I must make a confession. When asked about the prospect of New York City having a communist mayor, I casually joke about “our” support for Andrew Cuomo. “We” are a practical people, after all. If we don’t want Zohran Mamdani to be mayor of the greatest city in the world, what else are we going to do at this point? So current Mayor Eric Adams’s dropping out last weekend should be good news.
Sometimes you do just have to be pragmatic in politics.
The problem with Andrew Cuomo isn’t even that, as governor, he once said that he wanted the likes of me — those who believe we must protect the lives of unborn children in their mothers’ wombs — to leave the state. More consequentially: Who can forget about the elderly who died during Covid because patients were shipped into nursing homes? And while one could argue that his decision was made in the fog of war, it was a natural extension of the culture of death that New York represents in a particularly lethal way.
And yet, here we are. Mamdani will probably win, but I suppose I’m still holding out hope for Cuomo.
So strange. Planned Parenthood is for Mamdani, by the way.
A lot of my guilt has to do with what is happening in Canada and what the United Kingdom is on the verge of (see more below). In the U.K., there is a hospice crisis. They should address that with compassionate care, rather than eliminating the problem by eliminating people with medical aid in dying — the euphemism of choice for advocates of physician-assisted suicide.
It’s in the news this week that a 56-year-old man with Down syndrome, by the way, was starved to death in a National Health Service hospital, despite the fact that he wanted to live. They are not even waiting for legal assisted suicide to start the eliminations.
We Need to Be Needed
This quite directly related to all the end-of-life madness. Many years ago, the now-comedienne Jennifer Fulwiler (a former atheist turned Catholic) texted me that a gal needed a priest in D.C. She was not going to be an atheist for long. The Dominicans, I believe, ultimately were a home for Leah Libresco. Today, married with children (having suffered along that road something awful), with Sargeant completing her name, she is flourishing. The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto is her latest contribution to the good. If you don’t believe me, read Fran Maier’s review here — he’s the Catholic intellectual equivalent of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
Here’s the bottom line, as Leah puts it in her book, when it comes to the hot-button issues — and reality:
Babies can’t survive a culture that despises dependence. A baby who can’t be easily accommodated is expected to be aborted. Women may be able to stagger on, maimed, but we cannot live a full, flourishing life when our basic biology is treated as a design flaw. We cannot pay an entry price in blood for an illusion of equality.
A culture that idolizes autonomy can’t value pregnancy. In the world of autonomy, childbearing is an interruption of the human project, rather than the obvious way we are tied to the humans who come after us. If a core part of a woman’s human experience is framed as her body betraying her, then women cannot and will not be treated as equal in dignity to men. It is not an accommodation to say that our fertility can be “fixed” or is only a temporary interruption of our otherwise inviolate bodies. If we aren’t accepted as we are, it’s small consolation to be admitted on sufferance, as defective men. . . .
Recognizing and honoring the differences between men and women means putting dependence at the heart of our account of what it means to be human. Dependence marks women more obviously and more intimately, but it is also impossible to tell the truth about who men are or treat them justly without accounting for our mutual dependence. No just society can be built on the basis of a false anthropology.
She concludes the chapter “The Blessing of Burdens” with:
If adolescence is characterized by fear about giving ourselves away to someone or something unworthy, growing to maturity may be characterized by confidence that it is safer and more human to be swept into the flow of “uncalculated giving and graceful receiving” than to hold ourselves back waiting for the right moment. The livelier and more active a gift economy, the more prudent profligacy becomes. Instead of holding onto our own selves and our own possessions carefully, we can give freely, expecting that what passes through our hands may return to us, in its proper time, after a rich and strange sea change. Our burdens and our needs are our invitation into the dance. We cannot slough them off without becoming small — an isolated node where we could have been tangled up in others.
I encourage you to get the book. And look for more about it soon on NationalReview.com.
Chicago Is a Pro-Life Town
Emceeing the Aid for Women annual dinner last week, I was staring out into the crowd, which included former Congressman Dan Lipinski, and kept thinking: This is where we need to be. This is who we need to be. Providing help for women, letting women know they are precious gifts to their children and can be the mothers they already are.
Dan, of course, a pro-life Democrat, is a former congressman because he was primaried out of office by his party and the abortion industry. This past week or so has had much back and forth about the cardinal of Chicago and pro-abortion Democrat Dick Durbin. Lipinski’s congressional witness is the way to do Catholicism in public life. And Aid to Women is what we need more of — and what women need to know the pro-life movement is about: them. Love.
Watch this video, which we showed at the dinner. Here’s an adaptation of the keynote that Robert Royal gave.
By the way, when I am in front of pro-life audiences, I often express my fear that we are the last people a young woman in an unplanned pregnancy would come to, because she would assume we would judge her. Please, please, let the young people in your lives know that you love them unconditionally, and embrace life however it comes. I was moved that the plea was met with applause. The Chicago crowd has the right idea. I got the impression they know why they are Christians (I think it was a largely Catholic group): because we are sinners in need of a savior!
I love you, pro-life Chicago. Let’s do more together.
God Bless Ezra Klein
New York Times columnist Ezra Klein is getting blasted for encouraging Democrats to make room for pro-life candidates. Jessica Valenti, author of the Substack newsletter Abortion, Every Day, has something to say about that: “This is no time for compromise. To support a ‘pro-life’ candidate — from any party — is morally incomprehensible.”
She makes the case that the politics of abortion are on her side. She even says something I agree with and that Republicans need to have an examination of conscience and strategy sessions about:
While some might argue abortion rights weren’t enough to win Democrats the presidency, let’s remember that — in addition to the mistakes the party made in the lead-up to November — Donald Trump didn’t embrace anti-abortion politics. Just the opposite: his team made sure that every headline claimed Trump and JD Vance didn’t support a national abortion ban and that they’d veto such legislation.
I’d even add that Vance, on one of the Sunday shows, mischaracterized an abortion decision at the Supreme Court — which he had to know he was doing. This placed him in the Trump camp of not wanting to make an issue of abortion pills. As much as Democrats want us to believe that Republicans are going after contraception, their hearts aren’t even in protecting women and their unborn children from pills that you can get at drugstores — sometimes prescribed via telehealth — and through the mail, including from states that want to make sure abortions happen in red strongholds such as Louisiana and Texas.
Ezra Klein knows that building coalitions is a political good. I suspect he also knows that Dems are in danger of overplaying their hand. In states such as Kansas and Ohio, a lot of the pushback to pro-life campaigns is a result of post-Dobbs confusion. Polls have consistently shown that Americans are not enthusiastic for abortion. Democrats will want to be careful — for the sake of practical politics. And then, of course, there are the lives and souls at stake.
Ezra Klein was also one of the first voices on the left who condemned the murder of Charlie Kirk without reservation. What a great debate I wish he and Kirk could be having about who could be the more pro-life party.
Around National Review
• The Editors: Wisconsin Move Exposes Planned Parenthood Lies
• Abigail Anthony: March for Life 2026: ‘Life Is a Gift’
• Wesley J. Smith: Canadian Dementia Patient Euthanized at Family’s Request
• Brittany Bernstein: Manhattan DA Declines to Prosecute NYC Woman Who Punched Pro-Life Activist During Street Interview
• Michael J. New: Guttmacher Estimates Abortion Decline in 2025
• Michael Brendan Dougherty: Pope Leo Breaks Out the Seamless Garment
• John Gerardi: A Tale of Two Illinois Democrats
• Me: A Senator, a Cardinal, the Pope, and the Imperative of Life
• George Washington U Students Believe Charlie Kirk Got What He Deserved
• Scott Adams Rethinks Assisted Suicide
• The Lesson of Charlie Kirk’s Life
Upcoming & Opportunities
• Considering adoption but need financial help? Show Hope offers grants. Take a look here.
• I’m looking forward to being back at my alma mater next week — although the law school, to be specific (where I got into controversy, back in my undergraduate days, though I wasn’t actually a law student there), moderating a panel at the Leading with Love conference there. Jennie Lichter, president of the March for Life, and others will be there, too, organized by the Center for Law and the Human Person at Catholic University of America Law and the Human Life Foundation.
• Join me in Mexico City next month with Tepeyac Leadership Inc. (Now excuse me while I try to meet their deadline for PowerPoint slides for my opening keynote!)
• The National Council for Adoption has extended its deadline for speaking proposals for its summer conference in D.C. to October 10.
• As I mentioned to Shemaiah Gonzalez this week, when discussing her new book Undaunted Joy: The Revolutionary Act of Cultivating Delight, birthdays are a big pro-life deal. Mark your calendar and keep an eye out for details about a birthday celebration about to be announced at Franciscan University of Steubenville for William F. Buckley’s 100th, on the actual day of his birthday, November 24.
Well, goodness. There is so much more to discuss. Which is why we stand athwart history 24/7 at National Review and have a new Lifeline every week. (Do you subscribe to receive this newsletter in your inbox, so you never miss one? Have you signed others up for it? I hope you find it a hopeful sign of pro-life life. The link to sign up is here.)
Holler anytime at [email protected]. See you here next week.
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