Good day. I’m hoping that you are experiencing the close of May with some refreshment. I’m constantly hearing two things: new life and deaths. Both, I pray, focus us on what matters most: how we love in the present moment.
The Pope’s New Letter ‘About AI’ Is Really All About Sex, of Course
By now, the algorithms working overtime on my phone suggest that every person on earth has commented on the first papal encyclical of Chicago-born Leo. The interest has to do with a few things: that it’s about artificial intelligence and that he’s the first pope who has operated on the Interwebs and social media. (The man tweeted! And about a pro-life march in Peru!) That it came out on Memorial Day, at a time when, frankly, people are war-weary and anxious (Iran), had something to do with it. (Long weekends are slow news cycles even when a lot is happening, simply because things are designed for at least some of the regulars who are taking a day or more off.)
But there is one thing that has not been said. Even as I’ve commented, I held this one off. I was going to let someone else say it. But here we are: You do realize, don’t you, what this encyclical is really about? Magnifica Humanitas is about sex.
Yes, I just wrote that to be provocative — so some website can enjoy ranting about conservatives obsessed with the topic. Consider it my response to the New York Times’ choice to run a pre-encyclical commentary arguing that, as pontiff, Pope Leo has chosen to move beyond the so-called pelvic issues. No culture war for him! Just like Francis. Nothing like Benedict and John Paul II. Here’s the problem with that kind of thinking (and I’m responding to the general attitude as I’ve heard it in recent days and more typically): Our problem, more broadly speaking, is reducing abortion to sex. Yes, that’s what it takes — normally, traditionally — to make a baby. (Though that doesn’t always seem to be as obvious as we can pretend.) Abortion is an anthropological issue. It’s a human rights issue. It’s as fundamental an issue as your birthday and your identity. And both of those things — birthdays and identities — are so much more important and loaded than we acknowledge.
Magnifica Humanitas is not an encyclical on artificial intelligence. It’s not Everything You Ever Really Wanted to Know About AI but Were Afraid to Ask Grok/ChatGPT/Claude. It’s about who the human being is. Because nothing in the world makes sense without having some solid grounding in who we are. And we all too often don’t. Or, even if we do, there is a world of distractions of various kinds and degrees trying to take us away from the meaning of life.
I’ve read this week that there should be more about Christ, more about sin, more about many other things both theological and technological in Magnifica Humanitas. It seems to me there is more than enough in its 42,000 words to keep us busy for a while on just that text. And at core, that text — and everything in the Magisterium of the Catholic Church — is at the service of helping men come to know who they are in the eyes of God. An encyclical can’t exactly personalize that to every individual in the world: Pope Leo handing K-Lo a document on who she is in the eyes of the Father while using ChatGPT. It can give some guidance and reiterate some moral principles, communicated in a particular context — in this case, making sense of AI. Magnifica Humanitas does that.
And about “sex” and this single encyclical:
Human rights are inviolable, since they are “inherent in the human person and in human dignity.” [67] Consequently, they are universal and inalienable. [68] Precisely because they are grounded in the common dignity of every man and woman, they have practical consequences and legal effects, for “it would be vain to proclaim human rights if, at the same time, everything were not done to ensure the duty of respecting them, respect by all, in all places and for all.” [69] Among these rights, the first is the right to life, from conception to its natural end, [70] without which it is impossible to exercise any other right. When this fundamental right is denied — as in the cases of induced abortion, killing of the innocent and euthanasia — we are faced with choices that the Church considers gravely wrong. [71]
And did I mention that Pope Leo was the first pope to issue a statement to the March for Life this past January? And sorry to disappoint anyone — that wasn’t Leo making life with his MAGA brother easier at Thanksgiving. It was also about human anthropology. It was also about who we are as people. You, me, all of us. It’s both that simple and that complicated. All of it. Basically, everything we spend our days thinking are the most important things at this moment come down to that. But feel free to enjoy being distracted by thinking it’s all about The Donald or Claude or whatever is before you next as the thing to be outraged about, or enslaved to, or however the distraction may play itself out. We’re all human with limited time. How are we going to be good stewards of the life we have? That’s what it comes down to. That’s what every encyclical is about: pointing man to God for the answer.
Also This Week in Leo: On Life
The Chicago Kid in Rome also met with “Members of the Demography Intergroup of the European Parliament” this week and talked family, sterility, abortion, and euthanasia. From Pope Leo’s remarks:
As representatives of your respective peoples, reflecting a plurality of political opinion within the Member States of the European Union, your focus on the Continent’s demographic question is certainly timely, for this issue signifies an urgent challenge with practical implications for millions of people and their families across “what is becoming the ‘old continent’ — no longer because of its glorious history, but because of its advancing age,” as Pope Francis often emphasized (Address to the General States of Birth Assembly, 14 May 2021). The problems resulting from zero-growth demographics are many and complex, and include, not least, the pandemic of loneliness. Moreover, demographic data are not merely statistics, but speak of fatherhood, motherhood and children. And children are the future! Yet, speaking of the future points to an integral and sustainable development, which is seriously impeded without solidarity between generations (cf. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 195). Sadly, such solidarity requires an intergenerational balance that is currently lacking in Europe.
Furthermore, over recent decades, we can see that a rejection of the Christian inspiration of the founding fathers of the EU institutions has led to a time of drastic sterility, not only because too many have been deprived of the right to be born, but also because there has been a failure to pass on the material and cultural tools that young people need to face the future (cf. Pope Francis, cis, Address to Participants in the Dialogue “(Re)Thinking Europe: A Christian contribution to the future of the European Project”, 28 October 2017). As a result, we are not infrequently faced with the contradictory claims of purportedly family-friendly policies, which simultaneously promote discrimination against motherhood, exalt abortion as a right, and undermine the very foundation of the desire to start a family. Happily, there are wonderful exceptions with us today!
Abortion Pills Brutally and Dangerously Kill. Does Anyone Care?
Women are getting abortion pills in the mail well beyond the FDA’s ten-week limit — it’s routine for 81 percent of online abortion businesses. That’s one of the takeaways from a new Charlotte Lozier Institute report: “An Overview of Online Abortion Drug Access in Post-Dobbs America.” The real overarching takeaway, of course, is what anyone with eyes to see and ears to listen can easily acknowledge if they care to: Abortion pills are dangerous to women. Yes, they kill babies. But if you’ve decided to overlook that for reasons of institutional injustice, or women’s empowerment, or “science is science,” except when we don’t want it to be, so be it. Sending a woman — or 18-year-old or college kid — pills so she can end a pregnancy without doctor oversight is cruel and callous, and the scene she’s likely to encounter alone in a bathroom is going to be a bloody mess. And the knowledge of what that bloody mess is — her baby — will be hard if not impossible to ever shake. But by all means, Republicans and Democrats alike: Be at peace that you can ignore the issue for an electoral cycle. It’s not as if politics is supposed to be in service of the human person or anything quaint like that.
Forgive my cynicism. I’m angry because there are well-intentioned people who sign on to the pro-choice point of view who — if you’ve heard me say this once, you’ve probably heard me say it 10 million times — care about women and babies. They want to know that a woman in difficult, even desperate, situations knows she has options. They don’t want to see mother and child perpetually struggling. There’s no way we — as individuals, communities, churches, workplaces, cities, states, nations — are doing everything within our means to help mothers and children. But most of us who disagree have some basic decency in common. We need to use the phrase “people of goodwill” again. There are more of us than we realize or that a glance at headlines on any given day would suggest.
Watch my interview with Ingrid Skop, M.D., about the report here.
Other Things
Sejal Hathi is described as “a new mother, a physician and the director of the Oregon Health Authority” in her bioline for her essay in the New York Times, “Nine Months of Medical Attention. Then Almost Nothing.”
She writes:
One year after my daughter’s birth, I still begin most days in a body I no longer fully recognize. I sustained a third-degree tear during delivery and spent months dealing with urinary incontinence. Pregnancy separated my abdominal muscles, and their stubborn refusal to reknit rendered even the most ordinary movement, like lifting my daughter from her crib, a willful act.
I had nowhere obvious to turn. My obstetric specialist discharged me at six weeks after delivery, and the general OB clinic was stretched so thin it had stopped scheduling new postpartum patients. My primary care physician said postpartum recovery was outside her scope. So I assembled my own care: researching my symptoms, calling pelvic floor therapists, coordinating referrals.
I am a physician who runs her state’s health agency. I had good insurance, paid leave and a fluency with institutions most new mothers should never need. What I did not have was a single provider who could serve as a quarterback for my care.
The dominant obstetric care model treats postpartum recovery as a brief coda to pregnancy: a short follow-up interval, punctuated by a three- to six-week clinic visit. Our reimbursement system reinforces that assumption, bundling prenatal care, delivery and immediate postpartum care into a single global fee, even as recovery extends months longer. . . .
Beyond the first few weeks after delivery, no single clinician owns accountability for the mother’s recovery and well-being. Her baby will see a pediatrician seven or more times in the first year of life. Whether the mother sees a doctor will depend largely on whether something goes wrong.
And she shares this:
My husband and I always imagined we would have more than one child. I understand more viscerally now why so many women stop at one — not because they don’t want another child, but because they know how swiftly the system lets go once the baby arrives.
It’s likely a Times-worthy point because JD Vance and peeps say, Have more babies, as he and his wife are currently doing. It’s a bipartisan/nonpartisan issue, however, anytime, for anyone human.
Crazy thought: Let’s rally around women and babies — and families — as a top priority. In life, for life. And certainly in public policy, including on health care.
Also: I remember being in my early twenties reading about the push to have morning-after pills in medicine cabinets and women’s purses. Now Planned Parenthood is actively marketing “Just in Case Abortion Pills” to “offer peace of mind for patients who are not currently pregnant and want to keep abortion medication on-hand — just in case.” Does anyone even remember when Bill Clinton — not exactly the herald of women’s rights and health and dignity — talked about abortion as “safe, legal, and rare.” The industry wasn’t on board with it then, and they are not even pretending anymore.
I’m flying to Buffalo this weekend. I hope my pilot isn’t on this list Le Monde covers here:
The network of US pilots helping women seek abortion care
NBC: New Jersey officer catches 1-month-old baby thrown from 2nd-floor balcony
Upcoming
March 31–April 2: Heartbeat International Annual Pregnancy Help Conference, Atlanta, Ga.
June 20: March for Life, Des Moines, Iowa
August 22: Day of Prayer & Healing for Men from Abortion
May 30: March for Life, Salem, Ore.
September 21: March for Life, Harrisburg, Pa.
October 2: March for Life, Columbus, Ohio
October 8: March for Life, Trenton, N.J.
October 9: March for Life, Bismarck, N.D.
For more information on state marches, see here.
SEND ME YOUR NOTICES ABOUT EVENTS AND DEADLINES OF INTEREST TO READERS WHO CARE ABOUT BUILDING AND NOURISHING AND EDUCATING THEMSELVES ABOUT A CULTURE OF LIFE AND CIVILIZATION OF LOVE.
Around National Review
Michael J. New: NPR Reports Democratic Candidates Are Downplaying Abortion
Brittany Bernstein: Texas Mom Recorded as Her Premature Daughter Beat the Odds. The Videos Became a Viral Pro-Life Sensation
Wesley J. Smith: Bioethicists: ‘Terminally Sedate’ People Committing Suicide by Self-Starvation
The Editors: MAID Gone Mad in Canada
Me:
Abortion Pills Kill. Do We Care?
Martin Short, Drawn to God’s Light?
Living Dying with Barney Frank
And watch or listen to the interview I did this week with Father Joseph Fessio, Mark Brumley, and Charlie Camosy on Pope Leo and AI. The link to the YouTube video is here.
Last Things
I’m just getting back on board life after medical leave, so do check in with me about what’s going on in your world. We all should be doing a lot more of that, whether it be about pro-life projects or the project of life. (Wise guys will say email K-Lo about sex. Please don’t. That’s what my spam filter is for.) Email me, by the way, at klopez@nationalreview.com. God bless you!