KLo and Robert George Save Manhattan!

KLo interviews Robert P. George on how the Manhattan Declaration could save Manhattan and the world from itself. An exerpt:

LOPEZ: How much did the health-care debate play into the timing?

GEORGE: The health-care debate obviously implicates questions of the sanctity of human life and the freedom of religion and conscience. The Declaration’s signatories strongly oppose paying for abortions with taxpayer dollars and favor strong conscience protections to ensure that pro-life physicians and other health-care workers are not required to participate in, or refer for, abortions, and pro-life pharmacists are not compelled to dispense abortifacient drugs.


LOPEZ: Why just Christians?

GEORGE: For too long, the historic traditions of Catholicism, Evangelical Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy have failed to speak formally with a united voice, despite their deep agreement on fundamental questions of morality, justice, and the common good. The Manhattan Declaration provided leaders of these traditions with an opportunity to rectify that. It is gratifying that they were willing — indeed eager — to seize that opportunity. Of course, as Cardinal Justin Rigali observed at the press conference at which the Declaration was released, the foundational principles it defends “are not the unique preserve of any particular Christian community or of the Christian tradition as a whole. . . . They are principles that can be known and honored by men and women of goodwill even apart from divine revelation. They are principles of right reason and natural law.” So the signatories are happy to stand alongside our LDS brothers and sisters who have worked so heroically in the cause of defending marriage, our Jewish brothers and sisters, members of other faiths, and people of no particular faith (even pro-life atheists such as the great Nat Hentoff), who affirm our principles and wish to join us in proclaiming and defending them.