Notre Dame Honoring Anti-abortion Scholar Who Rejected Award

A former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican who turned down a top honor from the University of Notre Dame the year then-President Barack Obama gave the commencement address will accept another award from the school. Notre Dame says Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon will receive the Evangelium Vitae Medal in April. The school says the medal honors those who "proclaim the Gospel of human life by steadfastly affirming and defending its sanctity from its earliest stages." Glendon is an anti-abortion scholar who was the American ambassador to the Vatican under President George W. Bush. She was to receive Notre Dame's Laetare Medal at the 2009 graduation ceremony. She declined it in protest of Notre Dame's decision to honor Obama despite his support of abortion rights.