Thank you for joining me for a third installment of this weekly pro-life newsletter. (If you haven’t already, please sign up here to receive this newsletter every Friday in your inbox).
I wanted to start with a community note: Dovie Eisner, a bit of a phenom in religious-liberty-friendly circles, remains hospitalized and seemingly unresponsive to communication. At the same time, he appears the definition of serenity — visitors to his hospital room do not see agony, but love. As those of you who know or of him are aware, he is physically disabled. On a good day he was not walking or breathing on his own. His devoted parents show what family is, living and breathing the value of human life because it is always precious. I walked into his father singing psalms in Hebrew on Thursday. The love of a parent for a child is one of our greatest resources. If you pray, please do keep him in your prayers. That this happened just after he courageously wrote against assisted suicide — currently a live threat in our shared Empire State can be no coincidence.
Don’t Let Planned Parenthood’s Lies Hit You on Their Way Out
Make no mistake: It is good news for women, the unborn, families, the cause of human life, and the so-called soul of America that Planned Parenthoods are closing around the country and the House voted to nix its federal funding. We’ll see about the Senate. Hillary Clinton and others are playing to type and disingenuously increasing the emotional — and, with no self-awareness — blood-stained (quite actually) imagery. (And, what happened to rare, Dems for Life asks?)
It is also a sign of the times. Abortion happens by telehealth and over the mail today — and at hospitals, when they are later along in pregnancy. Abortion clinics aren’t needed like they once were for abortions to happen in America.
As this transition happens — increased numbers of abortions happening by pills — don’t let the abortion industry pull a fast one. This NPR report about four Planned Parenthood clinics closing in Michigan says that of the four, the one in Marquette is “the only clinic that provided abortion in the vast, sparsely populated Upper Peninsula.” That sounded wrong — when states like New York are heralding their telehealth and postal powers (extra-state, to Hell with other state’s laws). Sure enough, Planned Parenthood itself says the abortion pill is provided “at all” of its Michigan locations.
Abortion by pill is abortion, too. Don’t let its hidden mainstreaming be presented otherwise. The end product, like with any “successful” abortion is a dead baby. And it’s another layer of cruel: A mother will find herself alone with the remains of her child to discard.
I’ve spent more days outside my own Planned Parenthood in New York haunted by a sign they would put out including in some of the darkest days of the Covid shutdowns: “We are open and we are here for you.” No more. That’s something to be grateful for.
It comes with its own/new challenges, as I talked recently with New York’s Cardinal Dolan about on his radio/TV show. But despite their deceptions, they were already outnumbered by medical centers providing actual health care to women. (See the recent Charlotte Lozier study, which I talked with its lead researcher about here.)
And speaking of Charlotte Lozier, they have some news about those claims that the abortion pills are safer than Tylenol. (They are not.)
Leo Is ‘One of Us’!
That was March for Life president Jennie Lichter’s exclamation/proclamation this week upon further confirmation that the new pope (you may have heard that he was born in Chicago?) was a member of Villanovans for Life as an undergrad, who attended then-new annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.
My daydream is to have an unprecedented pro-life rally emanating from the Philadelphia-suburb campus. If you want to join me in my dreaming, holler at klopez@nationalreview.com. (It might not be the craziest thing.)
For inside-baseball followers, this week the controversial head of the Pontifical Academy of Life was replaced. There are questions about a position taken by the new president, who has a medical degree (theology, too), on an end-of-life political debate and one on contraception. As I mentioned in a conversation with EWTN’s Matthew Bunson about his new book on Leo XIV (yes, you read that right), the former seems as prudential question. The latter troubles me more, but there still may be more to be seen in the pope prioritizing retiring Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia from the position (and with an internal promotion, with its pluses and minuses).
It’s optics, but I’ll take a pope able to catch a pope doll knitted for him and thrown to him at his latest Wednesday audience. That, along with him making clear his Catholic takes on abortion and marriage from the top, are good signs. And speaking of signs, even after the end of Roe v. Wade, I suspect his former presence at the U.S. March for Life will keep young people heading to D.C. every January, on the decision’s anniversary, to give voice to the voiceless unborn and their mothers who deserve better than abortion.
Fostering and Adopting After Roe
National Review alum Katie Yoder takes a look at the foster and adoption landscape after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision three years ago this summer — there’s some increase in interest in adoption, but it’s not clear how much. For one snapshot:
Melissa Bowe, director of family services at Catholic Charities of the Diocese of La Crosse in Wisconsin, which has provided adoption services for more than 100 years, said they saw a slight increase in the need for their services, but only immediately after the Dobbs decision. The state bans abortions at 22 weeks gestation.
“We have had women come to us specifically because of Dobbs, because they wanted to get an abortion and they couldn’t,” she said.
Bowe said that their numbers have remained consistent over the last three years, with about 60 to 70 finalizations (the completion of the adoption process in court) per year. However, they are seeing an increase in relatives, particularly grandparents, seeking to adopt their grandchildren.
Bowe’s agency is responding: They are connecting these grandparents with each other so that they know they’re not alone.
One thing we know is that abortion-minded women often think adoption is actually foster care — so they’d rather choose abortion than send their child into a government mess. But, of course, couples want babies to love. They are not owed your baby, but they are ready and willing and they are not a sentence as a ward to the state. Not everyone is called to foster or adopt, but whatever we can do to accompany women and educate about adoption and fostering — and whatever we can do to make it all more human, this is where we need to be. And, yes, life after Roe makes it all the more urgent and all the more an opportunity.
Georgia on My Mind
Adriana Smith, the 30-year-old mother and nurse, who is being kept alive to save the life of her unborn son, deserves and requires treatment beyond a paragraph in a newsletter. The most important thing to say is: What an awful, heart-wrenching story. The media coverage has focused on the state’s pro-life law as mandating Emory University Hospital to keep her alive. Defenders of the law point to an advance-directive law instead (Smith doesn’t have paperwork on her wishes). Her parents, in anguish, have named her son Chance, and are hoping he will be born healthy, for them to raise. What’s clear is no “side” should be exploiting this case, and, if the details are what have been reported and she is being kept alive only by extraordinary means, most reasonable people wouldn’t consider it a matter of moral mandate to keep mother and child on machines until he can be delivered. Former Planned Parenthood director-turned-pro-life-advocate Abby Johnson shared some compassionate thoughts on social media this week.
Please only add love to the mix on this one — the anger and even opportunism is unbearable, and that’s saying something on a topic where they often are.
Also note that the family has a fundraiser for medical needs. And before that went live, Students for Life reached out to the hospital and are raising money to go directly to help pay the family’s medical bills.
Other Things
Abortion for unborn babies with Down Syndrome is up 80 percent in four years in Scotland. A few years back, actress Patricia Heaton blew me away with her passion — and knowledge about — the issue of eugenics and Down Syndrome in an interview.
Tzeela Gez was murdered in a terrorist attack on the West Bank when she was on the way to deliver her third child. Ravid Haim was born by emergency c-section, but has now died.
Grace-Marie Turner, a conservative health-care advocate, who I first met when I was an intern at the Heritage Foundation, has died. She is one of the most gracious people I’ve ever met — always encouraging, always radiating beauty of the kind that has supernatural roots (she treasured her Catholic faith).
Life, on and for the Road
Earlier this month, the Sisters of Life had a block party off Fifth Avenue outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral to mark the 25th anniversary of their founder’s death (to celebrate what he lived for — eternal life with God). Cardinal John O’Connor was archbishop of New York and was inspired while visiting Dachau to start a congregation of women religious who would have the protection of the sanctity of human life as part of their charism. Thirty-some years later, they took over the streets, overflowing with young people, families, and, for lack of a better way to put it, some serious influencers and effective pro-life leaders. They handed out a card that included a quote from him that gets as fundamental as the pro-life movement ever can — and must. He said that God “brought you into being because He love you for you. Not for your talents, not for your potential, not for any money you may have, not for your educational experience. He loves you for you.”
I’m a little tight with the Sisters of Life, and, goodness, can they celebrate a birthday! I’ve learned from them how widespread not having your birthday celebrated can be. Imagine never having had your birthday celebrated? Even as a child. How are you going to welcome new life into the world, when all the pressures are to abort, when no one has ever celebrated your life.
The editors assigned to this today are not happy with me, meanwhile for going on too long. (Mea maxima culpa.) Email me with your speaking requests, news, feedback, birth announcements of new NR readers, or anything else at klopez@nationalreview.
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Gratefully, for life.