Recently in Ireland a body called the Irish Citizens’ Assembly took steps long feared by supporters of the right to life. The assembly is not a regular constitutional component of the Irish government. Rather it is a body called into being by the government to make suggestions as to potential constitutional amendments for the legislature … Read more
Like unsuspecting characters in an Agatha Christie novel, we are all witnesses to the commission of a murder still in progress, carried out in slow motion. It is happening so slowly, and its ongoing occurrence is so protracted, so pervasive, and so familiar that we haven’t sensed the magnitude of the violence being done or … Read more
On the Saturday following Trump’s inauguration the capital was clogged with another mass rally—the Women’s March on Washington. At first described as “spontaneous” by the media, it gradually leaked out that the whole thing had been planned—by Planned Parenthood, NARAL, CAIR, Move-On, and approximately fifty left-wing groups infused with cash from rich Uncle Soros. Reliance … Read more
After Hillary Clinton defended partial-birth abortion at a presidential debate, a poet promised that late-term abortion could unleash a mother’s “compassion.” Her sheeny New York Times essay about aborting a wiggling son whose name meant “heart” is heartbreaking. He’d need a heart transplant one day if he survived delivery; he’d face “horribly painful obstacles” and … Read more
A study published last week in the journal JAMA Psychiatry claims to show that women facing an unwanted pregnancy do not suffer any negative impact on their mental health after abortion. Carried out by the ANSIRH (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health) program at the University of California, San Francisco, the study sought to respond to … Read more
The state of Texas recently enacted a set of rules pertaining to the handling and disposing of fetal remains. The new rules require that healthcare facilities dispose of fetal remains by burial or cremation, and bans the facilities from disposing of the remains via industrial garbage disposals. The rules, expected to be passed into law … Read more
Arguments based on rights seem irresistible today. Unlike arguments based on natural law, let alone those based on revealed religion, everyone seems to understand them without further explanation. So if someone wants to say abortion is bad he says it violates the right to life, and if he wants to oppose the current deconstruction of … Read more
The age of Jenner, Obergefell, and #BlackLivesMatter puts issues of identity at the center of public life. As Catholics and citizens we need to understand what that means. Personal identity orients us in the world. As such, it has both individual and social functions. It enables us to order our lives by telling us what we … Read more
Social liberals consider traditional moral restrictions cruel in their very essence. Each of us, they believe, should be as free as possible to pursue his happiness as he sees it, consistent with the equal ability of others to do the same. To reject that position, as Catholics and other moral traditionalists do, is either intentionally … Read more
The 1960s were intended as a rebellion against the materialism, mindless conformity, soullessness, and general inhumanity and immorality of commercial and bureaucratic (“corporate and militaristic”) America. The answer, it was thought, could be found in freeing ourselves from a society gone wrong by rejection of social forms, pursuit of intense experience, and “doing your own … Read more
Standing in front of a famous 1964 photo of Father Theodore Hesburgh locking arms with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, honored Father Hesburgh at a party on Capitol Hill celebrating the retired president of the University of Notre Dame’s 96th birthday in late May. During her celebratory remarks, Pelosi … Read more
Jean Bethke Elstain, an author I greatly admire, made an astute observation when she remarked that “much that comes parading through town under the banner of ‘choice’ is actually a new set of constraints and compulsions.” “Parading” is an appropriately descriptive word since this new attitude toward choice does not come to us through a … Read more
While perusing a secular newspaper this morning, my eyes fell upon an opinion piece entitled, “Who will teach our boys to become men?” The author bemoaned the plague of gun violence among boys, but he did not suggest a way in which this type of violence could be mitigated. This is not surprising for a … Read more
In a recent article “Should Libertarians Be Conservatives” some libertarians were quite annoyed because I expressed my opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. I addressed the subject of same-sex marriage in an article on June 8. There I argued that there is no libertarian position on same-sex marriage. I address here the subject of libertarianism … Read more
This essay first appeared in the December 2000 issue of Crisis Magazine. I doubt there are many readers of this magazine who are pro-choice. Why, then, do I write an argument against abortion for its readers? Why preach to the choir? Preaching to the choir is a legitimate enterprise. Scripture calls it “edification,”or “building … Read more
I doubt there are many readers here who are pro-choice. Why, then, do I write an argument against abortion? Why preach to the choir? Preaching to the choir is a legitimate enterprise. Scripture calls it “edification,” or “building up.” It is what priests, ministers, rabbis, and mullahs try to do once every week. We … Read more
As a practical matter, the argument that a pro-choice president will end abortion is far-fetched. Never in American history has a laissez-faire chief executive ended a great moral evil. Take slavery and de jure racial discrimination. Pro-slavery presidents did not end slavery; it was brought to its conclusion by Abraham Lincoln, who in his 1860 … Read more
There is a train of thought that careens down the tracks of a shaky syllogism, and it picks up speed every four years in the United States. Like the Little Engine that Could, it chugs along and says, “I am pro-life and were I president, I would end abortion. Therefore if I vote for a … Read more