The Daisy Chain Fields Festival was a feminist fest in California last weekend organized by entertainer Olivia Rodrigo. One write-up described how “for just one day our humanity wasn’t up for debate,” speaking for women.
First thing: Women’s humanity is not up for debate as a general rule. Just look at the life of Gloria Steinem, who died this week. She had some wonderful opportunities throughout her life (including working for the CIA!), and even after railing against men, married one — although he succumbed to cancer three years later.
Secondly, it’s actual feminist progressive politics that punish women for being women — insisting that women’s fertility is a curse of nature. Women’s medicine has therefore become an instrument of medicating away her fertility — until she wants it. The industry then makes her spend a fortune and often leaves her without the desired baby, anyway. So much for those lies about having it all on your own timeline, following career scripts instead of life and love and family ones.
But, please, don’t let reality get in the way of religious fervor about abortion.
Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill — of “riot grrrl” feminist punk fame — said from the stage:
A lot of us feel like this government f***ing hates us and wants us dead. They don’t give a sh** about anybody’s health care. They don’t care if we die in parking lots of curable illnesses. They don’t care if our rights are taken away.
I’m assuming she’s talking about the likes of sepsis, which hospitals can and should treat even if a woman is pregnant. Fear being stoked by this kind of misinformation driven by the media and entertainers who are pure ideologues is what’s driving people to feel like they have to be supporters of abortion rights. A little calm — and facts — would help everyone.
With the help of Melinda Gates doubling the final number, Daisy Chain raised $20 million for nonprofits including the Center for Reproductive Rights, National Institute for Reproductive Health, National Women’s Law Center, and Planned Parenthood.
Perhaps I should have called it an abortion fest.
Speaking of: The majority of abortions in America are happening by pills. I was glad to see that the Catholic bishops’ national conference has a new prayer-and-education campaign running through the month of October about this brutal reality — the dangers, the alternatives, and the very basics of life and its defense. I talked with Kat Talalas there, whom I’ve encountered and collaborated with over the years at different junctures; we talked about the bishops’ pill push and also about the Walking with Moms in Need initiative, which is a beautiful thing when people take it up. Our conversation is here. (Apologies in advance for the awful fluorescent light on my end. Kat was sweet and funny about it at the end. Sometimes you have to laugh. Even when dealing with life and death. Maybe especially.)
Abortion and Mercy
“Abortion can be another word for mercy.” I’ve written about Anne Hathaway and pregnancy and abortion here before (defending this current pregnancy she chose). In recent days her overwrought comments on The View from a few years ago about the “reproductive destiny” of women (when she made that “mercy” comment) have been making the social media rounds again. I still contend that she’s speaking out of the grief of a post-abortive woman. As we’ve seen in the activist lives of many actresses, leaders of abortion groups, and others, sometimes the angriest, most emotional, most adamantly pro-abortion voices are post-abortive and probably in need of healing.
The good news is that there is the possibility for healing. There are Catholic ministries including Lumina, Project Rachel, and the Sisters of Life. Abby Johnson’s Pro-Love ministry and the work of her And Then There Were None go here big-time. There are some more secular-sounding ones like the Institute of Reproductive Grief Care. Don’t let yourself remain in the pain. Your healing can be a tremendous gift to others.
Her Mother-in-Law Drove This Doctor to Kill
The New York Times profiles a physician-assisted-suicide “start-up” in New York, Quiĕtus, explaining:
It all started for Tara Shapiro when her family was driving upstate for her son’s graduation, and her mother-in-law started choking. Dr. Shapiro’s husband jumped in to do the Heimlich maneuver, saving his mother’s life. Which, it turned out, made her furious. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” she told the shaken-up family. She was 81 and had a degenerative muscle disease, and had already decided that she was ready to die. That night, she and Dr. Shapiro started talking about looking for a doctor who would help her end her life.
When her death did come, that summer of 2023, the family could agree it was all very Janice Shapiro. It was on her terms. The family decided to drive up to Vermont, which had just made medical aid in dying legal for people traveling in from out of state. The Shapiros booked an Airbnb. Just before departing, they invited over a rabbi, but Ms. Shapiro didn’t like him and he was sent away. Then a priest came, whom she liked much more.
They played “My Way,” by Frank Sinatra. Dr. Shapiro recalled mixing the powders in a cup with apple juice, bringing out some sherbet to dull the taste, and handing it to her mother-in-law, who gulped the lethal combination down.
Later, the daughter-in-law explains:
“The Hippocratic oath says do no harm,” Dr. Shapiro said. “And I don’t think we’re harming anyone by doing this. I think we’re actually being compassionate and relieving suffering.”
Frankly, what I find most disturbing about the piece is how everyone involved in Quiĕtus seems to have a palliative-care/hospice/pain-management background. Kinda suggests those disciplines have lost their way. The whole point is to care for patients, not kill them.
Calling MAID Back in England
The British Parliament is about to take up assisted suicide again (the MAID is for “medical aid in dying,” which sounds more clinical than calling the doctor to kill you). Chuck Donovan writes about it here, and includes this:
The vote in Parliament next week will take place on the same date groups of radical Islamist terrorists chose suicide as the way to kill thousands of Americans. It will happen the day after the celebration of World Suicide Prevention Day, inaugurated by the International Association for Suicide Prevention and the World Health Organization in 2023. While many U.S. groups participate in the observance, the White House did not participate from 2018 to 2020 or in 2025.
A return to the observance would be welcome as campaigns for legalization and expansion of assisted suicide continue to press forward across the country. Epidemics of suicide in the general population remain a major concern, with legalization contributing to higher rates of these tragedies. These deaths more than double the number of homicides in America and receive far less attention. For these reasons and more, the vote in Parliament next week is a matter of global import.
I interviewed Charles Collins, editor in chief of Crux, which covers news from a Catholic perspective. He has written about assisted suicide there from his vantage point as someone who has had a close call and hospitalizations in England recently (he’s an American living in England; I first met him decades ago when he worked for Vatican News). You can watch/listen to our conversation on YouTube here.
Miss USA Is a Married Foster Mother
The pageant recently revised its rules. I’m a little confused but grateful for the educational opportunity that comes with this year’s winner, Justus Kelley.
Today explains:
“I’m very honest and transparent with people about how much I’ve learned since becoming a foster parent,” Kelley adds. “I had a little bit of an ignorance as to what kids would experience. I kind of assumed that every child in this situation must come from an awful situation or an awful parent. And my reality and what I’ve seen from the kiddos that have come into my home is they are coming oftentimes from families that deeply love them but are struggling, have fallen on hard times, are having housing crises and dealing with addiction.”
Kelley’s commitment to shedding light on the realities of the U.S. foster care system is evident in her Miss USA campaign. As she traveled to Miami, where this year’s competition was hosted, she carried trash bags. In an Instagram post, she explained why.
“The trash bags I carry reflect a reality far too many foster children know all too well. A trash bag should never be a child’s suitcase. Every foster child deserves to carry their belongings with dignity — and I need you to help me make that possible,” Kelley wrote in the caption.
Good Sense on Surrogacy
A quick late-August quote, FYI, from Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls:
International law doesn’t give you a right to form a family using whatever means. International law doesn’t support a view that just because you want to have a child with your genetic makeup, that you are entitled to have a child.
We might also note here that Gloria Steinem — God rest her soul — was against commercial surrogacy.
About Gloria
That point I made about Anne Hathaway, we could repeat here. This is what the late Kate the Great O’Beirne, former Washington editor of National Review, wrote in the introduction to her Women Who Make the World Worse and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports:
The feminist slogan “the personal is political” means that the ideology of the modern women’s movement was shaped by the personal experiences of its founders—and they weren’t pretty.
This was certainly true for Gloria Steinem, whose father abandoned her family when she was very young:
She was left as a young girl to care for her mentally ill mother. These are the women whose views on men and marriage inform the women’s movement. Gloria Steinem’s dysfunctional childhood persuaded her that “you become a non-person when you get married” and “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Thousands of her acolytes adopted the defiant slogan born of misery and abandonment.
Two more things: My favorite thing about that book of Kate’s was the reason she wrote it: gratitude. She was forever grateful for the gifts that she had been given in life. She names her life, her parents, her sisters, the nuns who taught her. Her faith and family were the world to her. Which is what motivated the book — she didn’t want women to be deprived of the fullness of life and love that she was able to experience.
I just was reading a Gloria Steinem interview of Dolly Parton the other day. Even Steinem couldn’t get Dolly to fall in line as a pro-abortion feminist. She loved life too much — and was deeply committed to life being about more than politics. We all need to take some of that up!
Around National Review
• Wesley J. Smith: More Bioethical Advocacy to Compel Medical Help in Self-Starvation Suicides.
• Michael J. New: Even Abortion Supporters Admit Post-Dobbs Predictions Have Not Come True.
• Abigail Anthony writes about a subtle pro-life surprise in one of her summer-reading novels.
• Kamden Mulder: Drug Companies, Prescribers Endanger Patients by Routinely Flouting FDA Rules, Senate Probe Finds.
Me:
• Women Deserve Real Health Care: The Guiding Star Project Model — a video interview with Alabama-based nurse practitioner Laura Ducote about a new telehealth platform for restorative health care for women.
• A Spot-On Response to the Met’s Galliano Exhibition Cancellation.
• Good Golly, Dolly Loved God.
Upcoming
• September 12: National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children
• September 16–18: Restoring Men’s and Women’s Health Summit: The Future of Health, Fertility, and Family Formation, Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.
• September 21: Pennsylvania March for Life, Harrisburg
• September 23–November 1: 40 Days for Life Fall Campaign
• September 23–25: “Less: Fewer Branches. Better Fruit,” Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit, Atlanta
• November — National Adoption Month
• November 8 — Pure Religion Sunday
• January 22 — Knights of Columbus and Sisters of Life Life Fest Rally, Daughters of the American Revolution Hall, Washington, D.C.
• January 22 — National March for Life, Washington, D.C.
• February 26–28: “The Strength and Beauty of Life-Affirming Medicine”
• The Matthew Bulfin Educational Conference, an annual pro-life medical conference hosted by the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, St. Louis, Mo.
Other Things
• Erin Piacenti, a 32-year-old vice president at Bank of America, was stabbed to death in Times Square as she was making her way home from work Monday. It was her first week back at work. She had been on maternity leave after the birth of her firstborn, a daughter. The baby had just been baptized.
• Naomi Schaefer Riley: Flailing ACS reveals the fatal flaw that endangers NYC kids — in its want ads.
• Liam Siegler in Christianity Today: New Research: How Do Men Choose to Choose Life?
• South Carolina has a new Pregnancy Resource Tax Credit.
• Donald DeMarco: Will Andorra legalize abortion?
• From Feminists for Life: How to Support a Pregnant Friend in High School.
Thank you for being here. Come back. Keep in touch. Spread the word. And let’s keep getting better at life and love together. The more of us who do, the more we’ll see what a glorious alternative it is to a whole lot we tend to settle for — and that our culture inflicts on the innocent. Lifegiving counter-witness can make all the difference.