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  WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN: THE CASE FOR THE BODY IN PUBLIC BIOETHICS O. Carter Snead (Harvard University Press, 2020. Hardcover, pp. 336. Also available on Kindle.) Reviewed by Maria McFadden Maffucci O. Carter Snead’s What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in... Read More →

Broken Bonds provides the accounts of sixteen women from nine countries who experienced surrogate motherhood. None of them sound like happy, altruistic “angels” (a common term for mothers used in pro-surrogacy propaganda), smiling as they selflessly turn over the baby they’ve... Read More →

The standard response to these “what ifs” is that a sitcom is light comedy that attempts to appeal to its contemporary audience, perhaps in part by steering clear of deeper matters, particularly those that might divide and alienate viewers. And in this Friends resembles most of... Read More →

  I suppose I first became a feminist as a rebellious young woman at an Irish Catholic convent school—this would be back in the 1950s, just edging into the early 1960s. This was a period in Irish life which was traditional and conservative. Since the foundation of the Irish... Read More →

  As readers of this journal only too painfully know, in May 2018 Ireland voted by a two-to-one margin to remove from its Constitution the amendment protecting the right to life of unborn children. It was a devastating blow not just to the pro-life movement in Ireland, but... Read More →

  Pro-life advocacy and policies are implacably opposed by the elites of the West. The United Nations promotes abortion access as an international norm. Leaders of the European Union continually criticize and attempt to stifle prolife laws in Poland and Hungary.1 All of the... Read More →

When I learned that John Leo had retired as editor-in-chief of Minding the Campus, my thoughts leaped to T.S. Eliot’s final prayer at the end of “Ash Wednesday”: “Suffer me not to be separated.” The news came as a wrench, a decisive twist to the bolt on a repository of shaping... 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 →

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 →

  I’m just coming off a long Andrew Sullivan blog post, and I beg my gentle readers not to think less of me for poking into the thought processes of a writer who is not, by general definition—or for that matter his own—the hottest new pledge bro for Knights of Columbus. I... Read More →