Insisting on Life features commentary, reflections and news from Maria McFadden Maffucci and special guests.

The name is taken from the title the Human Life Review gave to the collection of essays from the late, great pro-life journalist and Review contributor Nat Hentoff—published when we honored him with our Great Defender of Life Award in 2005.

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Maria McFadden Maffucci is editor in chief of the Human Life Review and President of the Human Life Foundation.

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Posts

No Shoes, No Recognition for the Unborn?

    I recently had the opportunity to revisit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Although I had been there several times before, this time was different: I went with the scourge of abortion foremost in my mind, hoping to reflect intently on the similarities between...
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Archbishop Paglia: Channeling Mario Cuomo?

    Personally I would not practice assisted suicide, but I understand that legal mediation can constitute the greatest common good that is concretely possible in the conditions in which we find ourselves. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia No small number of Church officials undoubtedly hope...
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In Memoriam: Damian Jon Geminder 1989-2023

  This edition of Insisting on Life pays tribute to a young man who was always doing exactly that.  _________________________________________________________ Damian Jon Geminder died on April 20, after suffering a massive heart attack on March 1. He was 33 years old. The Director of Public...
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Cancel the Revolution

       Bullies have a right to protest, but that right doesn’t extend to dragooning others into untruths—including the untruth that people who join a hateful mob have any intention of listening to a speaker in the first place. They don’t . . . —Mary Eberstadt, The Wall Street Journal, March 26,...
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Insisting on Life: Encounter: Worldview Matters, featuring Maria McFadden Maffucci

    In the January 19th edition of David Vaughan’s radio program, Encounter: Worldview Matters, broadcast from St. Louis, Maria talks about the organization’s history and mission then talks about the changes in the pro-life movement happening due to the Dobbs decision. David had great...
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Happy Birthday, Judge Buckley! 

  In honor of Judge James L. Buckley’s centennial birthday, today, we are reprinting here his speech when he accepted our Great Defender of Life Award,  in 2012.    Thank you all. I am deeply touched by the honor you are conferring on me tonight, but I am truly undeserving and I...
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Unexpected: A new movie about hope

  The first thing I’ll say about the movie, Unexpected, is that it lives up to its title. Each time I thought “Oh right, this is how its going to go, ” I was brought up short by a, well, unexpected plot twist. I’m not going to spoil that for you here. The movie, directed by David Hunt and...
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Remembering Father Kaz

  “Happiness in Heaven” is the ultimate goal, drilled in to kids from an early age by rote repetition—if you attended parochial school in a certain era. Definitely a positive future endeavor! Since the overturn of Roe last June, I often think of recent inductees into this happiness, those...
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Erika Bachiochi on: Why can’t (and shouldn’t) a woman be more like a man.

  Pro-lifers in Washington for the March for Life had an opportunity to hear Erika Bachiochi speak about her latest book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision  published in 2021 by the University of Notre Dame Press.  She spoke twice: the evening before the March, together with...
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“God already sees the entire future of that embryo”

The following is an excerpt from the late Pope Benedict XVI’s General Audience on December 28, 2005, on the Feast of the Holy Innocents.  Psalm 139[138] “The wonder of my being’ Evening Prayer – Wednesday of the Fourth Week Dear Brothers and Sisters, 1. At this General...
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Will the “World’s First Artificial Womb Facility” Incubate 30,000 Lab-Grown Children Every Year?

  Moral disgust and fascination are often two sides of the same coin when it comes to new developments in biotechnology. In many ways, it is the capacity for moral disgust that will save our society by steering us away from the encroaching culture of death. But that capacity for moral...
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Receiving Treatment for an Ectopic Pregnancy Is Neither an Abortion nor a Choice

  The Supreme Court decision last June that overturned Roe v. Wade has initiated a noisy national conversation in which abortion advocates have asserted that elective abortion (or termination) is a treatment for ectopic pregnancies. It is not. And I should know, because several years ago I...
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