15 Things That Caught My Eye Today: Paulie Walnuts Goes to Confession, Millennial Mom Help for the GOP, and More

1. Fr. Robert Sirico’s powerful homily at the funeral Mass for his brother, Tony Sirico (“Paulie Walnuts” in The Sopranos). I cried. Just preparing you. (Start about 19:35 in and catch the Gospel, too.)

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3. Megan McArdle in the Washington Post: A Berkeley professor’s Senate testimony didn’t go how the left thinks it did

Then, when it was his turn to speak, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) returned to this exchange, saying, “You’ve referred to people with a capacity for pregnancy. Would that be … women?”

In even tones, Bridges replied that while many cisgender women have the capacity for pregnancy, many don’t, while some trans men and nonbinary people do. But after a little back-and-forth, she gave up. “So, I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic,” she said with an exasperated laugh, “and it opens up trans people to violence.”

The whole thing quickly became a Rorschach test. Many progressives cheered to see Professor Bridges school a reactionary Republican. But conservatives also cheered, because they see a gift to Republican election campaigns.

Unlike a Rorschach test, however, this one has a right answer, and the progressives have it wrong. Moreover, the fact that they can’t see just how badly this exchange went for their side shows what a big mistake it was to let academia and media institutions turn into left-wing monocultures.

4. Daily Signal: Detransitioning Teen Pleads: ‘No Child Should Have to Experience What I Have’

5. Aleteia: Ukrainian mother in Italy chooses life with the help of Help for Life Center

Faced with an unexpected pregnancy and abandoned by her fiancé, Christina found help and support at a crisis pregnancy center.

6. Abby McCloskey: The GOP Failed Millennial Moms Like Me. But It Needs Us Now More Than Ever.

For whole life conservatives, it should be a fundamental birthright that every American is entitled to spend the first months of life with their mother and father without their parents’ risk of job loss or financial instability. The literature on childhood development overwhelmingly highlights the importance of parents being present and engaged early on, and yet the status quo makes it very difficult for mothers and fathers to spend this critical time healing, adjusting and bonding with their newborn. Republicans shouldn’t nervously offer benefit trades, like dipping into your Social Security if you want to have access to paid leave following birth — they should go all in and make America a global leader in our care for new mothers. I’ve argued for six weeks as a bare minimum of paid parental leave, but the research supports significantly longer durations. A federal paid parental leave program is not just a patch or a backup plan; it’s a cultural shift that this time of intensive caregiving and attachment is worth protecting for everyone, irrespective of their occupation or the state they live in. It’s a signal for our value of life and care.

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I’d prefer not to grow the government either, but that doesn’t mean we have to continue to decrease the already shrinking share of the pie going to children. Spending for these priorities should come from a massive overhaul of our existing system. Our entitlement spending is disproportionately tilted to older people, including those with significant means. It makes little sense why we’d commit as a country to a safety net for the 20+ years at the end of life, but not at the beginning. (Unless, of course, you look at who is in political leadership and who votes.)

Yes, this would take hard work and compromise. That’s what government is for. Instead, I fear many in the GOP would rather call out companies who provide stipends to employees to travel for abortions, further stoking the new culture war that has broken out over abortion in the wake of Dobbs — instead of striving to make America the best place to be a mother and raise kids.

7. Jeanneane Maxon: With Roe Reversed, Pro-Lifers Prepare to Help More Women Facing Unintended Pregnancies

8. Hadley Heath Manning: Do Pro-Life Christians Have A Special Obligation To Women And Babies?

Some earnest pro-life Christians have responded defensively to the message of “you better provide foster care!” by pointing out that many people who share their views are already actively supporting pregnant women, babies, and children.

It’s true, and in recent years many Christian churches have made foster care a focus. In the last decade, an explosion of Christian “bridge organizations” has dramatically increased foster care in the Christian community, using churches to recruit, train, and support Christian foster parents. Project 1:27 is one of these organizations. It started in Arizona and now operates in eight states. Other organizations include 4KIDS, Promise686, the 111 Project, Orphan Care Alliance, Focus on the Family’s Adoption and Foster Care Initiative, and the CALL — a group in Arkansas that is responsible for signing up more than one half of the state’s foster families.

Christians and churches support marginalized children with their wallets as well. From 2010 to 2015, giving to Christian orphan care rose more than 87 percent, and giving to adoption rose more than 73 percent.

But the motivating factor behind all of this giving and volunteering isn’t a pro-life political view. It’s Christianity itself. In fact, all Christians, regardless of their views on abortion, are called to care for “the least of these,” which can mean marginalized people of all kinds, including the homeless, refugees, prisoners, orphans, widows, and others.

That’s right: Even Christians who consider themselves to be pro-choice receive the same teaching and face the same mandate to support expectant moms and their children (as well as other people in need). And frankly, it’s not a kind or generous thing for anyone to offer to sponsor someone’s abortion travel). Using your personal resources to sponsor someone’s out-of-state travel for abortion means you are not even “personally pro-life” — the term many liberals use for the “I would never do it, but…” position.

And here’s another difficult truth: Christians cannot outsource their responsibility for the poor to the government. Some progressives seem to believe that supporting women in need only requires marking a ballot a particular way (a way that would increase government programs that purport to address social problems). Conservatives are more likely to personally feel the weight of their social responsibility and in response, to volunteer or donate to charities.

9. Marta Hummel Mossburg: Rebranding Pregnancy Help Centers

The opposition has a big advantage. A 2014 survey of 1000 American women and 300 men from 18 to 44 years old by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute found that 93 percent of women and 90 percent of men had heard of Planned Parenthood, which dominates the abortion market in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and the Guttmacher Institute both compile data on the number of induced abortions each year, and their data vary widely. According to their numbers and Planned Parenthood’s self-reporting, the group provides either 56 percent of abortions in the U.S. each year (per the CDC) or 38 percent (per Guttmacher). Whichever number is more accurate,  “the level of market dominance… could be taught in business schools as the ultimate example of planning and execution.”

Pregnancy help centers should seek the same recognition for themselves in the quest to save more lives. They already have a great reputation, as surveys routinely show those who visit them—about 2 million people each year—have favorable opinions of the services and care offered at the centers. Think of the lives that could be saved if even 50 percent of people, instead of the 4 percent noted above, referred friends with an unexpected pregnancy to a pregnancy help center instead of Planned Parenthood or another abortion clinic.

It is difficult to know the name of the local pregnancy health center when there are 2,700 different ones, however. What if each, for example, was called “Pregnancy Support Network” plus a city name?

10. Kristen Waggoner & Erin Hawley: Roe v. Wade Did Not Empower Women, It Lied To Them

Roe was not the pro-woman opinion that some imagine. In a patriarchal passage the pro-abortion left would rather forget, Roe gave to a woman’s doctor the authority to choose abortion. It stated that “the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient’s pregnancy should be terminated.” This was the money line from Roe.

As the late-Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted, Roe was “physician-centered,” focusing on “a doctor’s freedom to practice his profession as he thinks best.” “The picture that I got from [Roe],” Justice Ginsburg said, “was tall doctor and little woman needing . . . his advice and care.”

Roe was premised on the lie that bodily autonomy always wins. Yet the law has always recognized that one’s right to autonomy does not exist in isolation. One’s right to swing his arm “ends just where the other man’s nose begins.” Thus, none of us has the right to injure another person in the exercise of our own bodily autonomy. That’s why murder is a crime in every state. Yet Roe placed bodily autonomy over everything else, allowing for the purposeful destruction of a second life.

11. The Telegraph: JK Rowling backs parents told disabled daughter did not have right to female-only care

12. Tom Hogan in City Journal: Philly in Black and White

Philadelphia is experiencing the dreaded long, hot summer. Violent crime continues to soar, from premeditated ambushes to seemingly random juvenile attacks. Under district attorney Larry Krasner’s catch-and-release crime policies, Philadelphia homicides are in a statistical dead heat with last year’s record-breaking numbers. The response of city leaders? They’re imposing a lockdown, creating a curfew, and politely asking murderers to stay home at night.

The summer literally started with a bang, as the first hot weekend led to a mass shooting in the popular tourist destination on South Street, with three victims murdered and many others injured. Then, at a Fourth of July celebration, two police officers were shot, leading to Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney’s now-infamous admission that he was tired of being the city’s leader and would be happy when he was out of office. Just a few days after the Fourth of July disaster, another Philadelphia murder victim—a young man allegedly killed by gang violence—was taken in a procession to a cemetery. As the line of mourners in cars crossed a street on the city’s outskirts, men lying in wait drove up alongside the procession, got out of their car, and opened fire on two other young men in one of the funeral cars, killing both. Police did not hesitate to call the murders an “ambush.” So now the funerals of homicide victims are themselves occasions for more murders—a stark testament to Philadelphia’s out-of-control retaliatory violence.

The latest high-profile murder almost defies belief. A 73-year-old man was walking along a North Philly street when seven teens, boys and girls, attacked the man with a traffic cone, beating him to death. It all was captured on video, which has since been released to the public in an attempt to identify the teens, who looked like they were having a great time killing a defenseless old man.

Philadelphia’s response to the violence would be laughable if the subject matter weren’t so grim. The fainthearted Mayor Kenney, who wishes to be elsewhere, signed a bill establishing a 10 p.m. curfew for everybody under 18. But police aren’t even allowed to fine juveniles out past curfew; instead, officers must make “every reasonable effort” to take them home. Not surprisingly, criminal-justice experts call the curfew “pointless.” Perhaps it should have occurred to the mayor that teens who will not follow the law against killing are also unlikely to observe a law that says be home by 10 p.m.

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15. Many years ago, I was in Santorini on an NR cruise (with Kate and Jim O’Beirne and beloved others). I was in this monastery and didn’t want to leave. Was pretty sure it was one of the closest spots on earth to Heaven.

AP: On Greece’s Santorini, 13 Cloistered Nuns Pray for the World