Social Issues

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Shameless plug for a friend

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Please pardon this shameless plug for the official grandmother of this blog, Frederica Mathewes-Green of Beliefnet, NPR and lots of other places. The Dallas Morning News just ran a very interesting Q&A with her — gentle and blunt at the same time — linked to the content of her recent lectures in an Episcopal church in Dallas. The title of the lectures was a flag-waver if I have seen one: “Sex and the City: Men, Women and the Future of Civilization.”


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That time of year?

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Everywhere I turn this week, reproduction and contraception are in the news. Maybe it’s the Spring factor (enemy of people with allergies and all haters of public displays of affection) or maybe the death and funeral of the pope have set off a few moral tremors. Who knows? Item: New York senator and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has promised to block a Senate floor vote in the new nominee for head of the Food and Drug Administration until he agrees to rule on the proposal to make “Plan B,” the “morning after” pill, available over the counter. Item: Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick threw a hissy fit over the wave of cases where pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions for the pill — either the pre-emptive variety or the morning after edition. Item: Economist Steven D. Levitt’s new book Freakonomics is getting a lot of mileage out of Levitt’s old charge that abortion reduces crime (by eliminating a lot of would-be criminals). “Ahem!” says movie critic/crack statistics guy Steve Sailer.


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St. Pete Times keeps covering Terri news

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As one would expect, the best newspaper in Florida is continuing to cover the Terri Schiavo case, even as the national and global media focus on events at the Vatican. Here is a direct link to The St. Petersburg Times website dedicated to the life and death of Terri. The news for today is that the precise location of her body and its immediate fate remain unknown. There also is a roundup of clergy views on the case, most of which are pro-life, and, from recent coverage, a profile of the other woman in Michael Schiavo’s life. As the pope story grows, this link is the one to keep for the aftermath of the Schiavo drama.


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Buckets of tears

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The St. Petersburg Times‘ detailed report on Terri Schiavo’s final hours is elegant and rigorously balanced. The article, which appears under a five-person byline, is a moving account of the grief felt by Michael Schiavo and his brother, by Terri’s siblings and parents and by the protesters who have demonstrated outside the Pinellas Park hospice.


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Memory eternal, media eternal

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Howard Kurtz is already up with a roundup of the final media issues in the Terri Schiavo case. Lots of links to people on the right as well as the left, but the emphasis once again is on the pundits. It you want another blast of the “I know what Terri Schiavo would have wanted” opinion, then by all means click here and read it. I expect more and more coverage now on the pope’s feeding tube as the press moves on to the next story. Reporter Daniel Williams at The Washington Post is already listening to the Catholic debates and, no surprise, finds that some are already not-so-gently asking if this pope is being a good Catholic at this moment. The key: Please help GetReligion spot the good and the bad in the hard news coverage in the next 48 hours or so. Let us hear from you.


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