You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Reproductive Freedom’ category.
Notre Dame’s commencement begins this afternoon at 2 o’clock, with live streaming video here. President Obama will receive an honorary doctorate and deliver the commencement address. I’ll be liveblogging the event, which anti-abortion activists have threatened to disrupt.
Obama beat John McCain 57% to 41% in a straw poll of Notre Dame students last October, and the Notre Dame Observer has said that initial feedback from their student readership was strongly supportive of the commencement invitation. A poll out on Thursday, by the way, finds that only 34% of American Catholics, and only 43% of regular Catholic churchgoers, think UND should rescind their invitation to Obama.
1:40 pm: Anti-Obama protesters have been out in force at Notre Dame for weeks now. Perennial GOP also-ran Alan Keyes was arrested on campus pushing a bloody doll in a Spongebob Squarepants stroller last Monday, and a plane flying a banner bearing an image of an aborted fetus has been buzzing the campus since late April.
1:50 pm: The live feed from commencement is up now, with video of graduates filing into the venue. The commencement is being held in the Joyce Center, the campus’s 11,000-seat basketball arena. The official list of prohibited items is a long one.
1:58 pm: Commencement is beginning two minutes early, with the procession of the faculty.
Longtime anti-choice wackjob Randall Terry says that someone leaked him a copy of the text of the honorary degree President Obama will be receiving on Sunday, and he says this is it:
The University of Notre Dame Confers the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on the 44th president of the United States, whose historic election opened a new era of hope in a country long divided by its history of slavery and racism. A community organizer who honed his advocacy for the poor, the marginalized and the worker in the streets of Chicago, he now organizes a larger community, bringing to the world stage a renewed American dedication to diplomacy and dialogue with all nations and religions committed to human rights and the global common good. Through his willingness to engage with those who disagree with him and encourage people of faith to bring their beliefs to the public debate, he is inspiring this nation to heal its divisions of religion, culture, race and politics in the audacious hope for a brighter tomorrow.
On Barack H. Obama, Washington, District of Columbia
I’m going to go out on a limb and call this a fake.
It reads like a right-winger’s image of how a left-winger would praise Obama, dwelling on exactly the aspects of Obama’s public persona — community organizer, healer of divisions, “advocacy for … the worker in the streets of Chicago” — that drive conservatives crazy.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it just doesn’t smell right to me.
Friday morning update: Fox News claims it’s legit.
Sunday morning update: Fox is still vouching for the text’s authenticity, but as far as I can tell no other news outlet has bitten. Various conservative Catholic bloggers are skeptical, but tentatively appalled — one says that it reads like Obama campaign literature, while another says that if it’s real, it’s a “Fuck you” from the university to the Catholic church’s bishops.
Sunday afternoon update: I guessed wrong. It was real. Yeah, I’d call it a bit of a fuck you to the university’s critics.
By the way, I’m liveblogging the commencement as it occurs.
Perennial presidential-campaign asterisk Alan Keyes was one of twenty-two anti-choice activists arrested on the Notre Dame campus yesterday. The group, which included Operation Rescue founder/sleazeball Randall Terry, was protesting President Obama’s upcoming commencement address.
The group was arrested for trespassing — Notre Dame policy allows only “student-led protests” on campus, and apparently this group couldn’t (or didn’t care to) find any student supporters.
But that’s not my favorite part of the story. My favorite part of the story is this: When Keyes walked onto campus, he was pushing a blood-spattered doll in a stroller…
A Spongebob Squarepants stroller.
Update: Photo from here. Note that the doll was so small and unobtrusive that the (“pro-life,” but disgusted anyway) blogger who posted it thinks that Keyes was pushing a bloody Spongebob doll in the stroller. Note also that commenter Leslie Hanks actually approves of parading around with bloody Spongebob dolls as an anti-abortion tactic.
Xavier University, the nation’s only historically black Catholic college, has invited Donna Brazile to speak at their commencement, but the Archbishop of New Orleans says he won’t be there.
Brazile, the campaign manager of Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign — and a one-time student activist with the United States Student Association — is a black Catholic, and a native of the New Orleans area. But she’s also pro-choice, and that’s not sitting well with Archbishop Alfred Hughes.
A high school student in Virginia’s Fairfax County has received a two-week suspension and a threat of expulsion … for taking her birth control pill at lunch.
Oakton High School considers bringing prescription drugs to school one of the most serious violations a student can commit — it brings a harsher punishment than use of heroin or LSD, and the same penalty as possession of a handgun on school property.
The student’s mother was aware of, and supportive of, her decision to go on the pill. Birth control pills are most effective if taken at the same time every day, and the student began taking them at lunch over the summer. Neither the student nor her mother was aware that the punishment for continuing to do so in the fall could be so severe.
The student faced a hearing before school officials on Thursday, and has yet to hear whether she will be expelled.
Thanks to Amplify Your Voice for the heads-up on this story.
August 5 update: Stephen Colbert ran a segment on the incident on Monday night’s Colbert Report.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments