What a life.
We get to begin again and again. Another day. Another chance.
And while the topic of human life — politicized as abortion and assisted suicide most contentiously — seems all the more confusing and frustrating in many ways since the Dobbs case at the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade, it’s also a still-new reality (when you consider three years vs. 50) to try something better for women and children and families. As we considered last week and no doubt will again, that requires men to buy in, in a significant way, to the idea that women deserve better than abortion.
August 15, by the way, is the Feast of the Assumption of Mary (into heaven) in the Catholic Church. Also known, to some folks raised Catholic, as the-day-Mom-made-us-go-to-church-on-a-weekday-during-summer-vacation. (It’s a holy day of obligation — consider that a public service announcement if you’re Catholic.) We must note the Marian celebration because we will never have a culture of life and civilization of love without honoring women and motherhood.
And, when it comes to Mary, mother of God, William F. Buckley Jr., of course, had the best line, from his essay in the 1969 book Spectrum of Catholic Attitudes: “What disturbs me most about the opposition to Mary is that it is so unchivalrous.”
Leave the Little Sisters of the Poor Alone Already!
Yes, I’m yelling. It’s come to this. A little bit of righteous anger is called for. Just ask Bishop Barron.
The Little Sisters of the Poor had another loss in court this week, 14 years after the Obama administration forced these Catholic religious sisters who care for the elderly poor to fight for their religious freedom over the Obamacare Department of Health and Human Services mandate for contraception and abortion-inducing drugs.
You can watch my conversation with Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of Becket, the law firm for religious liberty, here.
A Little About Women, and a Letter to Them
One of my favorite Peggy Noonan columns reflected on John Paul II and women. In 2017, she was writing during the Me Too eruption and quoted from his 1995 “Letter to Women,” sent to the Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing.
“As a document it has more or less fallen through history’s cracks,” she commented. “But it’s deeply pertinent to this moment and was written with pronounced warmth by a man who before he became a priest hoped to be a playwright.”
She wrote:
John Paul hit hard on “the long and degrading history . . . of violence against women in the area of sexuality”: “The time has come to condemn . . . the types of sexual violence which frequently have women for their object, and to pass laws which effectively defend them from such violence.”
There is more, and I urge you to read it, but it is a very modern document, a feminist statement in the best sense. . . . At the heart of the current scandals is a simple disrespect and disregard for women, and an inability to love them.
I bring this up because JPII’s letter and Peggy’s column both stand the test of time. Not only would women not be abused if the beauty and value of the feminine were known and appreciated, but abortion would not be as mainstream as it is. Abortion is abuse of women. A culture that considers abortion — abusing women and killing children — sacrosanct doesn’t honor and respect women.
I also raise this because Peggy Noonan and I will be talking about women — and many other things — to women in Manhattan next month. It’s part of a GIVEN program. GIVEN is a bit of a movement in the making; it’s an organization that educates, nourishes, and mentors young Catholic women on their essential dignity as creations of God, beloved daughters of the Father. It holds forums that are essentially enriching immersion retreats in understanding the richness of women, complementarity with men, and all the gifts we have been given and that we can be to one another.
More information here. See you there? It will be fun.
Canada Is Killing Herself — and People Are Noticing
A former National Review Institute William F. Buckley journalism fellow has an important piece in The Atlantic this month. “Canada Is Killing Itself,” the title of the work by Elaina Plott Calabro affirms. It’s a long, difficult article to read, but well done. In some places up north, it’s easier to get a green light for medical suicide than to get a wheelchair.
Pretty much the whole report is alarming.
There was Alan Nicols, who applied for MAID, or Medical Aid in Dying (the current preferred euphemism for doctors killing patients with their permission), while on suicide watch at a British Columbia hospital. “A few weeks later, he was euthanized on the basis of ‘hearing loss.’”
One family physician interviewed has killed more than 430 patients in nine years.
One woman with rheumatoid arthritis was having a “suicidal crisis” and showed up at Vancouver General Hospital for help. There was a psychiatrist available, but not a bed. So the clinician asked whether she ever considered MAID. She wound up leaving the hospital in a “panic” and “the encounter had validated many of her worst fears: that she was a ‘burden’ on an overtaxed system and that it would be ‘reasonable’ for her to want to die.”
Doing harm. That’s what MAID is all about.
And when assisted suicide expands to children, parents will not be considered those who know best. Calabro writes:
As Canadians await the rollout of psychiatric MAID, Parliament’s Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying has formally recommended expanding MAID access to mature minors. In the committee’s 2023 report, following a series of hearings, lawmakers acknowledged the various factors that could affect young people’s capacity to evaluate their circumstances — for one, the adolescent brain’s far from fully developed faculties for “risk assessment and decision-making.” But they noted that, according to several parliamentary witnesses, children with serious medical conditions “tend to possess an uncommon level of maturity.” The committee advised that MAID be limited (“at this stage”) to minors with reasonably foreseeable natural deaths, and endorsed a requirement for “parental consultation,” but not parental consent. As a lawyer with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan told the committee, “Parents may be reluctant to consent to the death of their child.”
One palliative-care physician in Toronto was disturbed when she had to kill a patient who was “all alone” in a rental apartment. He gave his final consent from a mattress on the floor. The doctor had to “kneel next to the mattress in the otherwise empty space to administer the drugs.” He told Calabro it was “horrible.”
The doctor’s solution? To establish a Medical Aid in Dying House where people can be killed more routinely and comfortably.
This is not normal. This is not healthy. Canada, heal thyself. And, American kids, isn’t this enough northern exposure to avoid importing any more of it here?
Around National Review
New JAMA Study Shows Prevalence of Telehealth Abortion
Man Who Assaulted Baltimore Pro-Lifers Escapes Jail Time
There Are More Sisters of Life for Life This Week
Costco Opts Out of Being a Latter-Day Abortion Clinic
Upcoming
Carter Snead and Dr. Lydia Dugsdale are among those participating in a Pittsburgh debate moderated by Bari Weiss on September 10: Is Designing Babies Unethical — or a Moral Imperative?
Will you join me? At the Aid for Women dinner in Chicago on September 25.
The Women’s New Life clinic in New Orleans will have its Gala for Life on October 3.
There is a post-abortion healing retreat for men in Westchester, N.Y., on November 8 and for post-abortive women November 23–25 in Doylestown, Pa. For more information, contact Lumina.
Help Wanted
Sidewalk Advocates for Life is hiring (remotely) — including for chief operating officer. More here.
And Now for Something Beautiful
Do you know about Bella Health and Wellness in Colorado? This is the kind of holistic pro-life health care we need more of. Of course, the state decided to stop them from one of their services: abortion-pill reversal. Far from something sinister, the treatment involves giving a woman progesterone to stop the effects of mifepristone, the key hormone in a chemical abortion. Women who have second thoughts and want to intervene to save the life of their baby after they’ve taken the first pill in the abortion-pill cocktail should have the right to simply get some progesterone. It’s just about the most natural thing in the world for a pregnant woman. The campaign against pro-life clinics and medical centers continues, and abortion-pill reversal continues, but Bella has won (another Becket victory) for now. Get to know a bit about them from my interview with their co-founder (with her daughter) Dede Chism, here.
In closing — please make sure you are subscribed to this new pro-life newsletter from National Review. And think about who among your friends and family and coworkers and associates might benefit from receiving it. Sign up here. Or send them an introduction to The Lifeline with a prompt to subscribe. The more of us who are on the same page, in the same conversation, the more the word gets around about what’s going on with life and death and what we can do.
School is starting up, and if you know campus groups in need of speakers or pro-life fundraisers in need of the same, please don’t hesitate to ask. The schedule is getting crowded, but for a good cause, room can often be made. Also: Send me your news, your feedback, and other thoughts. Thank you. I’m at klopez@nationalreview.com.
And I do hope you do check in on nationalreview.com during the week. Much more to come on the site, and in the next Lifeline. Thank you for being here and coming back.