How Pro-Life Am I, Really?

  Following oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last December, the Supreme Court justices cast their votes, the decision was logged, and the opinion of the Court—along with any concurrences and dissents—is now being written. Experts say it will be...
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Bringing 40 Days for Life to Japan: The Cultural Coloring of Pro-Life Work in East Asia

A week or so ago I sat in on a Zoom meeting hosted by the London office of 40 Days for Life.  Prolifers will recognize the name: From its inception back in 2004 as a Lenten movement to shut down a Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas, Forty Days for Life has grown into an...
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You Don’t Say!

Abortion serves men, because it allows them sex without responsibility, and always has. “You take care of it.” A Democratic administration is intent on enshrining it. Who says they don’t open doors for us anymore? Which is why the hands-off-my-body placards at abortion-rights...
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Rights Talk and Abortion

I was in my teens when the move to legalize abortion in New York State stirred private and public debates on the topic and precipitated my own interest in defending the unborn’s right to life. Over time assisted suicide joined the list of pro-life issues, as state legislatures...
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The Core of the Gambler

“Gambling,” said Meyer Lansky—and the old racketeer knew a thing or two about the subject—“pulls at the core of a man.” If the explosion of legal online sports betting in New York State is any indicator, millions of men are being pulled at their core; millions of women, too. The...
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“Total Anarchy”: How Is a Human Being to Live?

Some old friends were in town recently, so I joined them for lunch. Among their number was Miroslav Marinov, a Bulgarian intellectual who fled his communist homeland long ago and settled in Canada, where he still resides today. One of the most erudite people I know, Miro, as we...
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When I’m Sixty-Four

Facebook found me out. At least I think it must have been the Zuckerberg conglomerate that culled and sold my personal data so that months before I turned the age the Beatles sang about, I began seeing targeted web ads for retirement investments—401k, IRA and estate strategies,...
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Pope Francis, Pets, Babies . . . and God

Pope Francis has been widely criticized for comments he made last week about young couples choosing pets over children: We see that people do not want to have children, or just one and no more. And many, many couples do not have children because they do not want to, or they have...
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Abortion, the Hunger for Heaven and Thomas Hardy

Whenever we think of the forces arrayed against the pro-life cause—and they can sometimes seem rather formidable, especially when we take into account that they include what St. John Henry Cardinal Newman nicely referred to as the “aboriginal calamity” of original sin—we must...
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“Every Moment Is Precious”

  As we can see in the debate anticipating the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, many abortion arguments boil down to the question of when the occupant of the womb should be considered a human being. Prolifers—and biology textbooks—state the obvious...
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