Individual Americans have enjoyed more personal freedom, individual rights, and collective liberty than most, if not all, other civilizations in history. Yet we are living in a time when freedom, rights, and liberty have been so thoroughly redefined and distorted that we struggle to communicate with each other. A faithful Catholic uses the same words … Read more
President Trump’s welcome October 6 decision to roll back the Obama Administration’s trampling of conscience rights, which required employers to pay for abortifacients, in no time led to howls in the media and among Democrats about the “threat” to “contraceptives” and “birth control.” By the next day, my email contained an appeal from the Democratic … Read more
In what way can simply signing a document be a burden on you or your freedom? Obviously, the answer to that question depends on the document that you’re asked to sign. If you’re a celebrity and a fan hands you a scrap of paper for an autograph, your burden consists of a few seconds of … Read more
Why did Republicans do so well in the 2014 elections? Among the reasons emphasized by pundits and operatives on both sides of the political aisle has been the ability of Republican candidates to counter effectively the charge that they would escalate the so-called “war on women.” A key example cited by both left and right … Read more
Hobby Lobby was never so much about the principled Constitutional issue of whether there is a right to conscientious objection (be they based on religious or scientific convictions) as much as a prop in the melodramatic political “war on women” by which some cynically hope to save at least a pro-abortion Senate majority in the … Read more
In the buildup to the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, and even more so in its aftermath, prominent news outlets have been aggressively spreading falsehoods about key aspects of the case. Beyond logical fallacies about who is imposing their will on others, many reports and commentaries also contain statements that are discredited by the scientific … Read more
An unforeseen, positive effect of the HHS mandate’s dramatic affront to religious liberty is to have brought renewed attention to the abortive effects of contraception. But there still needs to be far more discussion of their full moral import—for social policy, institutional behavior, conscience rights, voting behavior—and, ultimately, pro-life rhetoric. This essay makes two points. First, … Read more
Contraception is one of the great scourges not just of our time but of all time. In two ways it sets men and women against their creator. First, because they choose disobedience over the clear teaching of the Church. Second, it says no to the creative work of our Lord. Both of these put their … Read more
Shortly before the new year, a number of religious organizations were given protection from the HHS abortion and contraception mandate. While social conservatives and defenders of the First Amendment cheered, numerous prominent media organizations manipulated basic scientific facts to deny that the mandate—required by federal law—forces people to fund abortion-inducing drugs. Media Matters did this at least twice, … Read more
Speaking at a Planned Parenthood conference last week, President Obama celebrated the abortion provider as an icon of progress. Mocking the legislative efforts of pro-lifers within such states as North Dakota and Mississippi to curb abortion, Obama said to his chuckling audience, “When you read about some of these laws, you want to check the … Read more