point by pointCritics say finishing school, working and marrying before children only describes privilege. The evidence says more than that, and the objection has answers. The marriage penalty buried in welfare programs, with the math shownMeans-tested programs can make marriage cost a low-income couple thousands of dollars a year. Here is the arithmetic, program by program, and the fixes. The family came before the state, so why does the state act like a parent?The family is prior to government in time and in rights, so policy should start there, while answering the case for protecting children from bad parents. The conscience clause Madison wrote for the Bill of Rights and lostMadison's 1789 draft of the Second Amendment spared the religiously scrupulous from bearing arms; the clause was cut, and conscience was left to statute. What Obergefell said to religious believers, and what it left openObergefell v. Hodges promised religious people could keep teaching their view of marriage, and the decade since tested how far that promise reaches.
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