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 - About this issue . . .
. . . At the 48th annual March for Life on January 21st, the mood was overwhelmingly hopeful that the upcoming Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court decision will either number Roe’s days or end them completely. We marched with Mary Rose Somarriba, editor of our new online feature NEWSworthy (see From the Website for a typical report), who was interviewed in the crowd by Lauretta Brown of the National Catholic Register. “I don’t know if Roe will be overturned or not, but, either way, our country needs a lot of healing, and women need a lot of support in facing their unplanned pregnancies,” Somarriba remarked. Pressure to abort “really pushes women into corners more than many people realize and makes them think that they can’t have children and careers and success or other passions in life.” And Sister Marie Veritas of the Sisters of Life told the Register: “To come today, in this time of solidarity and to stand for life, to stand for love with our brothers and sisters here, that’s one of the most powerful witnesses we can give to the world, especially this year on the possibility of Roe falling, . . . What every person here wants to let women know is that we want to cherish you in your motherhood and support you in that.”There was a great crowd in Washington, despite many indoor events being canceled due to the continuing spread of Covid 19 variants and the vaccine mandates—health issues that cause painful divisions among us. In this issue we bring you information backed up by available scientific data, as well as optimistic news about ethical vaccines and how we can help encourage their production. We welcome three new contributors: Meaghan Bond (“What We Know About Covid-19 and Pregnancy”); Margaret Brady (“Ethical Vaccines Are Becoming a Reality”); and W. J. Kennedy (“The Sad State of ‘This Bloody Business,’” about the horrific, active trade in aborted-baby body parts).Thanks for reprint permission go to: The Living Church for Victor Lee Austin’s “Why Have Children?” (Appendix A); the Washington Free Beacon for Collin Anderson’s “How a Liberal Foundation Bankrolled Abortion Pills in the Name of Population Control” ( Appendix B); and the National Catholic Register for Lauretta Brown’s “Pro-Life Families Witness to Dignity of Unborn and Love for Vulnerable Mothers” (Appendix D).We hope you enjoy the remarks and photos from our 18th annual Great Defender of Life Dinner (p. 70), where we honored Marvin Olasky and Margaret Colin, and remembered our late co-founder Michael Uhlmann. As always, we are grateful for the sparks of mirth generated by cartoonist Nick Downes.As we continue in this auspicious year, please remember to visit our website often for updated news, thoughtful blogs and essays, spiritual reflections, and special previews: www.humanlifereview.com.Maria McFadden Maffucci
Editor in Chief
- Who would have thought it? China of all places is “closing abortion clinics and expanding services to help couples conceive” (see the report in From the Website). Yes, they have a birth dearth in China. So do we, as senior editor William Murchison reminds us in “Cantkerous Anti-Birthers.” And the Supreme Court, he writes, “however heavily stocked with ‘pro-life’ jurists,” isn’t going to reverse it, even if those jurists “put the kibosh on Roe v. Wade.” Over the past half-century, “the ideologizing of abortion,” writes Murchison, “has rubbed away the ancient commitment to unborn life as beautiful and nourishing.” The data he cites are grim: “U.S. population grew just 0.1 percent in our miserable Covid year of 2021—the lowest growth rate ever recorded by the Census Bureau.” In 2020, “the number of deaths exceeded that of births in 25 states,” and the marriage rate, he goes on, “is at an all-time low, at 6.5 marriages per 1,000 people.” While from an unexpected corner comes a warning: “Elon Musk,” Murchison notes, “recently told the Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO Council: ‘I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birthrate and the rapidly declining birthrate.’”
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