Greetings. Today is one week until Holy Saturday. It’s a day of a weird silence and lamentations that run deep. Come morning and midday, I’m always still stuck on Good Friday — on my sins. I try to imagine a world without redemption, that doesn’t know God in any way at all.
It’s too much to take.
Easter invites us to embrace new life. When I think of how prevalent anxiety and depression are — so serious that people have serious thoughts of suicide and worse, reportedly, and anecdotally, at alarming, even pandemic levels — I plead in prayer that people come to the miracle of knowing God’s love for them.
Which is why I tend toward the long Easter Vigil Mass. “O happy fault!” is exulted. If it were not for our fallen nature — our sins — we would have no need of a Savior.
May every chocolate bunny consumed plant a seed of a question: Why are the stores all decked out in the pope’s supposedly favorite candy, Peeps? May we all realize that there is an opportunity for new life daily. We can begin again, showing thanksgiving for our lives and the lives of everyone we know.
Prayers for your Easter, spring, next few hours . . . everything.
A Half Century of Living in the US of A
So, speaking of human life: I’ve officially hit a half century on this earth. (Despite my early love for The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, it’s all been spent on one planet. Perhaps the “To Serve Man” episode scared me away from experimenting above and beyond our home.) I tell you because gratitude for our lives is always good. In fact, I do not believe we can pretend to truly be pro-life and change human hearts and minds — and culture — without celebrating birthdays. And as grateful I am for every Facebook message on or around March 22, I also am talking about something else: Make a birthday count. Don’t assume someone else is taking care of it. Don’t assume that because there are many people in a person’s life that she will get beautiful notes and fresh flowers or a book for transforming meditation or some other fruit.
For my birthday — and I figure you get a few days — I’m asking you if you would please donate to the Sisters of Life. Spend a little time on their website. Sign yourself up for their quarterly newsletter. It’s free and full of tender encouragement for everyone on earth. It will inspire you, help you in struggles, and remind you that you are not alone and also that no one is meant to be alone.
And please use this birthday link to donate. Gifts modest and extravagant are encouraged — and the sisters will be praying for you and your intentions. I will, too.
Birthdays Need to be Celebrated: A Life-Giving Baby Step
I Look Awesome for 250: Can You Do Me a Favor for Life?
Dead in Spain: The March of Medical Death Continues
Noelia Castillo Ramos was killed this week. She was 25 and had suffered the torture of a gang rape in a government facility for vulnerable youth. She later attempted suicide in 2022 by jumping off a building and was left a paraplegic.
“I don’t feel like doing anything: not going out, not eating,” the beautiful young woman, clearly in physical and mental anguish, said in an interview. “Sleeping is very difficult for me, and I have back and leg pain.”
Noelia said: “I’ve told them how I want it to be. I want to die looking beautiful. I’ve always thought I want to die looking good. I’ll wear my prettiest dress and put on makeup; it will be something simple.”
She also made clear she was not an invalid — presumably as evidence that she was of sound mind when requesting euthanasia: “I am not bedridden or anything of the sort; I get out of bed. I shower all by myself. As you have seen, I apply my own makeup and manage my own affairs.”
So-called mercy killing is out of control all over the world. Helping people through physical and mental suffering is not simple, but it’s the decent, human thing to do. Instead, our medical professions — and our consciences — are being taken over by the culture of death. And to the young, with life ahead of them, we owe better — as we do to the elderly, and to everyone who’s homeless, depressed, or struggling with any other new “condition” that doctors and lawyers will come up with today to get rid of “imperfect” human beings.
You or someone you love could be next. Let’s love one another better, not cast aside people as they become less productive and more reliant on others. Fact of the matter is that Barbra Streisand was right when she sang that people who need people are the luckiest people in the world — though I would swap out “luckiest” for “most blessed.” And we all need people. Remember that the next time you nearly pass by a person without a thought or word or help. Remember those whom you tend to forget — an uncle in a nursing home, your parent you maybe take for granted while he’s still alive. We are not meant to be alone. And remembering that while looking with love at other human faces is also essential to being truly pro-life. People do know us by our love — lack of, too.
Say Her Name: Karnamaya Mongar
What will it take? What level of barbarism, government incompetence, ideological blindness, and moral absence will it take for Americans to be shocked by abortion?
That was a question many of us asked back when Kermit Gosnell was in the news. His abortion “clinic” was dubbed a “house of horrors” by a Pennsylvania grand jury. His subsequent trial got shamefully little media coverage, perhaps because poor women and their children were his victims. No doubt because the evil within his abattoir had to do with an evil throughout our society: abortion. We pretend it’s a right. We pretend it’s just another medical procedure. We pretend a woman is not a free citizen without it. These are all miserable lies that end life and that forever devastate those who remain.
Karnamaya Mongar is a name most of America doesn’t know, but we do her a grave dishonor by our ignorance — or dismissal. A Bhutanese refugee, she was 44 years old and 19 weeks pregnant when she showed up at Gosnell’s place, where she experienced malpractice after malpractice.
We have the opportunity to remember her because Gosnell died in prison on March 1. His case was about more than him and his slaughterhouse. It was about abortion in the United States and what we are willing to tolerate or look away from. Abortion poisons everything it touches and is part of the air we breathe.
Lynda Williams, a Gosnell employee, who spent time in prison for her work there, testified in the trial about Mongar’s case:
Before the procedure, Williams gave Mongar one pill of Cytotec, a drug used to induce labor. Williams also assisted in administering local anesthesia. When Mongar complained of pain, Williams said she called Gosnell, who told her to administer a second round of local anesthesia.
Mongar’s pain did not subside, but turned severe, according to Williams. She testified that she was afraid to call Gosnell a second time, so she gave the patient more anesthesia, but only half the amount she’d given the other two times. Williams said when she did relent and consult the doctor again, he told her to give Mongar more anesthesia.
After the fourth dose of anesthesia, Williams said Mongar’s skin turned gray in color and her breathing slowed. She said Gosnell continued to perform the abortion, and once the procedure was over, he started CPR on Mongar and told Williams to call 911.
Mongar was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where she died the next day. After an initial ruling of “accidental” death, once the medical examiner reviewed toxicology reports, he changed Mongar’s cause of death to an overdose of Demerol.
There’s so much to say about Gosnell, but for now, how about people who did the right thing?
Husband-and-wife team Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer did yeomen’s work chronicling the barbarity that Gosnell inflicted. They dubbed him “America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer.”
They even wrote a play, Oh Gosnell, that was performed off-Broadway.
Jim McFadden, of happy memory, as they say, founded the Human Life Review because we need to have a record of how bad things got — and highlight strategies and encouragement about how to do better. I don’t know the solution to ending abortion in the United States, but I know we all have a role to play in it.
From our editorial about Gosnell:
Gosnell’s life’s work is a testimony to gruesome neglect in American law and society. This neglect allowed Gosnell to profit at incredible cost to his community, to unborn children, and to women in difficult pregnancies. Prosecutors speculated that Gosnell caused perhaps hundreds of born-alive infant deaths. . . .
The Gosnell case exposed more than a clinic; it also exposed Pennsylvania’s government, and ultimately American society. The Pennsylvania Department of Health had three decades to detect and shut down Gosnell’s “Women’s Medical Society.” For political reasons, it was decided that inspections would, inherently, impede “access” to abortion.
Flashbacks, by me: Kermit Gosnell, Our ‘Monster’
Oh Gosnell Is Telling the Truth about Abortion
Foster Care: What Not to Do
I’m delighted we’re featuring Naomi Schaefer Riley in the current print edition of National Review. (You do subscribe, don’t you? Do it here if you don’t!)
She writes:
The notion that children are removed from their homes because parents can’t afford a car seat is not true. But this kind of myth is repeated by politicians and advocates across the political spectrum. Last year, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R., Mo.) introduced a piece of child-welfare legislation by saying, “I think about the families separated in Missouri over the years, not because of abuse or neglect, but because they could not afford to pay a bill or [buy] new clothes for their kids.”
It is true that families involved in the child-welfare system are disproportionately poor, but it does not automatically follow that poverty is what is causing their children to be removed to foster care. Indeed, there are millions of families in this country who are poor but do not neglect their children. Of the almost 12 million children living below the poverty line in the United States, there were 546,000 substantiated claims of abuse or neglect in 2023, according to the Children’s Defense Fund and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families. In other words, 95 percent of kids living in poverty did not have a substantiated claim.
Children who are neglected often lack resources. But more often than not, that neglect is a result of parents who suffer from mental illness or addiction and are unwilling or unable to care for them.
Riley, a former NR intern of many years ago now, has become the foremost expert on foster-care policy in America. She’s filling a void that is an unforced error and a blind spot for conservatives — child-welfare policy and monitoring. The work she is doing should be an examination of conscience for our culture, which includes each and every one of us. When I talk about her excellent book, No Way to Treat a Child, I often acknowledge that it’s a depressing read, but I highlight one chapter that is pure inspiration, challenging us with what works. How can your church, community organization, or family rise to the occasion to make sure that no child is orphaned, that every child has a forever family?
Naomi’s “The Wrong Way to Fix Foster Care” can be read here.
Other Things
• Four percent of all deaths in Belgium in 2025 were assisted suicide.
Some good news, in case you missed it: Scotland has voted down legal assisted suicide. The more this happens, the better. The inconsistency of governments putting out public-service announcements and spending money on suicide-prevention programs while recommending suicide to patients is clear to anyone paying attention.
• Nicholas Eberstadt on Paul Ehrlich
• My friend Chelsea Sobolik, a pro-life and human-rights, activist, is, with her husband, adopting a second child from India.
What more can we do for children without families here and abroad?
Please pray for the growing Sobolik family and for anyone considering adoption or foster care.
Around National Review
• Rachel Lu: The Pro-Life Future
• Ramesh Ponnuru: A Republican Failure
• Michael J. New: New Guttmacher Data Show Slight Abortion Increase in 2025
• Kamden Mulder: ‘Slap in the Face’: Major Pro-Life Group Unloads on Trump Admin After DOJ Moves to Dismiss Abortion Pill Suits
• Wesley J. Smith: Force Pregnant Girls to Have Abortions, Says Ethics Article
• Michael J. New: New Pew Poll Show Gains in Pro-Life Sentiment
• Ramesh Ponnuru: Indiana Judge Uses Religious Freedom to Defend Abortion
• John Gerardi: Prosecuting Women for Abortions Would Be an Evidentiary Nightmare
• Me: Remembering a Media Trailblazer, Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation
Upcoming
• Check out remaining state marches for life for this calendar year.
• Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit, September 23–25, 2026, Atlanta, Ga.
• Sidewalk Advocates for Life Conference, October 23–24, Dallas, Texas.
• March for Life, January 22, 2027, Washington, D.C.
• Send any announcements/invitations about your pro-life events to me at klopez@nationalreview.com.
One Final Thing for Life
Lou Holtz, the legendary Fighting Irish coach, died on March 4. While in hospice, he would reportedly ask visitors, until the end, “What can I do for you?”
The lesson of Holtz’s life is “to care more about doing for others than you do for yourself,” said his son Skip Holtz. “When you think of Lou Holtz, find the persons closest to you and ask them, ‘What can I do for you?’ If we can all do that, we will continue his legacy by making this a little warmer, better place than we found it. Yes, he was successful, but most of all, he was incredibly significant and he changed people’s lives for the better. He made you want to be a better Christian, a better person, a better husband, a better father, a better student.”