Greetings from the nation’s capital, where I’m hoping to pray for you and your intentions and our nation at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception over by the Catholic University of America, by the time you read this.
The crypt church there, where I will no doubt be because I’m overdue for confession, is where Dorothy Day once had a powerful experience in prayer that helped radically change the course of her life. (It was mentioned in the homily at her funeral Mass in lower Manhattan in December 1980.)
On her 75th birthday, in 1973, Day wrote with continuing regret about her abortion, and with gratitude for the forgiveness — the mercy — of God:
God forgive us the sins of our youth! But as Zachariah sang out, “We have knowledge of salvation through forgiveness of our sins.” I don’t think anyone recognizes the comfort of this text better than I do. I have not yet been attracted by the present tendency to bring everything out into the light of day by public and published confessions. Were we not taught by Holy Mother Church to respect the modesty of the confessional? Or is that a silly expression? But oh the joy of knowing that you can always go there and be forgiven seventy times seven times. (Even though you wonder, in your distrust of yourself, whether you really mean or have the strength to “amend your life.”) I hope your readers can read between the lines from the above and recognize what my positions on birth control and abortion are.
I’ve always found that remarkable. When Commonweal asked her for a reflection for her birthday that year, that’s what she chose to write, less than a decade before her death. The pain of abortion doesn’t go away.
As I’ve often written and spoken about, she is a saint for our times, a woman whom women can relate to in the most intimately emotional and, of course, spiritual ways. (The line about her I love from Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, from a conference we were both keynoting at, is: “I don’t know if Dorothy Day is a saint, but I know she makes me want to be one.” Yup. We may have had some different politics, but the Beatitudes aren’t political or ideological.)
Anyway, that’s the kind of aside and historical flashback you can count on now and again from The Lifeline, National Review’s weekly pro-life newsletter. If you want such in your inbox, please make sure you are on the list: Subscribe here. Subscribe others, too.
Now on to other business.
More Than a Few Good Men for Life
I’ve spent the last few days at the Knights of Columbus annual convention, which happens to be in D.C. this year taking over the Reagan Hilton and then some. I’m here for a handful of reasons involving life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, basically. The Knights will forever have my loyalty for the support they gave the Christians of Iraq after the ISIS genocide. I said on EWTN the other night that there are Christians in Iraq today because of the Knights — they helped build hope for a future there. (The former man in charge there, Carl Anderson, and my late dear friend Andrew Walther are heroes of this and other stories.)
The Knights have long been a presence at the national March for Life — which we will keep doing in Washington in January until abortion ends in the United States, I pray. They also make changing the culture plausible by educating and organizing and challenging men to live lives of virtue and charity and prayer.
One of my favorite things about the Knights convention is to run into and sometimes trip over children. It tries to be as child-friendly an event as a working convention can be — with executives with babies in their arms, more often than not these days. This is the way to be “pro-natalist”: to be wholeheartedly, thoroughly pro-life.
Supporting Life, and Restoring Dignity and Confidence in Men, in War-Torn Ukraine
Behind every abortion, there is a weak man who walks away from his responsibility, Patrick Kelly, head of the Knights of Columbus, often says as he rallies the members of the Catholic fraternal organization to build a culture of life and civilization of love, as John Paul II phrased it.
Szymon Czyszek is the Knights’ director of international growth in Europe and president of the Polish Knights. Once Russia attacked Ukraine, he became intimately involved in the lives of vulnerable Ukrainians, walking alongside Ukrainian Catholics who have remained, who fled, and some who have returned — albeit in temporary housing, which Szymon calls “homes away from home.”
Among those who have been wrecked by the war are women who have been raped.
Sexual violence is obviously the most sensitive of issues — and not one that men dedicated to virtue are going to bring up casually. Szymon, a husband and father (and old friend), is in awe of the resilience and courage of women who have become pregnant under such assaults. “Many women who have experienced sexual violence have decided to give life. Even in unthinkable circumstances, they have their children. And they experience stigma for it,” he tells me. That can’t be. So, the Knights offer them — in whatever way is most appropriate to each woman and her circumstances and environment — psychological, medical, material, and spiritual support. They work with a number of partners to help priests and others with training in working with extreme trauma.
Szymon points out that the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy — the order the famous Polish saint of mercy, Sister Faustina Kowalska, who died in 1938 in Krakow, was a member of — were founded for vulnerable women who had been sexually used and abused, and they continue to serve women and their children today.
Some of their immediate future work includes a mercy center in Ukraine as a resource for single moms looking for work and all kinds of assistance. A playground for children is another resource that already exists for women and families: Kids, being kids, get restless, adding anxiety to already overwhelmed adults.
When you talk to Szymon, you get a sense of the brotherhood of men in Poland and Ukraine and the love and protection of women and children there. He talks, too, about Russia’s attacks on priests, and the maddening uselessness of this evil war.
The Knights of Columbus are also providing educational scholarships for Ukrainian children who have been orphaned by the war.
(More information on their Ukraine fund here.)
This Is How You Do Pro-Life
A highlight of the Knights convention each year is the supreme knight’s report. (Forgive them their colorful titles . . . and uniforms. It’s a fraternal thing.) In it this year, Patrick Kelly said, in part:
We launched ASAP [Aid and Support After Pregnancy] in anticipation of the end of Roe v. Wade. And we know why it’s so important. A recent study showed that 60% of abortion-minded women say they’d choose life if they just had more material and emotional support. ASAP is our answer. We’re helping give diapers and baby formula to moms who can’t afford them and pack-n-plays to families that need them. And we’re even helping connect new parents with jobs and training to support their growing families. ASAP is meeting real needs.
Last year alone, we donated a new record of more than $6 million to pregnancy resource centers. And all told, in just three years, we have now given more than $17 million to help mothers and children. . . .
We will always support mothers and children. But we’re also helping men step up and become the leaders that women and children deserve.
Just on a quick phone call with Kimberly Henkel, president of the Catholic foster and adoption ministry Springs of Love (where I’m on the board) during a schedule break, I heard of several homegrown, grassroots Knights initiatives to support local parish families who foster and adopt. One includes a Knights council in Kansas finishing a basement so a grandmother can adopt her four grandchildren in foster care. That may not be a worldwide revolution giving every child a home, but it radically changes — and maybe saves — the lives of those in front of you who need support. It’s not handouts, it is Christian charity, it’s being a good neighbor, it’s realizing that every good thing we each have is a gift in some way. And our lives sure are.
Don’t Dump on Trump If He Actually Does the Right Thing for Women and Life
There have been some whisper indications for months that the Trump administration’s final policy on in vitro fertilization might not be as bad as first promised. The have-babies-by-all-means-necessary! rallying cry has been overdue for tamping down. And so it may be. The Washington Post has a piece suggesting as much but, of course, framing it as a failure to women. That’s a lie. Promising IVF for more, if not all, was peddling in recklessness and false hope, (as Ericka Andersen and I recently talked about). It’s cruel. It also happens to be bad science and financially irresponsible.
Particularly pernicious, as the White House is being targeted erroneously as anti-women here, the stage is also being set for an attack on alternatives to IVF. You’ve seen it in this early media predicting and in professional reproductive medical societies and advocacy groups. I don’t want to give it all added attention. I would instead commend so many natural hormone treatments and scientific care that seeks for solutions to women’s health-care problems — unlike what’s typical of women’s health-care protocols today, maybe especially in the case of reproductive medicine.
Around National Review
• Wesley J. Smith: Should Caregivers Be Forced to Starve Dementia Patients to Death?
• Marjorie Dannenfelser: Judicial Activism Won’t Restore Planned Parenthood’s Federal Funding
• Michael Brendan Dougherty: Trump Admin Backs Away from IVF Pledge
• John Puri: Trump Administration Reverses Biden-Era Policy Allowing VA to Perform Abortions
• Me: Ban Surrogacy. Ban Surrogacy. Ban Surrogacy
• Mentally Ill? We Can Kill You for That
• It’s Still the Culture of Death at the New York Times
• A Poet for Our Disjointed Times
• Thanks Be to God for Life. Thanks Be to God for Gracie’s Life
And always do keep an eye on nationalreview.com. And I’m @kathrynlopez on X, if you do such things.
Upcoming
In your charity, please pray for a young married couple, Amanda and Garrett, who expect to be meeting their first baby, a boy, in January.
Does your state have a march for life on the calendar in 2025, still?
• Harrisburg, Pa. — September 22
• Trenton, N.J. — September 25
• Columbus, Ohio – October 3
• Bismarck, N.D. – October 10
• Lansing, Mich. – November 6
Call for papers: “Now We Know That the Law is Good”: On Law and Virtue: Fourth Annual Spring Symposium, Center for Law and the Human Person, the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law. Abstract deadline: September 2, 2025.
Call for speakers: National Council for Adoption 2026 National Adoption Conference, June 24-26, 2026, in Washington, D.C. The call for speakers closes on September 30, 2025.
Thank you for being here. Please never hesitate to holler with news or feedback or questions or invitations — klopez@nationalreview.com. (I speak — especially to the young and older.) And if you found anything in this newsletter useful or constructive or interesting or maddening or challenging or inspiring — or anything else — would you please make sure you are subscribed to receive it weekly in your email inbox? Would you also make sure to add five or ten of your favorite people, friends, colleagues, enemies to the list — anyone you think might benefit from this?
Again, here’s the link for adding names to receive The Lifeline weekly.
Thanks again, and prayers for a good life this coming week. May every moment be a blessing.