Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard law professor and former U.S. Vatican ambassador, was honored by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) with its Proudly Pro-Life Award on Wednesday, October 6, for her “principled refusal” of the University of Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal. Notre Dame intended to bestow the medal upon Glendon at its May 17, 2009 commencement ceremony, but she declined, citing Notre Dame’s violation of the USCCB’s 2004 statement “Catholics in Political Life” by electing to honor pro-abortion President Barack Obama. Anthony J. Lauinger, NRLC vice president, said at the awards ceremony, “It took Mary Ann Glendon, a layperson, a mother, a wife, to put the whole sad spectacle into perspective. It was her principled refusal, her conspicuous absence, her silent witness to the dehumanized, discarded, dismembered, unborn children of our throwaway society that made Mary Ann Glendon the heroine of the Notre Dame commencement tragedy.” During her acceptance of the Proudly Pro-Life Award, Glendon spoke on shaping the country’s moral economy, and remarked that her three decades in the pro-life movement taught her “never to underestimate the power of the culture of death.” Source: The Catholic Review