Nicholas Frankovich

As an argument against face-mask mandates, “My body, my choice” collapses, for the same reason that it collapses as an argument to justify abortion. The body of the person asserting freedom of choice is not the only body in question. I may prefer to be free from the inconvenience... Read More →

Murder begins as a thought. Homicide, the broader category that includes murder, begins as either a thought or the failure to take thought—that is, the failure to take care. Let’s say I was texting on my phone while driving a car. If in my distraction I hit a pedestrian who then... Read More →

  “Nobody heard you,” said Richard Darman to Lesley Stahl. CBS News had just run a report critical of President Ronald Reagan. Stahl had produced it. Its thesis was that the White House diverted attention from the president’s policies by emphasizing his personality. “Mr.... Read More →

  My friend listened, neither smiling nor frowning, as I explained why abortion was an injustice. She waited until I finished. “That’s logical,” she said. “But it doesn’t make sense.” Never discount “common sense.” It’s what wins the day in politics and policymaking. Your... Read More →

  “We will have to discard simple dichotomies” when the coronavirus pandemic finally subsides, Francis Fukuyama predicts in The Atlantic. Let’s borrow that line for a moment and apply it to the pro-life cause. The dichotomy that concerns Fukuyama is between liberal... Read More →

  Your name influences your destiny. So say social scientists and casual observers. In our day, the business of looking to your name to predict your job prospects, or to explain them, or to understand in more general terms who you are or will be in the world, is a subtle and... Read More →

Some readers of the Human Life Review might not want to hear what I’m about to say. If you’re a single-issue voter, be able to defend your reasons for taking that approach. If you can’t, think harder about your political philosophy. First, though, acknowledge that a single-issue... Read More →

  Abortion remains at the center of the pro-life movement, which began as a reaction against efforts to legalize the practice in one country after another across the Western world in the middle of the last century. Those efforts largely succeeded, in the United States and... Read More →

  In one fell swoop on this date forty-six years ago, the abortion laws of the fifty states of this union were made to conform to a uniform standard: The procedure could not be prohibited before fetal viability. Over the years since then, medical and technological advances... Read More →

  At the moment, it appears that Democrats need the votes of pro-life Americans more than the pro-life movement needs the Democratic Party, but that could change, and you hope it does if you’re concerned to keep the ship of state from foundering on the rocks of one-party... Read More →