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Daily Cusack: Monday 18 January 2016

– Architectural historian Catesby Leigh looks at Ralph Adams Cram and Pittsburgh’s gothic architectural legacy.

– In October for the first time ever Polish voters handed a parliamentary majority to a single party, putting the Law and Justice (PiS) party in power after nine years in opposition. But, alarmed by the new government’s attempts to correct the stacking of state media by their political opponents, western European powers have attacked the new government and suggested it be investigated by the European Union.

The PiS delegation of the European Conservatives & Reformists Group in the European Parliament has released a measured statement asking What is really happening in Poland? Given recent events in Cologne, however, Polish fans at a volleyball match in Berlin viscerally suggested the Germans should get their own act in order before criticisng others.

– Polish academic Artur Rosman explores both the history and future of the pro-life movement in America, citing the New York Times’s Kristen Dombek’s surprise at discovering that abortion is not an exclusively conservative concern:

Among those of us who wish to protect access to abortion, it’s easy to feel that “right to life” language is a cover for an attack on feminism. It’s a feeling supported by a common story about ­history: The anti-abortion movement began after Roe v. Wade, because conservative evangelicals were threatened by women’s newfound power over their bodies. What else could explain the movement’s swift rise in the decade following the Supreme Court’s decision, if not a widespread reaction against equal rights? […]

[I]t’s hard to imagine a country where the most prominent voices against abortion were Catholic physicians, and evangelical Protestants were either in favor of lifting restrictions on abortion, or didn’t really care. A country where Democrats and the Black Panthers opposed abortion, and Ronald Reagan, like most conservatives, supported it. Where more men than women supported legalizing abortion, and Hugh Hefner was one of those men, leading one activist to call legalized abortion the “final victory of the Playboy philosophy.” Where opposition to abortion found common cause with opposition to the exploitation of women, to the abandonment of the poor, to big business and to the Vietnam War.

– And finally, Sam the Eagle has a message for all the prospective candidates in the American presidential election: