It’s the afternoon of April 6, Holy Thursday, when I call Sasaki Kazuo. He answers the phone and I am immediately taken aback. His speech is slightly slurred, his words rushing together as if he were willing himself to speak. Just a few days before he had left a voicemail... Read More →

  Born around 347 in the ancient city that lies in ruins near present-day Antakaya, Turkey, he might have been called John of Antioch were it not for his celebrated theological thinking, writing, and especially, preaching. Known today as St. John Chrysostom—“Golden mouthed”... Read More →

  In deep blue Connecticut, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by some 20 percentage points, a sprig of hope surfaced on an early spring day as the 2nd annual state March for Life got under way at the Capitol building in Hartford. Featuring a succession of truly inspiring... Read More →

  Back in the day, there was a Disney-sponsored “See If You Can Draw” contest in the back of the comic books. You were to draw the picture provided, send it in, and they would tell you if you had talent. This opportunity was brought to my attention by my big brother. There... Read More →

  Aw, come on, we know what free speech is. It’s the duly enshrined right of the Left to malign the Right as retrograde, regressive, reactionary, with some “o” words thrown in, like oppressive. Whereas the Right’s right to come back at the Left operates only in the... Read More →

  There’s an old fable in Japan titled Ubasuteyama, or “Throw-Away-Grandma Mountain.” There are two versions. The one I know best is as follows: There’s a mountain—Throw-Away-Grandma Mountain—where people from a nearby village abandon their aged parents when the parents can... Read More →

  A teenager strapped to a backpack reeking of marijuana boards a city bus. The stink permeates the vehicle’s interior the moment the teen reaches the top step. Sneering at the fare box, he walks by the driver and plops into a seat. I guess he doesn’t have to pay. I do, but... Read More →

  It was the end of my first day on the job as a shop girl in an antique jewelry store in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Long glass cases on mahogany legs, a grandfather clock in the corner—they didn’t just sell jewelry but made and repaired it as well in the workshop at... Read More →

  Don’t worry. I don’t intend to give examples of the “amazing” artificially generated output of ChatGPT, a chatbot introduced last fall by OpenAI. With true Boomer perspective, and as one who wrote his first simple computer program using Basic language back in the dark age... Read More →

  The term “fashion victim” came into vogue during my lifetime. It was apparently first used by Oscar de la Renta (1932-2014) to describe people who try too hard to keep up with the latest design trends. Perhaps you’ve seen such poor souls, thoroughbred clotheshorses who... Read More →

  Some years back, some of my readers might remember, an advertisement for corn whisky ran on billboards across the country: “Old Grand-Dad—Over a Hundred Years Old and Still in the Bars Every Night.” Something of the same might be said about T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land... Read More →

  By the fourth week of January, resolutions made for the New Year are likely to have lost any momentum they might briefly have claimed. Resolutions usually take the nature of goals, and goals are fantasies, which isn’t to dismiss them—daydreams serve a purpose. But I prefer... Read More →

    This is not the time to stop marching. Though Roe has been overturned, abortion on demand is still the law in many states, and in recent votes even so-called pro-life states have expressed surprising support for pro-abortion legislation and some confusion over bills... Read More →

  You know what killed Roe v. Wade? Roe v. Wade. New York State legalized abortion in 1970, and it didn’t need the Supreme Court to do it; it already had the option because of states’ rights.  Hawaii was actually first, but its law had residency requirements whereas N... Read More →

  Pastor Tsujioka Kenzo passed away on December 16. He was eighty-nine years old.  My friend and fellow pro-life advocate Vincent Kato let me know as soon as he found out. Just a week before, Vincent had shared photos of a Prolife Japan Christmas gathering with me. Pastor... Read More →

  The embers of an exhausted year—one more Christmas behind us—carry with them a familiar melancholy. The time is bittersweet, if not depressing, and I learned long ago to embrace this seasonal interlude with this thought in mind: The end of anything is hard. Once we lapse... Read More →

  “The pro-lifer’s first obligation is to be informed.” Dr. and Mrs. Jack Willke, Abortion: Questions and Answers “It is not possible to brainwash a curious person with access  to the internet.” —Dennis Prager One day, a waitress named Bonny found a disheveled young woman... Read More →

  Would a moving company that didn’t respect a “This Side Up” sign on the carton holding grandma’s precious china keep your business? No, they would answer for it. Yet today’s authorities turn precious common sense upside down and get away with it. For decades we were... Read More →

  The “red wave,” amplified in some quarters into a “red tsunami,” never materialized. The day after the November midterms, pundits on television shows across the political spectrum fidgeted in their chairs—wrong yet again. For prolifers, the political turmoil of the past... Read More →

  In his 1969 hit “Polk Salad Annie,” singer songwriter Tony Joe White, who also penned the immortal (and more traditional) “Rainy Night in Georgia,” tossed off these kooky lines: “The only thing her brothers were fit for / was stealing watermelons out of my truck patch.” A... Read More →

  In her mega-bestselling novel, Delia Owens commits the perfect murder to print. So perfect is the crime that the reader, right up until the last few paragraphs, is unsure if there was a murder at all, though there is definitely a dead body. Set in the 1960s South, the plot... Read More →

  I have organized dozens of pro-life groups, first as an undergraduate, then throughout my career as a high school teacher. And for thirty-plus years, I have been surprised by the number of decent, moral, conscientious students who, though vaguely sympathetic, wouldn’t... Read More →

  One afternoon in mid-October, I found myself sitting alone at a long table at the front of a big conference room in the House of Councillors office building in the Nagatachō district of downtown Tokyo. A pro-life group called Seimei Sonchō Sentā (Respect Life Center) had... Read More →

  My country right or wrong has become my party right or wrong. There are pitfalls in its original version—such as extreme nationalism—but during war it has merit: To mobilize a population towards a common goal against a hostile invader. It can be toxic, however, in a... Read More →

  Even if you’re not a Jordan Peterson fan, you’re probably aware that he recently set the term “incel” trending when he shed a tear for young men who identify as “involuntary celibates.” In a discussion with podcast host Piers Morgan, Peterson was asked to respond to... Read More →

  Some years ago, twenty-three to be exact—I’m sure because it was the occasion of my wedding day—I received this note: “Hope everything breaks your way.” It was from one of the most generous people I’ve ever known, a man who committed much of his life to splashing money... Read More →

  A few months ago, my wife and I did a rare thing for us—we went out to see a movie. A documentary about Audrey Hepburn was playing at the arthouse cinema across town, and, as a movie theater had been out of the question during the Covid years, we jumped at the chance to... Read More →

  [The Human Life Foundation will hold its 19th annual Great Defender of Life Dinner on Oct 6. The following appreciation is reprinted here in memory of James P. McFadden, a widely known and admired Great Defender of Life—and the founding editor of the Human Life Review—who... Read More →

  With the overturn of Roe and its emphasis on viability, “life begins at conception” has a chance of graduating from opinion to law in the form of fetal personhood legislation. This raises issues ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime. Ridiculous as in the abortion... Read More →

  Aware that it has been 25 years since Mother Teresa passed away, the creators of a new documentary are seeking to make her life and labors known to a generation for whom she may be an unfamiliar saint on the calendar (September 5). Mother Teresa: No Greater Love, produced... Read More →

  George Barone came into this world in the dying gasp of the 19th century, sired by the same father, James, as my maternal grandmother Rose. They had different mothers, technically making them half-siblings among the ten or so other children both camps totaled when all was... Read More →

  As a prolifer in the United States, I was haunted for years by the staggering number of dead. The children who never see sunlight. The mothers who carry the ghosts of these murdered little ones in their wounded hearts. The toll of abortion, the stories of death and misery... Read More →

There’s a lot of crowing and barnyard strutting about a recent referendum in Kansas. By voting against it, Kansans upheld a previous court ruling that found a right to tax-payer-funded abortion in their state constitution. If the Democrats had any honesty, they would now be... Read More →

  August 2022 marks the eightieth anniversary of the death of Dr. Janusz Korczak  (1878/9-1942). In 1942, Korczak, a Polish pediatrician, educator, writer, and humanitarian, voluntarily accompanied nearly 200 orphans in his charge to their deaths in the gas chamber at... Read More →

  It came in the mail. An “Official Business” government envelope would normally press my panic button, but I knew this had more to do with death than taxes. Actuaries not auditors were on my case. Inside the envelope was my Medicare card, carrying a unique number I am not... Read More →

  Pro-choicers are conducting a campaign of violence nationwide in the wake of the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. Churches, pro-life offices, pro-life pregnancy centers, and anywhere or anyone else associated with respect for human life is fair game. The “Summer of... Read More →

  “Possession is nine-tenths of the law” isn’t an actual law, it’s an expression. It means that ownership is easier to establish if one has possession of a thing, more difficult to establish if one does not. For nearly fifty years, the pro-abortion front owned the debate... Read More →

  In June 1215, English barons cornered King John on the fields of Runnymede and forced him to sign the Great Charter—Magna Carta—among whose guarantees was the right to habeas corpus: “No man shall be arrested or imprisoned . . . except by the lawful judgment of his peers... Read More →

  Who here remembers “two weeks to flatten the curve”? Anybody? How about six feet of social distance to “stop the spread”? And let’s not forget this hoary chestnut: “Follow the science.” All of these were still in vogue—though the bodies stacked outside Elmhurst hospital,... Read More →

  In the twentieth century, transgression outstripped the framework of crime. The maddest dreams of the maddest men of the past could never have conjured up the horrors of modern mass killing—Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, Buchenwald. It was in numb recognition of the inability of... Read More →

  Has anyone heard, in these heated post-Roe days, a well-reasoned, legally sound defense of the 1973 opinion itself? Crickets? That tells us a lot. But let me take a step back and celebrate the moment, which, to be honest, I never thought would come in my lifetime. Through... Read More →

  In the eighties and nineties, I would meet with a group on the Lower East Side for discussion and commentary on the arts-and-culture scene. Okay, okay, we were there to buy pot. Gordon (not his real name) was the dealer, and he was very organized and surprisingly strict.... Read More →

  Father’s Day is June 19. A decision by the Supreme Court regarding the fate of Roe v. Wade is likely any day now. The conjunction of these two events is important. It ought to initiate a national conversation about fathers and their unborn children. Roe is just the tip of... Read More →

  A Japanese friend and colleague who studies history and historiographical epistemology sometimes remarks that cultural battles in the United States break out in Japan five or ten years later. That analysis is proving true once again in the case of abortifacient pills. In... Read More →

  We live in interesting, even dangerous, times. Take your pick of crises from the headlines: shootings; inflation; suicide epidemic; pandemic; opioid overdoses; looming war in the West; threats of violence if Roe v. Wade is overturned. There’s little good news or comfort... Read More →

  On a pack of cigarettes, we see WARNING: Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and may complicate pregnancy. Some pill bottles read WARNING: Do not drive or operate heavy machinery while taking this product as it may cause drowsiness. Abortion has packaging... Read More →

  The pro-choice rants of sanctimonious goddesses mock us with fantasies about an overarching conspiracy that does not exist. “The real agenda of those teaching abstinence-only education,” they scream, “is to stop free sex!” Who is responsible for this failed curriculu... Read More →

  Merely a few feet from my bed stood Jack the Youngster, burbling in his Pack ’n Play portable rumpus cage/crib. His emission of growling noises—a favored locution of his and of mine, and an ongoing source of amusement for both of us—was wearing thin now that it was time to... Read More →

Those Who Give All for Life I got to know Will Goodman when I was in graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin, some ten years ago. On Friday afternoons I prayed outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of town. Will would often be there with... Read More →

Ten years or so ago I was on the subway reading a book. It was warm weather and I was wearing a light blouse. In my peripheral vision I caught sight of a boy of about twelve standing next to me and staring at my chest. I looked down to discover that the top button of my blouse... Read More →

You would think after so long a time we’d be better at this. Lent, Holy Week, Easter. They’ve been observed for some two millennia—and for however many years in our own lives—yet by now, two days after Easter Sunday, we may wonder what it was all about. Well, let me speak for... Read More →

I have been doing a slow walk through J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion in concert with a Tolkien podcast; concurrently, I am moving through the Old Testament books of Joshua and Judges, accompanied by Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year podcast. The experiences are weirdly similar.... Read More →

  In Herodotus’ Histories we learn that Croesus, King of Lydia, waged war upon his neighbor Cyrus II, the great king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. At the outset, Croesus felt assured of his victory, having been told by the oracle at Delphi that he would destroy a great... Read More →

I went to Catholic School in the 1960’s. This was the time of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II, 1962-65). Pope John XXIII called the Council because he believed the Church needed updating. Perhaps this was why when we were taught about the six days of creation the focus... Read More →

It was an example of the kind I call “silly-clever,” borrowing the term from George Orwell. He used it in criticizing the work of the major Christian apologists of his day, including Chesterton and Lewis. (I don’t think his argument against them is very good, for what it’s... Read More →

  The other day, in an idle moment, I was reading the Spectator and came upon a rather shocking piece on motherhood, a shocking but a brilliant piece entitled “What does Gen Z have against motherhood?” by the wonderfully talented young writer, Freya India, who, responding to... Read More →

  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... Read More →

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... Read More →

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... Read More →

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... Read More →

“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... Read More →

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... Read More →

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,... Read More →

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... Read More →

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... Read More →

  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... Read More →

Bleak and brutal. These words come to mind today—December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents—when the Church remembers the children who were murdered in what the poet John Donne calls “Herod’s jealous general doom” (“La Corona”). Of course, no words, poetic or prophetic, can... Read More →

The other night while dial-surfing on FM radio for some music, I came upon a talk-radio guest sputtering excitedly: “The people behind the 15-week ban on abortion in Mississippi are trying to change the definition of viability!” The nerve! Not only an assault on abortion rights... Read More →

Abortion is legal through all nine months of pregnancy, under all circumstances, in every state, and Americans are not allowed to vote on it. That is what the Supreme Court mandated when it handed down the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Furthermore, the Supreme Court justices... Read More →

In a recent Human Life Review blog (https://humanlifereview.com/wrestling-with-life-issues-in-japan/) I wrote about a loutish sumo wrestler, the mistress he mistreated, and the child they conceived. When his mistress told him she was pregnant with his baby, the sumo wrestler in... Read More →

Every day, the beneficence and wisdom of our public “expert” class look less beneficent, and certainly less wise. There’s Covid; there’s public schooling and job opportunity; there’s race relations; there’s government spending. To which well-known topics, let’s join abortion and... Read More →

This week the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The case concerns Mississippi’s 2018 “Gestational Age Act,” which prohibits abortion after 15-weeks of gestation (13-weeks after fertilization). The question before the... Read More →

If someone had told me of a plan to make a three-part TV documentary based on rare footage of the Beatles’ final recording session, I would probably have said, “Why bother?” Although the preposterously premised film Yesterday—which imagined that a cosmic glitch had wiped the... Read More →

In one of the many rules St. Benedict wrote for his 6th-century religious community, the father of Western monasticism directed his monks to “remember to keep death before your eyes daily.” A dour suggestion at first blush, Benedict was urging his followers to contemplate the... Read More →

We hear a lot about nuclear stockpiles. There are pacts and treaties and deals aimed at limiting and destroying nukes. But what about virus stockpiles? The American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), headquartered in Manassas, Virginia, is, according to its website, a “global... Read More →

Well, that’s done for another year. You know what I mean: Halloween. Call me a sour puss whose kids are beyond the trick-or-treat phase, but Halloween seems to get more eerie every year, and not in fun or healthy ways. The ghosts and goblins come out earlier, with some stores now... Read More →

An article in a Japanese magazine caught my eye a few months back. It was about a sumo wrestler, but that’s not what was unusual about it. Sumo remains very popular in Japan, and top wrestlers have the status of major celebrities. News coverage of goings-on inside and outside of... Read More →

On December 1, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (an abortion clinic), a case challenging the legality of a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mississippi has asked the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade... Read More →

You may recognize the fractured English in my title as the considered judgment of Mr. Bumble, the selfish, scheming, self-satisfied character in Oliver Twist. In true Dickensian style, he lives up to his name as his petty plots while working as parish beadle backfire, leaving him... Read More →

A recent front-page news summary in the Financial Times was headlined “Economists back abortion rights.” As an economist I had thought this topic was out of bounds for the profession, so I read the article with interest. When I subsequently examined the relevant evidence, it... Read More →

On Friday, September 24, I watched the U.S. House of Representatives debate—and pass—the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA). Put forward by pro-abortion Democrats in the House as a means of enshrining Roe v. Wade in federal law, the legislation should be renamed the... Read More →

Recently I got off a bus from New England at the Port Authority in New York City. According to the employee at the information desk there are now only two ways to get to the upper level to access the street and subway, a very long flight of stairs or an elevator. A sign is posted... Read More →

Sometimes it seems as if the institutions of our seasick culture have embraced the same way of thinking, that is, that every problem is a public-relations problem crying out for a public-relations solution. This obsession with creating appearances instead of addressing realities... Read More →

The last time I saw the Twin Towers, they stood with amazing grace. Shimmering with the flaming colors of sunrise, the often gaudy-seeming weights at the lower end of the city’s skyline exuded a double-barreled beauty against a clear, brightening sky. Having grown up a few blocks... Read More →

[The following is adapted from a column that originally appeared on the (Italian) website The New Daily Compass (newdailycompass.com) and is reprinted with permission.] Since the beginning of the year, most of the reproductive rights focus has been on the restoration of United... Read More →

As I went through the paperwork, I was aware of a familiar hollow feeling in my chest. It was the one I had when my older son was diagnosed with autism. This past March, while the world was still in COVID-crisis mode, my husband and I were in a crisis of our own. We had applied... Read More →

The ever-expanding LGBT acronym is currently holding at LGBTQIA+. The added A stands for asexual, the Q is interchangeable for queer or questioning, apparently the + sign stands for the kitchen sink, and a recent annexation, the “I,” stands for intersex, historically known as... Read More →

At the risk of being labeled a heretic, I must confess that to my mind there’s something not quite right with G. K. Chesterton. I assume that many in this audience would strike the virtual match to my imagined pyre, and I would not blame them. Who am I to criticize one of the... Read More →

I have been reading The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, a play that French poet Charles Peguy wrote more than a century ago. For the French especially, Joan of Arc’s life and death are an inspiring patriotic touchstone to return to in times of national crisis or... Read More →

When I was in graduate school, using the word “agency” was a favorite signal of one’s in-group status. In the cutthroat world of graduate history seminars, “agency” is a way to criticize “tropes” about people in the past. A commonly called-out “trope” is that “subalterns,” or... Read More →