Greetings from the City of Brotherly Love. I cannot ever be in Philadelphia without thinking of the saint I’ve long dubbed the patron of National Review — she died the year we were founded, 1955 — Katharine Drexel, whose remains are in the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Center City. (She’s also been known to stalk me.) Drexel famously went to Pope Leo XIII to tell him the church needed to do more for black and Indian missions. He turned it on her, asking: What about you? What are you going to do?
What about you? is the question.
What are you going to do?
That’s the question we all must ask ourselves, if we haven’t already — and far too many of us have not — as we approach the fourth anniversary later this month of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision that ended the Roe v. Wade regime in the United States.
Chemical Abortion, Revolutionizing Abuse
There’s news this week of a plea deal out of Illinois. Seven years for forcing abortion pills on your girlfriend.
Here’s how a local public-radio report put it:
A man from Normal received a seven year prison sentence after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter of an unborn child last week.
Emerson Evans, 32, was accused of inserting four abortion pills into his pregnant girlfriend without her consent, causing a miscarriage. Evans was arrested in August and originally faced three counts of intentional homicide of an unborn child and one count of aggravated assault of a pregnant person, in addition to the one count of voluntary manslaughter.
McLean County Judge Jason Chambers gave Evans seven years on the single charge in a plea deal with the state’s attorney’s office. He will be required to serve at least 50% of the sentence and will be given credit for 285 days in McLean County jail, the McLean County Circuit Clerk’s office confirmed. All other charges have been dismissed.
Evans was eligible for up to 15 years in prison for the Class 1 felony. Intentional homicide of an unborn child is a Class M felony, and would have carried a 20-year minimum sentence for each count.
Interesting wording. “Causing a miscarriage.” It’s an abortion. But we can’t call it an abortion, because we can’t admit that abortions happen under coercion — and worse?
The fact is that chemical abortion is the best friend of a man who wants to abuse women. You used to have to scare her into abortion — put the fear of a beating into her, or that you will leave, when you’ve managed to emotionally manipulate her to get what you want, when you want — or else. Melanie Israel at Heritage has been keeping a running list of some of the cases that actually make the news. It includes Rosalie Markezich’s testimony (an Alliance Defending Freedom case) about her boyfriend managing to get the pills mailed to Louisiana using her information, ultimately forcing her to take them and aborting their baby.
Meanwhile, count me among the pro-lifers underwhelmed by news that the FDA claims to be really actually reviewing how our current chemical-abortion reality came to be. If they really were concerned, they would have long ago reinstated pre-Covid-era rules, a.k.a. protections for babies and mothers, as a minimum start.
(And if you haven’t already, do listen to what Dr. Ingrid Skop from the Charlotte Lozier Institute has to say about the wild west of abortion pills in America in a video interview with me here.)
Defining Eugenics Down, Influencer-Style
The YouTube influencer Down syndrome abortion drama continues. Jesse Ridgway hailed People magazine in an X post for its “nuanced” reporting on the matter — “This is good journalism!!” The abortion announcement is getting so much attention that many are openly wondering if this is but an elaborate content–creation event (which Ridgway has been known for: namely fake-murdering his father for what turned out to be a fictional series involving his real father).
I’m taking him at his word on this one. He says it is real and that he’s going to “keep talking about it” because “aborting a child” happens a “million” times “every single year” — try more like a million-plus — and if he doesn’t “encourage the conversation,” abortions will only continue “in the shadows.”
And if you eat hamburgers, you have no moral standing to comment on his abortion, by the way.
He says his wife is suffering (which happens, because abortion hurts).
And he has no fear of going to hell, because he’s an atheist (so any testimony that a person with Down syndrome is a gift from God is definitely lost on him).
On the hamburgers-and-hot-dogs arguments: Leah Libresco Sargeant, author of The Dignity of Dependence, wonders if Ridgway is willing to go as far as Princeton’s Peter Singer goes — to defend infanticide. Because once you say a life is extinguishable because of its likely quality, why wouldn’t you extend that to, say, a toddler who comes down with an unexpected/undesired condition?
(Also, dear fellow opponents of abortion: Leading with damnation is generally not the most inviting way to convince someone to consider another way of looking at abortion. It’s why I spent some time talking about defending the faith without raising your voice and things.)
One, of course, doesn’t have to believe in the Creator to see that developing life is exactly that. It wasn’t yesterday that sonogram technology made it so that not seeing the science before us requires denial. Just this week, Becket attorneys were in court with a case involving a religious objection to the Covid vaccine. In its way, denying the science behind abortion — refusing to acknowledge that the unborn baby is human — is a religious statement. (See more in that vein in the next Lifeline item.)
As horrific as this Ridgway business is, it is a clear case of God writing straight with crooked lines. The numbers of people posting beautiful tributes to loved ones with Down syndrome — simply celebrating that they are alive and that their lives are gifts — is a breathtaking spectacle.
Karen Czarnecki is president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute. This is her brother David, who has “an extra chromosome.”
There are also these nuns who are probably — please — praying for us all right now.
‘Pro-Choice Democrats’
The phrase appeared in a New York Times op-ed this week. You may have understandably done a double take.
It’s redundant. Is there another kind of Democrat, after all? Ask pro-life Dan Lipinski what happens to such a Democrat. (You get primaried and become a former member of Congress.)
It’s also an understatement.
The author acknowledges that — it’s, in fact, the point of his piece.
Democrats who advocate any restrictions on abortion are a dying breed. The Democratic platform once talked about reducing the need for abortion; no such language exists now.
I had to smile when I saw that Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day linked to the op–ed, describing the author, Zaid Jilani, as “anti-abortion.” That’s not unlikely; he’s Muslim. (I’m not assuming; he’s written as much.) On the other hand, Andrew Sullivan had Jilani on his podcast earlier this year and described him as a “young center-left journalist”; he’s written for ThinkProgress, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and Alternet. He has a Substack “from a decidedly anti-partisan perspective.”
That’s all a long way of saying: I don’t know if he is or not. But Valenti’s lead evidence is a link to a repost of a Lila Rose tweet criticizing Donald Trump for saying the Hyde amendment prohibiting federal funding of abortion should be “flexible.” Jilani comments: “The man [] believes it’s OK to drop a bomb on a boat carrying marijuana and murder everyone on it also doesn’t care about the moral issues surrounding abortion? You don’t say?”
That’s not too controversial or revealing a note.
He does later use “we” when writing:
It’s time for supporters of abortion rights to realize that nuance and compromise aren’t dirty words. Dogmatism was always the purview of the Christian right, not the secular left. There are millions of Americans in the middle of the polarized abortion debate, and the Democrats should realize we exist and meet us where we are.
Being a bridge-the-divide kinda guy — not being an extremist — does not reveal him to be a secret leader in a sinister pro-life plot to end abortion in America. Politicians who get away with being considered pro-life don’t even pretend to have that position anymore, since the Republican Party took exactly that out of their platform. And it’s precisely that kind of extremist thinking dominating the mainstream that keeps us in our miserable abortion politics in America.
Jilani, by the way, reminds Democrats that it wasn’t long ago when they — Bill Clinton — could admit that abortion “is not just a routine medical procedure like a root canal, and it would be best if it was rare.”
In case we needed reminding: Abortion is a sacrament, and reasonableness is a mortal sin.
That’s not a red-meat line, by the way. Nancy Pelosi has referred to abortion as “sacred ground.” Late-term abortionist Leroy Carhart, who died in 2023, : “I think out of respect and love and honor for this baby that you’ve lost, you will find yourself being a better person.”
These are leading abortion principals in their own words. (Also the stuff of Smithsonian Americana.)
Valenti is dedicated to that tradition. Is everyone who is left of center?
I certainly pray not.
Suicidal New York
New rules have been issued for the implementation of doctor-assisted suicide in the Empire State. From the New York Post:
Under the law, the ill patient must “self-administer” the suicidal medication prescribed by a doctor.
“A patient may use a tool or assistive device to help self-administer the medication, but the patient must perform a final, physical act to self-administer it. The medication may not be administered by a person other than the patient,” the rules say.
The regulations don’t specify what drugs can be used for doctor assisted suicide.
Under the law, the “underlying terminal illness or condition” of the patient must be listed as the cause of death, not the suicide drugs.
Just look across the border to Canada to see what a confusing, deadly nightmare this is opening the floodgates for — all orchestrated by the former Hemlock Society, now known as Compassion & Choices, and its media and political enablers.
The new archbishop of New York, Ronald Hicks, had a recent piece calling assisted suicide yet another example of what Pope Francis often called a throwaway society.
Valerie Pavilonis had a good item in The Dispatch about our inconsistencies when it comes to suicide — why do reports on suicide have warnings in the media if, say, you jump off a bridge, but not if you get a prescription?
An American Pope in España
Pope Leo’s apostolic journey to Spain has been extraordinary. For one, the blessing of the tower of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona — now the tallest church in the world — was worth the wait.
He was given a seven-minute standing ovation after speaking to the Spanish parliament:
Every truly just society is built upon the recognition of the inviolable dignity of the human person. Such dignity precedes any concession by the State and cannot be subordinated to shifting social consensus or the whims of the majority at any given moment. It belongs to every human being by the very fact of their existence, and for this reason, it must guide every positive legal system. The Christian faith proclaims it on the basis of Revelation; human reason can recognize it as a requirement inscribed in the truth of man. When this conviction remains alive, the law becomes a safeguard for all and a guarantee against the imposition of particular interests and agendas.
He warned against “the throwaway culture”:
If life ceases to be recognized as a fundamental value, what future can our societies have? Can a community that casts into the shadows the unborn child, the elderly, the sick, those who suffer in silence, or those who depend entirely on the care of others be called fully just?
Leo said that “the defense of human life is neither a partisan issue nor a confessional interest: it is a goal of civilization.” Continuing:
Every human life must be recognized and safeguarded from conception to its natural end, in every circumstance of its existence. When this certainty is obscured, the most vulnerable are the first victims, and the law loses its deepest meaning: to serve and protect every person. For this reason, the moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to accompany, protect and love those lives that are most fragile.
He also highlighted the family as “the primary human reality and the natural foundation of the community.” I have a lot of favorite moments from the papal trip — and that’s even with a language barrier (forgive the misleading Lopez; perhaps I should change it to O’Lopez) that keeps me from a comprehensive view. Among them:
An exchange with a young woman who talked about her failed suicide attempt.
And something lighter: Papal time in a cockpit traveling from Madrid to Barcelona.
Around National Review
• Katelyn Walls Shelton: Sarah Ruden’s Alternative History of Women
Michael J. New:
• New Gallup Poll Shows Gains in Social Conservatism
• Trial of Bay Area Pro-Life Activist Ends in Mistrial
• Wesley J. Smith: Americans Are of Two Minds About the ‘Moral Acceptability’ of Suicide
Me:
• Trump? Not Pro-Life? Surely You Jest!
• Women Rule: A Casual History of Women in the Catholic Church with Bronwen McShea
• Do Conservatives Care to Have a Conscience?
Upcoming
• June 18, Good Counsel Homes is having a Semiquincentennial fundraising dinner honoring Morton Blackwell and Mary Margaret Olohan, in Washington, D.C.
• June 20, Students for Life and others mark Celebrate Life Weekend in D.C.
• August 18-21, Care Net’s National Conference, Houston
• September 28, Human Life Review’s 23rd Annual Great Defender of Life Dinner, New York City. I’ll be introducing honoree Cardinal Timothy Dolan
Closing Time
Keep us here at The Lifeline up to speed about events, initiatives, opportunities, and concerns that should be on our radar. Email me early and often at klopez@nationalreview.com
God bless you and the lives you cherish.