What percentage of raped women become pregnant? Answer: nobody knows. Strike that. Many people claim to know, but the actual rate is hidden from us, though it can be estimated with considerable uncertainty. Maybe the better question is, are pregnancy rates higher, the same, or smaller for raped women than for non-raped women? Answer: nobody … Read more
Next week, the Supreme Court will begin its consideration of two cases, one concerning the Defense of Marriage Act and the other California’s Proposition 8 Amendment, which may settle in the near-term the questions concerning the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. Both the Marriage Act and Proposition 8 define marriage as being between a man and … Read more
The dominant secular culture portrays the world of In vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogate pregnancies as a great advance for mankind, even as it generates a stream of horror stories beyond the imagination of Greek tragedians. Not a week passes, it seems, without a new disturbing permutation to this culture. “Surrogate offered $10,000 to abort … Read more
In a recent National Public Radio broadcast and accompanying article entitled “Morning-After Pills Don’t Cause Abortion, Studies Say,” NPR journalist Julie Rovner reported that the Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate doesn’t force people to pay for abortion-inducing drugs. The article focuses on drugs commonly known as “morning-after” pills, which actually can be used to stop pregnancy … Read more
Every parent has experienced a child caught in the act, perhaps even with evidence of melted chocolate still on the corner of her lip, who resolutely denied the obvious. “What? Who me? Couldn’t be!” A good many parents have also encountered the icy indifference of a bolder child, one who does not care if he’s … Read more
Forty years ago this month, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down every law in the land protecting the right of any child simply to be born. All at once, amid the sound and fury of imploding statutes, the most dangerous place in America became a mother’s womb. Since Roe v. Wade authorized … Read more
It was, not so very long ago, widely regarded in this country as morally wrong and, not infrequently, socially ruinous, for a man to walk out on his wife and children. In 1961, for example, Nelson Rockefeller, who was then Governor of New York, decided to divorce his wife of more than twenty years, for … Read more
When the Supreme Court struck down all state laws restricting abortion in Roe v. Wade, the justices were undoing the work of a group of courageous physicians who had helped enact the laws a century earlier. The leading force in this movement was Dr. Horatio Robinson Storer, an energetic young obstetrician from Boston. Until the … Read more
A common trope in social policy debates is to claim that the public’s changing opinion on the policy at stake, rather than the policy’s moral or substantive justifications, merits changing the platform of one’s preferred political party. This notion seems recently to have taken root on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, and … Read more
Would you ever want to be buried alive? It’s a question Tom Stoppard raises in his absurdist drama, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. In the play, the titular Rosencrantz considers this riddle when he contemplates the experience of being a corpse in a coffin. Even taking into account the fact that you’re dead, it isn’t … Read more
Following is the homily given October 14 by Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore and the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington on the occasion of the Marian Pilgrimage for Life and Liberty. On this beautiful autumn Sunday in … Read more
Complaints that Washington-is-broken, which seem to have new intensity in recent years, often go hand-in-hand with laments about “partisanship” in politics. And, to be sure, there are reasons to be concerned about the functionality of our political system and its ability to address and solve some very serious problems. The present, sad condition of much … Read more
Leyna Gonzalez is a precious little girl – a 20 month old bundle of energy and joy. Against all odds, she is with us today. While in utero, an ultrasound was performed at seventeen weeks that revealed she had a rare tumor protruding from her mouth — an oral teratoma — making her survival highly … Read more
The Supreme Court’s minor mistakes have few systemic consequences. But when the Supremes make a big mistake, the error tends to seep throughout the entire political process, poisoning everything in its path. That was what happened with the Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, which intensified the passions and accelerated the dynamics that led to the … Read more
Originally Published in Crisis September 2008 The statements made by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Joseph Biden on Meet the Press have provided a wonderful, even providential, opportunity to present the Church’s teaching on abortion and explain its foundational importance to Catholic moral and political teaching in general. Already many bishops have … Read more
In the mid-’90s, the abortion industry in the United States realized it was facing an existential threat — the population of abortionists was aging and nobody was stepping up to take their place. Although plenty would pay lip service to a right to “choose,” when it came to the grisly work involved in “terminations,” few … Read more
I am following up a recent blogpost about China’s demographic decline. This piece from the Economist shows that the inexorable rise of the Dragon will be hindered by its demographic Achilles heel. According to the UN medium variant population projection, China’s population will dip to below 1.3 billion in 2050 (assuming that its very low fertility rate starts … Read more
Graham Preston, a 56-year-old father from Queensland, Australia, went to jail recently for refusing to pay fines of roughly $8000 that have accumulated after 10 years of non-violently blocking the entrances of four abortion clinics around the state capital, Brisbane. He refuses to pay the fines on principle, arguing that trying to save the innocent … Read more
A learned friend of mine recently wrote an op-ed piece for a newspaper in which she argued that the drive for same-sex marriage is not simply about same-sex marriage; it is also about winning moral approval for homosexuality. If society, acting through the state, tells us that homosexuals can marry one another, then it is … Read more
“What’s the secret to comedy? Timing!” My director told me this again and again during rehearsals for a comedic play. It’s true. All comedians know this rule, whether intuitively or because they have the same director as I had. Daniel Tosh is no exception. He recently had a young lady named Marion Jones on his show Tosh.O. … Read more