The Dobbs Dissent: The Case for Abortion Falls Apart

The landmark Dobbs case has consigned Roe and Casey to their rightful place on the ash heap of history. The Court repudiated its previous judicial fiats, which had arrogated the power to decide abortion policy for the whole country, thus restoring the American people’s democratic...
Read More →

Samuel Alito’s Prophetic Vision

In a few days, we’ll know if Samuel Alito’s leaked draft in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will survive as the majority opinion and become the “law of the land.” Whatever happens, Alito’s draft will stand as one of the greatest and most courageous declarations by a...
Read More →

Dobbs Decision Shows US Can Be Both Powerful and Humane

Friday’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is a win for the United States, democracy, the Constitution, women and, yes, the pro-life movement in all its wild diversity and unrelenting spirit—as well as for human rights movements overall. The Supreme Court’s...
Read More →

The Scent of a Soul

Creighton Abrams, easily the best U.S. commanding general in Vietnam during the war, had a simple principle for dealing with cranks and nasty critics: “Never wrestle with pigs; the pigs love it, and you get dirty.” It’s sound advice, if sometimes hard to follow, given the toxic...
Read More →

Swords to Plowshares

    As I write, America is reeling from yet another mass shooting. My social media has been overflowing with disturbing images—e.g., a dump truck emptying piles of waste labeled “thoughts and prayers”—along with loud calls for more gun control and equally loud calls to...
Read More →

The Answer to Roe is Nuremberg

  In the twentieth century, transgression outstripped the framework of crime. The maddest dreams of the maddest men of the past could never have conjured up the horrors of modern mass killing—Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, Buchenwald. It was in numb recognition of the inability of...
Read More →

What to Make of Mark Houck’s Arrest

Many years ago, when I was a federal prosecutor, I understood that one of the worst things that can happen to a person is to come to the attention of a federal prosecutor. Mark Houck, a pro-life leader and founder of the Catholic men’s ministry The King’s Men, is now...
Read More →

THE DEEP PLACES: A MEMOIR OF ILLNESS AND DISCOVERY

Ross Douthat (Convergent Books, 2021, hardcover, 224 pages, $26; Kindle $14.95) Reviewed by Brian Caulfield _________________________________________________________________ Halfway through this book, I called a friend who has had Lyme disease for more than four years. “Do you,”...
Read More →

What We Owe the Dead

One of my life’s defining moments occurred before I could read the back of a cereal box. I was four years old, too young to tie my own shoes, when I stood on tiptoes and looked into my father’s casket. He was just thirty seven. His bipolar disorder had overcome his brilliant...
Read More →

How Planned Parenthood Lets Women Down

Dr. Leana Wen had just lost her baby. It was a hard blow during a difficult season of her life. As then-president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Dr. Wen was struggling with bureaucrats who didn’t share her vision for the organization. They’d criticized her,...
Read More →