Tea at Trianon: Victory for Conscience Rights

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, May 5, 2019

Victory for Conscience Rights

From the Susan B. Anthony List:

Today the national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) praised the Trump administration for finalizing new regulations to strengthen enforcement of federal laws protecting the conscience rights of health care personnel and other entities who do not want to participate in abortion. The regulations clarify what recourse is available to victims of discrimination under the law and what penalties the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Civil Rights may enforce for violations.

“Today President Trump and HHS Secretary Azar delivered an important victory for conscience rights, fulfilling a key promise to pro-life voters,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “Last year the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division of the Office of Civil Rights was established at HHS to investigate and address conscience violations – an essential step to protect pro-life doctors and nurses like Cathy DeCarlo, who was forced to assist in a late-term abortion or lose her job. These new regulations go even further to put teeth back in the law after years of nonenforcement by the Obama administration. Abortion is not health care and no health care professional should ever be forced to participate in the destruction of human life." (Read more.)