George McKenna

SYMPOSIUM: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization PERSPECTIVES ON THE IMPENDING FATE OF ROE The Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, expected to be issued in June 2022, could mean the end of Roe v. Wade. Or maybe just the beginning of the... Read More →

“My chief hope for the future is that the common people have not parted company with their moral code.” —George Orwell While serving as Allied Commander during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower, later the 34th President of the United States, told his troops in North Africa, “You... Read More →

SYMPOSIUM: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization PERSPECTIVES ON THE IMPENDING FATE OF ROE The Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, expected to be issued in June 2022, could mean the end of Roe v. Wade. Or maybe just the beginning of the... Read More →

  Nicholas Frankovich has written a very thoughtful essay—provocative in the best sense—building a case for avoiding absolute positions on how to protect the nation against the coronavirus and on how to approach the abortion issue. It’s a fine essay and deserves a respectful... Read More →

  At a family gathering early in the last election season I was asked by a practicing Catholic who reflexively votes Democratic whether, if Donald Trump had gotten the Republican nomination, I would vote for him in the general election. When I said yes, both she and her... Read More →

We asked our participants to reflect on “Pro-life in the Time of Trump,” and offered them the following two opposing views to consider: Charles Camosy writing the day after the election in Crux, and Marjorie Dannenfelser quoted in Susan B. Anthony List’s press release the same... Read More →

Suppose this: suppose a politically savvy Rip Van Winkle in, say, 1965, perceiving that a movement to legalize abortion was gaining strength in the country, were asked, “Which of the two major political parties will eventually identify with that movement?” What would he answer? I... Read More →

  Dear Peter, I hope that you will not take it amiss if I write this in a more informal style than we’ve been using, but my feeling is that now may be a good time to engage in direct dialogue. Wasn’t it something like that which you first proposed to Anne Conlon after reading my... Read More →

A Bad Bargain: A Postcript           At about the middle of September I wrote a piece on this site critical of an article in Commonweal magazine by Peter Steinfels, a writer and former editor of the magazine... Read More →

 A Bad Bargain In his 1858 debates with Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln argued not for an immediate national abolition of slavery but for preventing its spread into the new territories. Lincoln understood that if slavery’s growth were arrested as the rest of the... Read More →