When National Review was founded in 1955, our founding statement talked about standing athwart history yelling Stop! We have been dedicated, by design and from the beginning, to be intolerant of evil. Sometimes threats to vulnerable human life are ubiquitous. Other times they are intimate, and duplicitously hidden by euphemisms, made worse by the the extreme misery of politics. These threats are very much what Bill Buckley and crew had in mind, even if all that we face today could not be predicted in full detail back then. In this sense, this new newsletter is nothing new. We have started it knowing that the challenges to vulnerable human life are in many ways greater than they’ve been. The Lifeline seeks to help, broadly and practically.
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New York Won’t Get Away with Murder in Texas
The end of Roe v. Wade has given way to a war among states. My native New York has been living up to its abortion-capital nickname. Governor Kathy Hochul, who likes to mention that she’s a baptized Catholic, when it’s convenient, said even before the Dobbs decision that the Empire State would welcome women who seek abortions, insisting that the suffragettes would have been standing with her abortion extremism — even though they were, in fact, against abortion. In the wake of Dobbs, she is a fierce defender of doctors such as Margaret Carpenter, who are sending abortion pills out of state.
This week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Ulster County, N.Y., clerk for refusing to enforce a Texas district court $100,000 fine against Carpenter. “No matter where they reside, pro-abortion extremists who send drugs designed to kill the unborn into Texas will face the full force of our state’s pro-life laws.”
New York is hiding behind a 2023 shield law, which N.Y. AG Letitia James’s office says “broadly prohibits law enforcement and other state officials from cooperating with investigations into reproductive or gender-affirming health care (‘protected health care’) so long as the care was lawfully provided in New York.”
Spare Us the PowerPoint Presentation
Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson had Grammy winner Victoria Monét on their podcast, IMO, in an episode that aired last week. The former first lady asked Monét about how she has managed to balance motherhood and career. Monét explained how “disheartening” it was when business partners encouraged her (the verb she used) to have an abortion when she had become pregnant during Covid. Although she was already in her 30s, she was told that she had plenty of time to choose motherhood later — “What’s the rush?” — and one member of her team, she says, went through the trouble of putting together a PowerPoint presentation for her on the hardships and expenses of raising a child.
Obama and her brother seemed disappointed and even shocked by Monét’s testimony. Obama, who is, of course, an advocate of legal abortion, said “of course, all kids are a blessing,” while acknowledging the challenges of parenting.
Monét, by the way, wasn’t making a political statement but a human one — the kind that makes you wonder if we can stop seeing everything through ideological glasses and find some common ground to protect the unborn and their mothers from the culture of death. Monét campaigned for Kamala Harris last fall, committing at an Atlanta rally to do what she can to make sure that her daughter “lives freely” and “has autonomy over her own body . . . whatever gender or sexual orientation applies.” Monét also encouraged those gathered to not only vote but make sure that their friends, neighbors, and “booty calls” vote, too.
Motherhood Is Truly Fantastic
(Spoiler alert)
For the second time in this newsletter, I am kinda, sorta weighing in on a superhero movie with zero expertise on the matter. But not only does the new Fantastic Four movie have pro-life themes, an extremely pregnant Vanessa Kirby (who plays Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman) is leaning into it, as the kids say. “Moms are the real superheroes.”
“She’s pregnant. She gives birth. Then she’s a new mother all while this existential intergalactic threat is coming and this mission is taking place,” Kirby recently said about her character. “I was so honored that Marvel asked me to take this journey but also wanted to portray a mother like that. Because it’s metaphorical . . . for what mothers do every day.”
As Variety — no pro-life rag — describes:
“Fantastic Four” opens with the revelation that Sue is pregnant, and follows the heroic astronaut and her husband Reed Richards as they question if their son will be born with any abnormalities due to their own intergalactic abilities. When Galactus and his herald, Shalla-Bal, express their intent to . . . devour the earth, Sue and her team travel to space and attempt to change his mind. She eventually gives birth to her son Franklin, and refuses to offer him up as a bargaining chip. When Galactus descends upon earth, she exerts her full powers in an effort to save Franklin, ultimately sacrificing herself — until the infant manages to revive her.
Also from the Variety interview with Kirby:
I remember reading that going, “this is so cool that, at the midpoint of the movie, it centers this woman giving birth, and these three kind and loving men supporting her as she’s doing it.” It was so cool to see that a superhero was doing something so primal and so utterly human. I was most excited for that bit.
Kirby also talks about how her character isn’t saving the world just for the sake of saving the world: “I’m fighting to save my child.”
We Choose Death When We’ve Already Been Abandoned
You may recall that the House of Commons in London recently embraced doctor-assisted suicide. Laws that legalize medical death are just codifying what is already in the cultural bloodstream.
Tim Hull is sick of trying to get the British health-care system to treat his sickness.
BBC reports:
It is the battles to get the health and care support he needs which have driven him to make the desperate decision, says Tim. He feels abandoned by health professionals, has been moved from one waiting list to another, has not been provided with the right equipment to help him and has been bed-bound for nearly seven months.
In February, he stopped taking the medication that prevents his kidneys from failing. They are now beginning to give up and he knows he has months, if not weeks, to live.
“I don’t feel that things are going to get any better than this,” he tells BBC News. “I just feel [ending my life] would be a better option than lying in bed 24 hours a day.”
Tim’s neurological condition is rare, however, many of the difficulties he has faced feel familiar to many.
Over the past two years, BBC News has been contacted by the families of more than 250 people with serious disabilities or illnesses about their struggles to access health and care services.
It’s agonizing to read all the unnecessary frustrations that the National Health Service’s incompetence have added to Hull’s suffering. This is no way to treat a human being. It’s more of the same kind of abandonment, only quicker, under assisted suicide.
Eugenics. We Actually Do Do That
So, the media have been ridiculously carrying on this week about an American Eagle jeans ad. A blonde, blue-eyed model mentions having good genes. A pun. In advertising. What fun. But we’re not smart enough for those — or mature enough, anyway. Or maybe we’re too smart for our own good, trying to create controversies — and see racism — where there aren’t any.
I already pointed out that the Planned Parenthood Dems are trying to have judges force taxpayers to continue to fund a business that was truly founded on eugenics. But it’s not just Democrats.
An IVF start-up, Herasight, has an application that calculates how successful its embryo selection process might be for your desired traits in a child — which can include a specific level of IQ as well as the elimination of certain diseases.
Ari Schulman, editor of the New Atlantis, tweeted: “People still think ‘Gattaca’ is just a fairy tale, because a eugenic dystopia must be something imposed on us rather than something we all voluntary choose.”
All It Takes Is Basic Biology?
I never want to make the abortion issue sound easy — there are so many emotions and abuses and miseries that shape people’s opinions on legal abortion. That said, the group Secular Pro-Life has a survey of “non-traditional pro-lifers,” which you are invited to fill out if it describes you. Among the respondents is a self-described scientist who has a deep appreciation for the basics of biology.
Around National Review
John Gerardi: Planned Parenthood Got More Taxpayer Money than PBS and NPR Combined
Dan McLaughlin: The Worst Decision Yet on Funding Planned Parenthood
Michael J. New: Over 30 Planned Parenthood Facilities Have Announced Closures in 2025
Ramesh Ponnuru: On Abortion, NPR Picked Its Side Long Ago
Haley Strack: The Dangers of Surrogacy
Me: Make Respect for Human Life and Love Great Again: On Humanae Vitae and World IVF Day
American Eagle vs. Actual Evil
Congratulations, Your Baby Boy Is 30 Years Old
In Indiana and Arkansas, Care and Concern for the Unborn
Upcoming
September 13: National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children (second Saturday of September)
October 5: Respect Life Sunday (first Sunday of October)
June 24–26, 2026: National Adoption Conference 2026: Lifting Voices, Building Families, in Arlington, Va.
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Thanks for spending this time thinking about life. What more can we do to protect and nourish it this week?
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Until next time, do email me anytime at klopez@nationalreview.com.