Of Births and Deaths and Bieber Fever

Hello, Coffee Talkers!

I'd like to share a couple stories of interest from today. The first is on the death of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who performed more than 75,000 abortions before becoming a pro-life advocate. He still considered himself a Jewish atheist for many years after considering himself pro-life, and later became Catholic in 1996. I'd never heard of Nathanson before today, and wanted to share first a brief blog post from a canon law blog I follow [nerd alert!], and then a bit longer article about his life from the National Catholic Register.

And I'm sure that by now, most of you have heard at least bits and pieces of the news about Justin Bieber making statements against abortion, and being misquoted in Rolling Stone.

 He's already been on the receiving end of some attacks by abortion-rights activists, and while I have not personally caught the 'Bieber Fever,' I'd still like to defend his right to make his opinion known and ask certain people to leave the poor kid alone! Come on, if being against abortion is his choice, then who has the right to take his freedom away -- both the freedom of his choice in favor of preborn human life, and his freedom of speech? (To me, these attacks against Bieber make as little sense as some very vocal gay couples fighting against the vote to defund Planned Parenthood when they themselves want children, which would often call for adoption and thus rely on unplanned parenthood. Really. I know some of these people personally -- they are friends of mine, even -- so I'm merely commenting on these situations raising some philosophical questions.)

I know I'm venturing into somewhat controversial territory here, so let's all be kind to one another.

And welcome to our new readers in France and Spain -- perhaps I will see you at World Youth Day in August!

Peace and all good,
Leslie