Dr. John C. Willke, M.D., reposed quietly in the Lord on Friday, February 20. He was born in 1926, served in World War II, and then went to medical school.  Jack Willke was an obstetrician happily delivering babies and building his own family in Cincinnati when he became... Read More →

The Polish press reports another instance of in vitro fertilization (IVF) gone amuck: a little girl born to a woman who subsequently discovered she was not her genetic mother. The child was born, apparently in August 2014, to a 30-year-old woman in Szczecin province along the... Read More →

King v. Burwell? Never heard of it?  You may soon. On March 4 the Supreme Court will hear the case. The question before the justices is: What did Congress really mean when it wrote the ObamaCare law? You know, the erroneously-named “Affordable Care Act” (ACA), aka ObamaCare.  The... Read More →

Connie Marshner In the wake of the recent disappointment with Congress’ failure to vote on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act—which would ban abortion at 20 weeks, the age at which it’s been determined an unborn child can feel pain—it’s nice to remember there’s a big... Read More →

Papal exchanges on long distance flights have certain reporters salivating. Ever since the Holy Father’s famous remark, “Who am I to judge?” (taken out of context), uttered in the summer of 2013 on the way back to Rome from World Youth Day in Rio, reporters have waited anxiously... Read More →

The day ended OK. But it sure raised some red flags. Early in the morning on March Day (today, January 22), pro-lifers woke up to a kick in the solar plexus with the news that the Pain-Capable Infant Protection Act had been pulled from the House Calendar late the night before.... Read More →

As Marchers for Life will be stomping their feet and blowing on their hands to keep warm next Thursday, inside the U. S. Capitol something unprecedented will be happening. To begin with, the 114th Congress will actually be in session (as I recall, more frequently than not they... Read More →

Fact #1: a pregnant woman with a brain-death diagnosis can gestate a healthy live baby.  Of course, not every such pregnancy has such an outcome. Fact #2: Because of Fact #1, some foreign countries and some states in the USA have laws to give unborn babies in these unfortunate... Read More →

Two million dollars is the cost of respecting life. Call me rogue if you will, but from my perspective it’s worth every penny. Let me explain. Just before Christmas, a US District Court ordered a $1.9 million judgment against the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend for enforcing a... Read More →

Pro, Katha Pollitt, Picador, 2014 No one, we are told, is pro-abortion. No one thinks these are easy decisions. Abortion is something that will happen no matter what; it is up to us to tame it. In the words of Bill Clinton, abortion must be “safe, legal, and rare.” Safe and... Read More →

On Saturday, William E. May will be buried. [http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/washingtonpost/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=173463827] The Catholic universe is grieving his passing, but those in the pro-life movement who are not Catholic have reason to grieve as well. He... Read More →

On November 18th, Encounter Books hosted “A Conversation on Roe v. Wade,” a panel discussion focusing on Clarke Forsythe’s highly acclaimed book, Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade. Readers of the Human Life Review are likely to recall that Forsythe was honored... Read More →

  Eric Metaxas, who, along with his wife Susanne, was honored as a Human Life Foundation Great Defender of Life (2013), has a new book out, Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your life. Metaxas is the author of the NY Times best-selling... Read More →

Planned Parenthood has a global and national presence; being well-funded, it seeks to provide its “services” at more and more locations. Not content with over 700 “health centers” throughout the United States, the organization recently broke ground for the construction of a $9... Read More →

If, as the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, maybe the women of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign should be pleased by Planned Parenthood’s new fundraising campaign. A story on the Bloomberg News website explains how the tactics developed in the fight... Read More →

On May 18th my first book saw the light. It’s called Where Do I Fit In? A New Yorker in Never-never City (http://www.editorialconfluencias.com/que-pinto-yo-aqui/). I’m translating from Spanish. The book, published in the media and language of the country where I’ve lived for the... Read More →

When my mother died, I, who had been fairly stoic during the months of her final illness and hospice care, started wailing, shrieking really, uncontrollably. I couldn’t help it, even though as the big sister I felt guilty for calling attention to myself when my three siblings... Read More →

Unborn Child is the title of an album boldly released in 1974 by the rock duo Seals and Crofts at the height of their popularity. Ever hear of it? Didn’t think so. Even if you were a pop music fan during the 1970’s you likely have no recollection of the album, or its title song,... Read More →

Doris Gordon, the Jewish atheist pro-life activist who founded Libertarians for Life, died July 7, after a long illness. She was 86. A lifelong resident of Silver Spring, Maryland, Gordon is best known as an advocate for the unborn, although she spent years in the pro-choice... Read More →

The Senate on July 16 failed to end a filibuster in its effort to fast-track passage of Senator Patty Murray et al.’s bill to overturn the Supreme Court’s June 30 Hobby Lobby ruling. By a vote of 56-43 (four short of the number required to invoke cloture), the bill failed. Every... Read More →

This will be personal. Ten years ago, my best friend had a stroke. He lay unconscious on his bathroom floor for about 20 hours before anyone (me!) realized he wasn’t answering his phone. I called the police before dashing to his house. Officers were there when I arrived; Richard... Read More →

RMP:  Good Morning Mr. Hentoff, thank you for taking the time to talk about Jim McFadden and the Human Life Review. NH: Thank you for calling me. Yes, of course, I love the McFaddens. They are some of the most important people in my life. RMP:  As we discussed last week, the... Read More →

Jennifer Lahl on Breeders: A Subclass of Women? Jennifer Lahl, Director and Executive Producer of the new documentary film Breeders: A  Subclass of Women? about the experience of women and surrogacy, is president and founder of the Center for Bioethics and Culture in Pleasant... Read More →

  This month a new abortion comedy titled Obvious Child opens in theaters. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it, abortion comedy? Okay, how about a comedy with a story about abortion? That may be even more accurate, because for this film, written and directed by... Read More →

It is customary for the Secretary-General of the United Nations to issue a statement every time there is a special day designated by the UN to honor or commemorate something or other. May 15th is chosen as the “International Day of Families.” Ban Ki-moon’s statement to mark this... Read More →

This is the story of Ernest Trice, who entered my life in a way I can only ascribe to Divine Providence. I am a volunteer who visits elderly and disabled persons in nursing homes. Several years ago I asked a staff member at one of these homes if they had anyone who could use a... Read More →

They came from every continent and many countries. There were more than 30 speakers with a very specific purpose: the promotion of sexual and reproductive health and rights, family planning, universal contraceptive use, and abortion. Shockingly, but perhaps not surprisingly,... Read More →

[Editor’s Note: This column originally appeared on townhall.com on March 25, 2014. reprinted here with permission.] What a joy to find the New York Times editorial page staff on duty whenever a tough moral question arises, such as, “Can the U. S. government require business... Read More →

Witnessing to Life in 2014 [This is the text of the Keynote Talk for the Sacred Heart Major Seminarians’ 5th Annual Charity “Dinner for Life” for Rachel’s Vineyard on February 7, 2014, in Detroit. Mark S. Latkovic, S.T.D., is Professor of Moral Theology at Sacred Heart Major... Read More →

      Superceleb Wendy Davis—headed down the path to becoming Wendy Who?—won, as expected, the Texas Democratic primary for governor. She plans to base her campaign against Republican Greg Abbott on education, the economy, and jobs. As if Abbott were likely to let her off the... Read More →

  The February 5, 2014 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) features an opinion piece by two bioethicists and a medical doctor vigorously defending a “brain death” definition of death against individual dissenters—such as the McMath family in California—in the name... Read More →

  On Sunday, February 9, the Swiss electorate voted on three referenda, one of which was the following: Do you accept the popular initiative “Paying for an abortion is a private matter—reduce the burden on health insurance by ending basic coverage for abortion?” The popular... Read More →

     The late Fr. Stanley L. Jaki once remarked that “it takes unusually strong guts to challenge that secularist and unabashedly anti-Catholic stronghold which is the New York Times.” His choice of the word “guts” is significant. The word “courage” is derived from the French... Read More →

  Pro-choice critics of the multi-state push for 20-week abortion bans say such bans place an undue and onerous burden on women, because many serious and “lethal” fetal abnormalities are not discovered until ultrasounds performed at about the 20-week mark. According to the Alan... Read More →

  My seven-year-old son and I were hunting for books in the children’s section of the local library when I noticed a text with the title Asking About Sex & Growing Up, subtitled A Question and Answer Book for Kids (2009 Revised Edition). When I saw the author’s name,... Read More →

So, the New York Times tells us, Harry Reid’s “nuclear option” to change Senate rules and ban filibusters of judicial nominations[1] was driven by—surprise!—the desire of Senate Democrats to put radical pro-abortionists on the federal bench. Our self-proclaimed national “paper of... Read More →

        “Culture of life” is a term Blessed John Paul II highlighted in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium vitae. The Pope wanted to address the civilizational struggle afoot between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death,” the latter understood as... Read More →

“Grand Bargain,” No. Serious Rethinking, Yes Many weeks ago, I all but completed a reply to the critique that George McKenna published in the Human Life Review of “Beyond the Stalemate,” my June 21 Commonweal article, on the current state and future prospects of Catholic... Read More →

  Many mental-health providers where I live, in Westchester County, New York, censor speech about abortion in day programs, outpatient or inpatient therapy, group therapy, one-on-one therapy, social clubs and half-way houses. I have a mental illness. I also believe strongly... Read More →

  It’s a Girl Directed and edited by Evan Grae Davis Produced by Andrew Brown 1:02, Shadowline Films, 2012. www.itsagirlmovie.com           “The three deadliest words in the world,” according to this documentary, are “it’s... Read More →

A Bad Bargain: A Postcript           At about the middle of September I wrote a piece on this site critical of an article in Commonweal magazine by Peter Steinfels, a writer and former editor of the magazine... Read More →

  Pope Francis’s arrival on the international scene didn’t come about without a few glitches. For instance, when he warned in a recent interview that “small minded rules” could cause “the moral edifice of the Church . . . to fall like a house of cards,” his remarks were... Read More →

(Maria McFadden Maffucci delivered this speech at the Human Life Foundation’s Great Defender of Life Dinner on Sept. 26, 2013,  at which Eric and Susanne Metaxas were honored.) Welcome to all our friends—I see many beloved faces here, and many new ones as well; I am so... Read More →

New Yorkers are used to listening to two AM all-news stations: WCBS and WINS. WINS’ venerable motto is “all news, all the time.”   Well, the motto of America’s abortion establishment is fast becoming “all abortion, all the time.”  That’s essentially what Jessica... Read More →

 A Bad Bargain In his 1858 debates with Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln argued not for an immediate national abolition of slavery but for preventing its spread into the new territories. Lincoln understood that if slavery’s growth were arrested as the rest of the... Read More →

  Back in 1968, Andy Warhol observed that everybody “will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” The latest recipient of 15 minutes of fame is Texas State Senator Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth), being lauded as gubernatorial timber (and perhaps even more) for her “epic” 1 eleven-hour... Read More →

                                                                               ... Read More →

A Belgian website features a picture of a hospital bed with some stuffed toys on it. The picture is captioned: “the latest news on the euthanasia front (from a so-called ‘civilized’ country).”1 The image vividly captures the current drumbeat for the euthanasia of minors.2... Read More →

  Oh, baby! Just can’t get enough of you! After all, how many cuddly, brand-new royal kids are out there? Just one: Prince George. And does the world love him or not? Consider:  People magazine expects to sell 1.4 million copies of its “Royal Baby Joy!” collector’s issue. ... Read More →

Imagine this scenario: an acquaintance comes up to you at a function, and you exchange the usual pleasantries—how ‘s the job, the kids, etc. And then he or she says: So, how old is “your spouse,”—“50” or so?  How’s his health? Think he’ll get cancer or have high blood... Read More →

  The June 18 vote in the House of Representatives on the “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” was telling—and what it told us about abortion absolutism was highly disturbing. The 228-196 vote was almost completely along party lines: If there are “Democrats for Life,”... Read More →

          Done.  And of course there wasn’t more than the inevitable shadow of doubt – the one that hangs over all human enterprises – that the Texas Legislature was going to pass that abortion bill, as duly happened last Saturday.... Read More →

                 The Texas Senate votes Friday or Saturday on an anti-abortion bill the House approved Wednesday, 96-49. Declares Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst: “We’re not in the filibuster range right now, and we’re going to pass th... Read More →

        Sorry, Wendy, it’s going to pass, and this time you probably can’t do a thing about it, pink sneakers or no pink sneakers.        Nothing probably is ever final in politics, and febrile assumptions can turn to dust; but... Read More →

                                                                People going into nursing homes fear both loss of independence and having little to do. Some, who are literate, maintain a degree of control by devouring books. On my visits to homes as a volunteer I’ve encountered... Read More →

            On June 13, Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack asked former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the morality of late-term abortions.  His question was probably driven by the recent convictions of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell for first degree murder of... Read More →

Welcome to the blog! Scroll down for older entries. NEW:  Wendy Davis v. Greg Abbott by William Murchison (March 7, 2014) Defining Death, Not Defining Life by John Grondelski (February 26, 2014) Double Header Blog: Sign of the Times by Donald DeMarco & Swiss Abortion... Read More →

See his wonderful acceptance speech here: Read More →

I have a daughter who’s eight years younger than a friend’s. My friend, therefore, has become a kind of authority on what to expect a little bit down the road. When my Alexandra became a teenager, he warned: “Right now your daughter knows you are the biggest nerd in the world.... Read More →

               You wouldn’t think there’d be any doubt that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a votary of abortion.  You would have thought wrong. Read More →

Nat Hentoff : Why Obama is Silent on Murdered Babies Read More →

Why Obama is Silent on Murdered Babies Read More →

President Obama could really learn a thing or two about Planned Parenthood from the Human Life Review . . .     Read More →

The Human Life Review is proud to be a co-sponsor of the National Prayer Service: the largest national, interdenominational prayer service in observance of 40 years since Roe vs. Wade. On Friday, January 25, 2013 from 8:30-10:30 a.m., this service will take place in Constitution... Read More →

            Re the Nov. 6 mess: First thing to say is, can we avoid the sin of over-extrapolation? The journalistic, not to say human, tendency is to ride every political tide out to sea and back. Gee, if we’re here now, won’t we... Read More →

I am the president of the Human Life Foundation, a non-profit, non-sectarian organization in Manhattan, dedicated to the defense of human life, founded in 1974 in response to the Roe. v. Wade decision. Our quarterly journal, the Human Life Review, seeks to change hearts and... Read More →

This article was originally published in our Spring 2010 issue. The author suggested that we post this article on our website, saying: “The new Government has announced a reform of the abortion law, but it is still unclear how it would be implemented. That is the reason why... Read More →

National Catholic Register editorial on March for Life 2012 Read More →

Maria McFadden Maffucci speaks to CNSNews.com about Reagan’s Historic “Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation” Read More →