Fighting the Abortion Status Quo With “Heartbeat” Bills
Part 3 in an Ongoing Series
By Alec Ott
This past week, Amanda Prestigiacomo of The Daily Wire reported on the signing of the “fetal heartbeat” bill into law by the Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine. As a wonderful next move for the pro-life movement, the new law is intended to protect unborn babies with beating hearts from being aborted. Unborn babies’ heart beats are detectable after approximately six weeks of gestation.
As Prestigiacomo reported, a handful of states have passed such bills, including Mississippi and Georgia. And just to the south of Ohio, the Kentucky state legislature passed SB 9, and Governor Bevin signed into law the Commonwealth’s own “fetal heartbeat” bill. As summed up by a report from the Catholic Conference of Kentucky, the legislature passed several pro-life-related bills before wrapping up their session. One bill anticipates the overturning of Roe v. Wade to provide significant legal protection to the unborn. Another prohibits abortion on the basis of sex, race, or physical disability.
PreTeena: April 8 – April 14, 2019
Sunday Comics!
By Allison Barrows
You won’t want to miss these hilarious cartoons depicting the ups and downs of adolescence. Now each week’s strips will debut on Sundays as the lead strip of Liberty Island’s Sunday Comics feature. If you draw a comic and would like to have your work featured on Sundays, please contact us: [email protected]
Check out Allison Barrows’ new PreTeena blog here.
10 New Shots of Maura the Siberian Husky
By David M. Swindle
*Submit your photographs of nature and the outdoor life to [email protected] to participate in this weekly feature exploring the natural world.*
Gene Roddenberry’s Failed Post-Apocalyptic Series
By Tamara Wilhite
If you say “Gene Roddenberry”, the vast majority will immediately think “Star Trek”. A smaller fraction will remember “Andromeda”, not quite a failure given that it lasted several seasons though it failed to have a lasting cultural legacy. Yet both of these projects continue a number of trends seen in Gene Roddenberry’s repeated, failed post-apocalyptic series. Yes, there is more than one.
What Was It like to Be Alive in Colonial America in 1775, on the Eve of the Revolutionary War?
Part 1: An Introduction to a New Series
By Scott
In 1775, people traveled only as fast as they could walk, ride a horse, or sail a boat. A sixty-mile drive today that would take an hour would take two to four days in 1775. Travel by sailing ship from Charleston to Boston might take a month, while travel from Charleston to Britain might take two months or more. And news and the mail moved only as fast as that slow travel allowed.
Stubborn Characters When Writing… and Knitting
By Andrea Widburg
Although few would guess it, I am in fact a very methodical writer. I always start with an outline, whether it’s a short one that I can hold in my head or a longer one that I have to write out. Over my years as a lawyer, I’ve written thousands of outlines as a predicate to legal briefs and memos. On occasion, I’ll discover that an argument I set up in outline form doesn’t work in prose, but I can usually make it right just by reorganizing my ideas to improve the flow.
Writing a novel is proving to be very different. I came up with a story based upon my family’s experiences in Europe over the course of the latter part of the 19th century and the first two-thirds of the 20th century — and I put it in outline form. I then built up details about each character and put that information into the outline. Lastly, I did the historical research and into the outline went the history too.
Shouldn’t We Be Teaching the Constitution in Elementary School?
By David Churchill Barrow
How many adults, let alone children, know that while state power is plenary (a state can do anything not prohibited by the U.S. Constitution or its own) federal power is limited; the federal government can only do that which is expressly provided for in the Constitution? How many adults, let alone children, know that the founding fathers’ greatest fear was not that which is prohibited by the Bill of Rights (which were amendments; i.e. afterthoughts) but the combination of powers that ought to be separated?
Donald Sutherland: Grit Personified
Deconstructing Canadian Culture, Part 23: Toughness Tempered with Gentleness
By Josh Lieblein
“Grit” is a concept we will be returning to when we discuss the place of sport in Canadian culture, but for now it serves as a way to distinguish between ethereals like Christopher Plummer and Mary Pickford and Donald Sutherland, the legitimately cool, relatable rogue.
“Grit” is also not uniquely Canadian. Harrison Ford exudes grit. Nick Nolte has it in spades. Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston… I could go on. But Sutherland is no hardened cowboy, no scruffy nerf-herder. He may have been one of the Dirty Dozen, but his role in that infamous operation was to “stay out in the drive” and impersonate enemy soldiers. In M*A*S*H* (the film) he was Hawkeye Pierce, a well-known lover but no fighter. When he ends up body snatched in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, pointing and shrieking in that memorable scene near the end, the opposite him reacts with sorrow as well as fear.
An Unplanned Conversion of the Heart
By Alec Ott
Roughly 50% of this country identify as being pro-choice, meaning that members of this group believe that abortion should be legal at least in the early stages of a pregnancy. I have often wondered how many of this group would remain pro-choice if they really knew what was involved with abortion. Rather than agreeing with a lofty concept of letting a woman have a “right to choose,” would they maintain the courage of their convictions if they actually spent time in an abortion clinic to witness what happens there?
For I hope obvious reasons, I myself have not gone to an abortion clinic for this purpose, but I have read the testimonies of women who have gotten abortions and people who have worked at such facilities. And just recently I had a great opportunity to witness the story of a former abortion industry worker.
PreTeena: April 1 – April 7, 2019
Sunday Comics!
By Allison Barrows
You won’t want to miss these hilarious cartoons depicting the ups and downs of adolescence. Now each week’s strips will debut on Sundays as the lead strip of Liberty Island’s Sunday Comics feature. If you draw a comic and would like to have your work featured on Sundays, please contact us: [email protected]
Check out Allison Barrows’ new PreTeena blog here.
