archives

She's the one that may have inspired Dorothy Day. She could be the patron saint of workers rights. She spoke up for workers and children in more cities and at more rallies than any other living or dead American. Few bishops know her name. Presidents called her dangerous. Because she was a woman who spoke out like a man she was marginalised. I know of no statue or memorial erected in her name,in Memphis,Chicago,Colorado,NewYork or Cork Ireland-these are all places that should remember her.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

News Analysis
Debates over when life begins are by now wearily familiar, if no closer to resolution – witness Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama’s recent comment that pegging a precise moment is “above my pay grade.” Yet a Sept. 2 article in L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, suggests that an equally agonizing debate is brewing at the other end of the biological continuum – not over when life begins, but when it ends.