Blow on the coal of the heart. The candles in churches are out. The lights have gone out in the sky Blow on the coal of the heart And we’ll see by and by.      —from J.B.: A Play in Verse, by Archibald MacLeish   Cornflower blue skies and crisp breezes are what I... Read More →

  We had been close friends for twelve years, and I was blessed to be with him as the doctor helped him die. Growing stiffer and frailer over the last year or so, he had still enjoyed life, including a short walk we’d taken just a few days before, with him happily chasing... Read More →

  “People have a right to their own opinion,” Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life recently remarked, “but they don’t have a right to their own facts.” He was speaking about the prevalent myth that late-term abortion is done only in cases of medical necessity—or that ... Read More →

  Advent of My Little Child Christ My Lord Oh My Father what was Your Thought To Send Your Son for me to hold To offer him a tiny babe In the weakest of arms, my own? Whene’er I touch such a babe As You send Who has no speech no word no ken Taken aback I stand in momentous... Read More →

  On September 22, 2017, U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, in Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky et al. v. Indiana State Health Department Commissioner et al., permanently enjoined enforcement of a 2016 Indiana law regulating abortion... Read More →

Brightly colored flags greet visitors to the United States Holocaust Museum. The flags are not the national flags of the millions of victims of the shoah. Nor are they the national flags of the Allied powers who defeated Nazi Germany. Instead, they are the flags of the military... Read More →

  Among high-profile Democrats, Governor Jerry Brown of California stands out for his relative benevolence toward the pro-life cause. He has dared to refer to abortion in plain language—“the killing of the unborn”—and has called it “crazy.” He has supported and signed state... Read More →

  The Halloween terror attack of this past week happened at my 10-year-old son’s school. These are words I never thought I would utter. Terrorism is one of the many threads that make up the fabric of everyday life in New York City. My children read signs on the subway urging... Read More →

  During visits to relatives or friends who are quite old or have been very ill, you may be alarmed by the sheer number of medicines they take. Is all of this really necessary? The answer may well be “No!” Can some drugs cause new problems instead of solving old ones? The... Read More →

  A small package was delivered to my office. It contained a copy of the Human Life Review and a note from its editor, James P. McFadden, inviting me, on the recommendation of an unnamed source, to write for his fledgling journal. I was honored by the invitation and soon... Read More →

  The Harvey Weinstein Hollywood sexual-predator story offers one lesson for defenders of life: We defend or deny life even when we’re not within a thousand miles of a life issue. Here’s why. We don’t form a culture mainly by what we do in the big obvious cases. We form a... Read More →

  My familiarity with Star Wars is largely confined to the first few releases of the franchise back in the late 1970s. In the initial Star Wars film, aside from the romantic weirdness of this “galaxy far, far away” and the David-and-Goliath quality of the battle of Good... Read More →

  Last Saturday, the Human Life Review’s EXPECT initiative and ProLife Future NYC hosted a discussion panel on how four organizations are working to build a culture of life in America. The participants were Aimee Murphy of Rehumanize International, John Hinshaw of Good... Read More →

  My title is misleading. It attributes a poem to the stylish actress which she did not compose. “Time Tested Beauty Tips” was one of Hepburn’s favorite poems—she is said to have read it to her children on the last Christmas Eve she spent on earth. Legend credits her with... Read More →

  Modern cosmetics tells us something about our culture’s desire to abort the unborn and euthanize the sick and elderly. In our desire to beautify the body, writes Zygmunt Bauman, “the appearance of the remedy as a rule preceded awareness of the deficiency that clamored to... Read More →

Sometimes word games can become mind games. My 11-year-old daughter has Down syndrome. My instinct has always been to put it exactly that way—Down syndrome is something she has, not something that has her or something she is. Does that seem obvious? These are actually hotly... Read More →

  It’s the language we use for diseases. Polio, we say, has been eradicated from the earth. Last week many pro-lifers jumped on the moral carelessness of a CBS story which declared giddily that Down syndrome had been “basically eradicated from Iceland”— as if someone in... Read More →

  The shocking headline seemed to jump out at me from the computer screen: “Brit scientist could be about to CURE multiple sclerosis and provide hope for millions.”[1] Really? Did I dare hope for a cure after living with aggressive multiple sclerosis (MS) for more than 30... Read More →

  The name Clare Boothe Luce should not be absent from the minds of contemporary Catholics. While she may not have been a saint, she understood well that in times of crisis saints are what we need. In 1952, Luce edited a classic anthology of essays entitled Saints for Now. Twenty... Read More →

“Facts are the background noise of debate and analysis,” former Reagan media expert Merrie Spaeth explained in The Wall Street Journal. “Anecdotes are a message’s most powerful anchors. In the battle for public opinion, personal stories win.” Stories decide whose claims feel more... Read More →

Just like their male counterparts, elite women athletes receive cutting-edge advice regarding diet, training, medicine, and sports psychology. It’s an approach meant to fine-tune game-day performance using the most up-to-date research. With competition for Olympic medals,... Read More →

  Obsculta O fili – Listen, O son. These first words of the Rule of St. Benedict mark the opening of a new world in the West. An abbot (father figure) firmly yet tenderly calling for the attention of his spiritual son stands as a defining point for what would become... Read More →

  Health and wealth rhyme, and not just the words, although those tell a story too. The word health comes from whole, what an organism is when its gears are humming as they ought, everything in its place, each part in sync with the others, none missing or broken or... Read More →

  In The Story of a Soul, St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote that God  “set before me a book of nature; I understood that all the flowers He has created are beautiful, how the splendour of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the perfume of the little violet or... Read More →

  The majority of people don’t have to go all in for evil for a society to turn to evil. They need only go one-third or half-way. That’s one lesson to be taken from the work of the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, most famous as the author of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing... Read More →

  2016 was a banner year for earthquakes in Italy. More than 300 people lost their lives in two series of shocks that hit the center of the country—especially the region of Umbria—destroying small towns and their treasures. Nearly a year later, authorities are still removing... Read More →

  The joy of being pregnant was dashed for me at five weeks when I found out that the twins I was carrying were high risk. The doctor told me there was a 50 percent chance both would die and an 80 percent chance that at least one would. Every other week more complications... Read More →

  The New York Times headline warns: “As Mexican State Limits Surrogacy, Global System Is Further Strained.” The gist of the story is that the southern Mexican state of Tabasco, which for a brief moment became the next Mecca for wealthy Westerners looking for Third World... Read More →

On Mother’s Day, the Sisters of Life held a celebration for about 75 mothers and 150 children at their retreat house, Villa Guadalupe, in Stamford, Connecticut. Although it had rained all day Saturday and the forecast for Sunday was not good, there was no way this event could be... Read More →

It’s interesting, the kind of things you find rummaging through your files when you’ve got a deadline and nothing to say. (This, innocent readers should know, happens to the writers you read more often than any of us like to admit.) For example, the ethicist Charlie Camosy’s... Read More →

Crossword puzzles are said to be the most popular and widespread of all word games.  Typically, they are free of controversy—all the correct answers are facts that respond to questions such as “what is the longest river in Egypt?” or “who was the second president of the United... Read More →

  As Democrats fight among themselves about abortion, Republicans and pro-lifers watching from the sidelines say “Good,” though for different reasons. Republicans enjoy seeing their rival party in chaos. So do pro-lifers who are Republicans more loyal to their party than to... Read More →

  Is the pro-life movement doomed to lose the public relations battle? If so, it’s not because we don’t have the better argument—we do. It’s not because we don’t have great warriors, orators, and persuaders—we’ve got the best. It’s because so many of the intangibles that... Read More →

  His becoming an abortionist, Willie Parker tells Rolling Stone, “was an assertion of my responsibility to pursue justice and human dignity.” I don’t doubt him. He is, by his lights, a moral man. Parker heads the board of Physicians for Reproductive Health and performs abortions... Read More →

The story of an abortion survivor is one “that could not be heard, and therefore must not be told.” This was the lesson learned by then-college freshman Melissa Ohden who, in a discussion with new friends about “every kind of abuse, abandonment and human heartache,” found that... Read More →

  At a family gathering early in the last election season I was asked by a practicing Catholic who reflexively votes Democratic whether, if Donald Trump had gotten the Republican nomination, I would vote for him in the general election. When I said yes, both she and her... Read More →

  During the last presidential campaign, friends and acquaintances urged me to cast my vote for the Republican Party platform. I didn’t, because it wasn’t on the ballot. I wasn’t always so clear-eyed. In 1980, being young and both bloodless and woolly in my political... Read More →

  One of the doves who come to our window feeder seems to be missing the skin on the back of his head. I’m pretty sure we see his skull when he looks away from the house. It’s a dangerous world out there when you’re prey. They’re pretty birds, our doves, but they don’t look... Read More →

  On the first Saturday of every month, about forty of us gather outside Planned Parenthood on Bleecker Street in downtown Manhattan for an early morning Vigil for Life. We have been holding this vigil for almost ten years and neither wind nor rain nor blazing sun... Read More →

I always knew it was going to happen. I just didn’t know when—or for whom. My 11-year-old daughter, Magdalena, has Down syndrome. Over the years, my wife and I have met dozens of other parents of children with special needs—through schools, through Special Olympics programs,... Read More →

The story of Mary Magdalene, a repentant sinner who went on to sainthood, is well known. Today she serves as inspiration for two life-affirming organizations: The Community of St. Mary Magdalene and The Magdalene Institute. Their founder, Mary Langlois, hopes that the... Read More →

  According to the Centers for Disease Control, more people in Massachusetts die annually from suicide than from motor vehicle accidents (National Vital Statistics Reports, April 24, 2008). In 2007, the state’s suicide rate (8.0 per 100,000 people) was almost three times... Read More →

  Neil Gorsuch’s probable ascension to the Supreme Court nicely conforms to a script that pro-life advocates hopeful of seeing Roe v. Wade overturned have been writing in their minds for the past year: Elect a Republican president, who soon fills Scalia’s seat with a pro-life... Read More →

  What is the pro-life movement about? Oddly, it is this question that is most contested. If pro-choice people agreed with us as to the purpose of the pro-life movement, we might actually get somewhere. This was brought home to me recently at a conversation-with-cookies... Read More →

  He shocked his friends, and lost a good many of them. He said something no one in his circles would say. In doing so, he exposed one of the weirder and sadder failures in modern American political life. Nat Hentoff was one of the really cool guys. He wrote for the New York... Read More →

  It is clear that Donald Trump will keep tweeting after he is sworn into office as President. His Twitter site now claims to have over 20 million followers. What politician would give up such a goldmine of support? Especially when media reporters follow it closely? If Trump... Read More →

Wei Jingsheng, perhaps the Peoples Republic of China’s best known pro-democracy, human-rights activist, spent a total of 18 years in prison as a dissident charged with “counter revolution propaganda and agitation.” He was released in 1997 and, following pressure from the Clinton... Read More →

Great is the fury of the pro-choice community. And wouldn’t you be riled, too, if the State of Texas (or any other governmental entity, for that matter) had undertaken to train an unflattering spotlight on your philosophical premises? That’s what Texas’ new requirement for... Read More →

After their devastating losses in the November election, Democratic Party leaders finally understand that they have a huge problem with blue-collar Americans. They know it will take major efforts to regain the trust of the working class they used to champion. But doesn’t it occur... Read More →

It’s the claim that the opponent argues illogically when he hasn’t that’s the sneaky thing. People on all sides of every contentious issue do this, but the pro-choice movement seems—and I’ll admit I may be biased here—particularly keen on this way of trying to win an argument... Read More →

One hundred and forty-four years separate the first woman to campaign for the presidency of the United States and the latest to have done so. Despite this extended period of time, during which America has changed dramatically, it is interesting to note that the lives and views of... Read More →

A majestic lady recently took her place on a bluff overlooking the mighty Missouri River in South Dakota. On September 17th, a shiny and silvery statue called “Dignity” was unveiled near Chamberlain, a small town on the riverbank, along the route followed by Lewis and Clark as... Read More →

  That’s the title of Christian Schneider’s Sept. 25 column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. And what a thought-provoking column it is. When Schneider was four, he tells us, his five-year-old sister was killed after a tornado sent a tree crashing into the family’s camper:... Read More →

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I left our apartment with our son James, to take him across town for his second day at a new special education school. As I stood on the crosstown bus, I was thinking about the introduction for the Summer issue of the Human Life Review, which... Read More →

In September 2015 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a series of goals and targets in order to eradicate poverty, eliminate inequality, and subdue climate change by 2030. These Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), comprising 17 goals, 169 targets, and 230 indicators (to... Read More →

  Yeah, of course I’d visit with Annemarie. I didn’t know her, but I knew her parents. We’ve long been members of the same Episcopal parish. She was interested in journalism as a career. She hoped to ask me some questions (as if an old warhorse from the... Read More →

The platforms of the two political parties reveal, albeit unintentionally, which party holds the moral high ground and which is in defensive mode. To begin with, the Republican platform is written in English. The words actually mean what they say. The Democrat platform is written... Read More →

Last week, Congress made real progress for Life. July 14, was a crazy all-over-the-map legislative day. By the end of it, the Freedom of Conscience Act  had been passed 254-182, and pro-life initiatives had advanced. Two important bills, the Labor-HHS and the State Department... Read More →

Take Action Now! This week Congress is going to vote on what posterity may someday look back upon as one of the most important votes in the history of our country. It’s called the Conscience Protection Act of 2016 (H.R.4828/S.2927). Here’s why it’s needed urgently. Back in the... Read More →

The first ever pro-life women’s conference took place on the weekend of June 24-26 in Dallas. Hosted by activist Abby Johnson of And Then There Were None, the conference attracted women from all over the country eager to hear from female leaders and connect with one another. Over... Read More →

  The word “rape” is abused almost to the point of meaninglessness. Feminist zealots argue that a pervasive “rape culture” causes the high incidence of rape on college campuses today. In the name of addressing this crisis, federal legislation proposes to seize yet more... Read More →

Moy Moy has quadriplegia. How did I not know this? I know the meaning of “quad” (4) and I know that Moy Moy has neither the use of her arms (2), nor her legs (2). I also know that 2 + 2 = 4. And yet somehow the term “quadriplegic” has never occurred to me in connection with Moy... Read More →

  Counterattacks against pro-life gains are intensifying. In Washington State, Planned Parenthood and NARAL are scoring candidates for state office according to whether they will promise to regulate (i.e., suffocate) pregnancy resource centers. At this very moment, the... Read More →

    On the evening of May 11, the Italian Chamber of Deputies approved by a wide margin a legislative proposal to legalize civil unions for gay (and heterosexual) couples. Known as Cirinnà’s Law, after its sponsor, Senator Monica Cirinnà, the bill had been passed by the... Read More →

    Last week was pretty much business as usual for the pro-life movement in Washington . . .  as the country heads into what may be the most important presidential election in our lifetimes. On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a non-decision in the Little Sisters of... Read More →

  On March 30 Planned Parenthood got a big gift from the Obama Administration. That’s the day the FDA rewrote the label on chemical abortion drugs. Now, the FDA regulations conform to what had long been the common off-label use of the drugs by chemical-abortion providers. If that... Read More →

“Pare la guerra . . . Stop the war!” Those were the final words uttered by Sr. Maria de Guadalupe, a missionary who has lived in Syria, as she ended her presentation at a United Nations gathering last month titled “Defending Religious Freedom and Other Human Rights: Stopping Mass... Read More →

A Congressional hearing on April 20 gave the House Select Committee on Infant Lives a clear bipartisan mandate for further investigation into Stem Express and other companies engaged in fetal tissue procurement. Prior to the hearing Democrat staff leaked to Stem Express some of... Read More →

  “You can’t make this stuff up” I thought, as I was  reading a particularly gripping account in Abby Johnson’s new book, The Walls Are Talking: Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories;  a few paragraphs later, a clinic worker herself  observes that “Sometimes... Read More →

  On March 30, after more than four years, a civil case brought by three pregnancy care centers against New York City was settled in the centers’ favor. The case, Pregnancy Care Center of NY v. City of New York, was brought in response to Local Law 17, which then Mayor... Read More →

Pro-lifers across the country should make it a priority this week to contact their two U. S. Senators   The media machine of the Left is in high gear now, attacking conservative Senators because they don’t want to waste their time. For how many years did the media lament... Read More →

  Maternal surrogacy has become a major item on the reproductive-rights agenda and a rapidly expanding segment of the innovative procreation market. Concocted by whatever means, a human embryo is implanted in a “rented womb” of an unrelated woman—usually a very po... Read More →

The Daily Signal had the best headline last week: “Big Brother Bullies Little Sisters at the Supreme Court.” That was on March 23, the day the justices heard oral arguments in the Little Sisters of the Poor case (Zubik v. Burwell), the latest trip to the high court for those... Read More →

  All sorts of natural, legal, and Constitutional standards have been warped in order to accommodate the unrestricted right to abortion inherent in the Supreme Court’s 1973 rulings, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. It is a right that denies fathers an equal interest in the... Read More →

  The Left does not understand why we and our movement don’t implode, collapse, or otherwise dry up and blow away. Daniel K. Williams, in his stunning new book Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade answers that question in 365 pages of carefully... Read More →

You can’t fool Mother Nature. Melissa Cook thought she could. She had what she thought was a smart business arrangement: By renting out her body as a surrogate mother, the 47-year-old mother of four could earn good money. A contract that pays $27,000 (plus a $6,000 bonus if more... Read More →

  One of the pro-life movement’s best friends is taking hostile fire right now. For saying nothing but what ultra-pro-abortion Henry Waxman was saying sixteen years ago! Marsha Blackburn, who represents the 7th Congressional District of Tennessee, chairs the Select... Read More →

If you are pro-life and you pray, you’ll want to pray very hard on March 2. That’s the day the Supreme Court had scheduled for oral arguments in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt—the biggest threat to Big Abortion in two decades. In light of the untimely and unexpected death of... Read More →

Newspaper accounts indicate that despite threatening clouds on a cold Roman day, anywhere from 700,000 (the left-wing press) to close to two million (the organizers) people gathered in Rome Jan. 30 to support the traditional family, currently under attack via a bill in the... Read More →

  Wisconsin is a wonderful state. Politically, it’s rated deeply purple, but common sense seems to be in the genes up there, and it eventually prevails in political matters. For instance: Milwaukee is the only city in the country to have elected three openly Socialist mayors* and... Read More →

  Too late for Halloween, but just in time to frighten voters, the Guttmacher Institute (formerly associated with Planned Parenthood Federation of America) has released a report strongly implying that if Roe v. Wade were overruled, abortion would immediately become illegal... Read More →

“We are a cultural tectonic shift. We will outlast their political movement.” The 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade is next week. What’s the state of our Cause today? Note the word Cause. The defense of human life from the moment of conception until natural death is often referred... Read More →

  If you can’t handle ambiguity, don’t read this column. At the same moment that millions of unwanted children are being carved up for their constituent organs and sold to the highest bidder because their mother does not want them, other women—and men—are going to... Read More →

  The Human Capital Project has changed the national conversation on taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood. The Human Capital Project is the name for a series of undercover videos—made by David Daleiden’s Center for Medical Progress—that show high-ranking Planned Parenthood... Read More →

  Linda Greenhouse’s Thanksgiving Day op-ed in the New York Times, “Sex After 50 at the Supreme Court”  is a telling piece: telling about the thinking as well as the politics that inform it. Greenhouse’s essential argument is this: Fifty years after the Supreme Court... Read More →

“Everybody knows [it] is a gesture in futility,” said Harry Reid, the former Senate Leader. It’s “a victory worth fighting for,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List. They were both talking about the bill to repeal Obamacare that was passed by the U.S. Senate... Read More →

  Did you know that November was National Adoption Awareness Month? What did you miss? Unfortunately, not much. That is a shame, because infant adoption deserves the focused attention of those of us who care about the best interests of children—and few are as passionate... Read More →

  Last week the Cleveland Clinic announced that a medical team there will soon be the first in the United States to transplant a uterus (fallopian tubes and ovaries not included). Eight women have already begun the screening process. One travelled more than 1,000 miles to... Read More →

  “Pro-lifers are holding the country hostage because of their feud with Planned Parenthood.” This is a meme we have heard before and may hear again. What does it really mean? It could refer to two separate processes; two separate dramas. Right now in Washington, the... Read More →

  The news trail has grown cold on Dr. Michael A. Roth, the Detroit area OB-GYN who was found two weeks ago to be carrying pain-killing drugs and “products of conception” in his car—“14 containers of human tissue, possibly fetuses,” according to an Oct. 16 WXYZ report. Dr.... Read More →