Before his conversion to Catholicism, Terry backed capital punishment, which is NOT in line with the Catholic Church's stand against it. The Church is pretty consistently pro-life, from cradle to grave, and does not endorse capital punishment or even war. Witness John Paul II's unsuccessful attempt to persuade Bush not to invade Iraq. And Bush, who also signed more death-row executions than any previous Texas governor, was invited to Notre Dame with no protest of any kind, which itself is a kind of hypocrisy. Unless Terry's conversion is complete, and he decries any sort of violence, including against doctors who provide abortions, the execution of death-row inmates which he once approved, or violent demonstrations, he is a hypocrite. But then, in the "pro-life" movement, that is not unusual.

I am sure all (news) eyes will be on Obama and Notre Dame for the next 7-10 days, and we can all discuss how enlightened and reasonable President Obama is, and how stupid and lame the Catholic Church is.

This is a nice distraction from the real news of the Obama Administration - that he is just like Bush, the he is breaking his campaign promises about torture, Guantanamo, and Iraq. That he is really no different than the previous administration, from illegal wiretapping to torture to protecting a criminal corporate banking system. That is the real news. So keep focusing on this, because it means nothing. And that is exactly what they want you to do - to focus on nothing.

I trust that there is a blanket of security for the Notre Dame commencement today.There has not been the anti-choice violence recently that we have seen in the past, but I sure don't trust that crowd of terrorist loonies of the extreme right who feel that no violent act is beyond their moral right to commit.

He's the President of the United States. Security will be no more, and no less, than if he were speaking at Cleveland State.

I trust that there is a blanket of security for the Notre Dame commencement today. There has not been the anti-choice violence recently that we have seen in the past, but I sure don't trust that crowd of terrorist loonies of the extreme right who feel that no violent act is beyond their moral right to commit.

Oops, that didn't even work in Sarah Palins Republican world! Where they shoot wolves from helicopters to keep the population down! The cat just had kittens under the porch, again.

Let's breed more people to shoot in the war for the disappearing natural resources of banker bail-outs! Yeah, you know, the starvation and disease that pays for corporate/political corruption!

You sick people cringe at the site of a ketchup covered doll in a stroller, while children die! Not one of you have seen an Amercan Ghetto, where drug trade is the best way out!

Boo-hoo, my politics don't work anymore!

So why these words?

"...a healthy 50 percent of its faculty is non-Catholic."

Why is that "healthy?" Care to explain?

How many of the faculty at the American Jewish University are non-Jewish? 50%? If it were so, would you write that this is "healthy?"

There are plenty of moral arguments for abortion, starting with knowing that the live you may give some child could be in extreme poverty, or in an abusive home, or a life of some kind of hellish deformity.

There is no moral high ground in pawning off a child onto someone else to raise, if you have the means to abort it.

In some cases abortion is the ONLY moral choice.

I don't care what you call it - sweet lovey dovey gift of yaweh or bone sucking parasite, if it's not growing in YOUR body, you simply have no say or even a RIGHT to say what someone else does with THEIR body. The old biblical standard should apply here: a fetus is not human until their first independent breath. The rights of the mother trump the rights of whatever she grows inside her.

You, like many of the pro-life demonstrators as well, miss the point.

No one should object to the president of the United States addressing the class--and in the process discussing anything he wishes. A University has a right to invite anyone they wish.

But, they should not be conferring an honorary degree on him, which implies approval of his body of work which does include, whether you personally agree or not , behavior contrary to fundamental moral principles of the Catholic Church, even if, in your view, those principles are quite marginal.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/more-about-unbearable-lightness-of.html

But calling him "pro-life" is a perversion of language. This man has cheered on murder, the murder of doctors, all in support of his own personal jihad. Terry's just lucky his extremism is of the Christian variety instead of Muslim, otherwise he'd be rotting in a cell in Guantanamo right about now.

To the troll claiming that a majority of Americans are pro-life:

Actually, if you read that poll instead of quoting conservative talking points, around half of respondents didn't identify themselves as either pro-choice or pro-life. Only among people who chose one side or the other did the pro-life identification slightly edge out the pro-choice identification. There was no majority, but the plurality did not identify themselves as one or the other. Questions that ask about support for legal abortion are a better measure.

It was she, afterall, who wrote:

"To each group we explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun."

I think that Ms. Sanger is as lousy an icon for your movement as Mr. Terry is for mine.

Women are moral adults and agents; they think about abortion in complex and thoughtful ways and they should be trusted to make the decision.--Frances Kissling

True by half- give or take a half. Let's be honest here, the fudge job is insulting- there is nothing truly moral about abortion.

It's a harsh, crude, and downright brutal necessity.

Peel away the agonizing semantics and abortion is an axe job on an entity that if left to grow would, in fact, result in a human- NOT an advanced cancer of some sort.

If this WAS simply a cancer the 'moral' agents wouldn't require nearly as much complex thought to determine its future.

Abortion is the guillotine of hope.