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  Women can’t catch a break in the sexual code department. When I was a girl in the early 60s the protocol was that it was up to us to control romantic encounters because teenage boys could not; their urge was so strong they couldn’t be expected to curb themselves, so we had... Read More →

  On the morning of Saturday, May 17, a bomb went off outside the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California. The bomber, a twenty-five-year-old man named Guy Edward Bartkus, was killed in the blast. Four other people were injured. News... Read More →

  America’s twin epidemics of isolation and low birth rates intersect in the heartbreaking experience of new mothers in America. In my short time as a mom (we have two toddlers and another child on the way), I have spoken with women at libraries, pregnancy centers, churches,... Read More →

  Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them. (John 20:22-23) The scene of our Lord’s first resurrection appearance to the disciples, when all of them are together, from the Gospel of John, is sometimes called “St. John’s Pentecost.” John doesn’t give the... Read More →

  On a nothing August Saturday, with little more on my mind than the afternoon races at Saratoga, I picked up a copy of the New York Post and headed home to fix myself a sandwich. Lurid crime, political scandal, questionable celebrity antics—I don’t remember what was... Read More →

  The following is an imaginary conservation between myself and an abortion supporter whom I call Abe (for abortion). Me: I am always pleased to have an honest, open-minded dialogue with someone who supports abortion. I think that reason, logic, and the facts are on my side, and... Read More →

  Prolifers care about babies in the womb, of course. That’s part of what being pro-life is all about. But there’s something you notice when you spend time in the pro-life movement: Pro-life people are good at what comes after birth, too. So many of the prolifers I know are... Read More →

  Rape is the third rail in both the pro-life and pro-choice camps, but for different reasons. For prolifers life begins at conception, and since this includes embryos created during IVF procedures, certainly a child conceived by rape has the same right to life. But... Read More →

  [This article appeared in a slightly shorter form in First Things on May 3, 2010, ten years after the death of Cardinal John O’Connor. It is reprinted here, with the magazine’s permission,  to mark the 25th anniversary of the beloved Cardinal’s passing.] I first got to... Read More →

  Public opinion inside and outside the Church is split three ways about the kind of leader the Church needs at this defining moment of its history: another Francis (“a continuity candidate”), a pope in the mold of John Paul II or Benedict XVI, or a hybrid, someone between... Read More →