Campus Notes

Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania, has announced that columnist Ellen Goodman will deliver the “25th Furlong Lecture” next month.  Goodman is a prominent proponent for abortion rights.

Goodman makes no apology for her pro-abortion rights position in this 2004 Boston Globe article in which she writes of the importance of passing along the baton of the pro-choice movement to the next generation.  She writes in support of the pro-abortion “March for Women’s Lives”:

But Sunday is not just a march. It’s pass-the-baton day. It’s the day the next generation will be called upon to make a commitment and a connection between, as their mothers called it, the personal and the political. And of course, it’s about whether young women will or won’t be able to make decisions about sex and health and pregnancy. …

The antiabortion movement has had success not only in focusing on the fetus, but in associating unplanned pregnancy with irresponsibility. For two decades, access to women’s health has been chipped away, especially for poor women. But as long as the right to choose exists, this generation has had the luxury of ambivalence about individual choices.

But now we have peeping John Ashcroft, who wants to rifle through clinic papers. We have a national policy to teach abstinence as the only sex education. And across the globe, the administration’s “gag rule” against clinics that would even mention abortion has closed down women’s health and birth control centers in the name of democracy.

Meanwhile, there are pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraceptives and legislators who think that’s fine.

In a 2008 article for The State Journal-Register, Goodman ponders whether not knowing that women have had an abortion has “made it easier to chip away at their rights?”  She calls this a conundrum: “For all the lingering opposition to same-sex marriage, being gay is losing its stigma.  Having an abortion is being more deeply stigmatized.”

Then in a 2009 piece for the Springfield News-Sun, she wrote regarding the  then-unpassed healthcare reform bill:

As Coakley says, “I can’t believe that we are now reduced to saying the only way we can get good health care is by taking steps backward on women’s rights. It’s a false choice.”

She’s right. Now we’ll see if this false choice becomes the final choice.

Catholic Culture caught Goodman’s 2004 diatribe against denying communion to pro-abortion Catholics when she wrote for the Globe:

What next? Will we have a political reporter to cover John Forbes Kerry at each Sunday Mass from now to November? Will there be a Holy Communion beat? A wafer watch?

Catholic Culture has much more about Ellen Goodman here.

From the Saint Francis news release:

Her lecture is entitled, “A Civil Tongue: Welcome to the era of polarized politics, food fight cable shows, and ballistic blogging. How civility was shattered, who is winning, who is losing, and how do we call a truce to the mud wrestling.” As one of the country’s finest journalists she will share her experience and perspective about politics and the media. …

Dr. William B. Furlong was a beloved member of the University’s English faculty. He died in 1986. The lecture is funded by contributions from his former students, colleagues and friends.

On its website, Saint Francis University says that it is “guided by Catholic values and teachings” and touts that it is “The oldest Franciscan institution of higher learning in the United States”.