This edition of National Review’s pro-life newsletter is going to be short and sweet, as they say. As much as I pray for bilocation, it is not something I’ve been blessed/burdened with as of yet. So there needs to be a balance in my running around the nation’s capital and filing my column! The reality of being at a magazine and journalistic think tank? First world problems.
Such problems do, though, include the reality of legal abortion in America. And while the Trump administration headlines at the March for Life today, and listened to pro-lifers on Thursday, it leaves much to be desired. As I’ve noted here before, the only reason abortion opponents are celebrating the closing of abortion clinics is because the abortion industry doesn’t need abortion clinics anymore. Your CVS. Your Walgreens. Your local pharmacy. Those are the abortion clinics now. And even in states where abortion is illegal, women know how to get pills by mail. And we are a year into the second Trump administration, and the means of the majority of abortions in the United States do not appear to be remotely a priority. Is that shocking? No. Take it from a gal who lost her innocence reading about Donald Trump on the front page of the New York Post back in the day. Pro-lifers, please, don’t pretend this is the most pro-life administration ever.
I was on Catholic radio this week, and a caller complained that George W. Bush was surrounded by abortion advocates, especially the women in his life. Which makes what he did on embryonic stem cells, just before the 9/11 attack on the United States, all the more courageous. I want men to defend innocent human life. And women! Because women deserve better than abortion.
Job Opportunity
Women deserve better is a slogan that Feminists for Life contributed to. And the organization’s president, Serrin Foster, is retiring. If you know someone who would be right for this unique role, bridging the right and the left, there is information about the job opening here.
Fruitfulness in Suffering
I had the blessing of hosting a book event for Leigh Snead in Washington, D.C., on Thursday about her new book, Infertile but Fruitful: Finding Fulfillment When You Can’t Conceive. There’s a sacred pause necessary whenever this topic comes up, because it is so painful. And yet, at the gathering at the Franciscan University of Steubenville’s new D.C. outpost, it was clear how grateful women are for other women willing to vulnerably discuss the issue. The pressure is so great to choose IVF or even surrogacy. And yet children even in our own country are languishing in foster care, maybe not even knowing they can pray for a forever family.
Enough with the Politicians
The March for Life features JD Vance. That’s hard to tolerate, given some of what he’d said about abortion pills — even mischaracterizing a Supreme Court case because Donald Trump did. He knows better. So do we.
That said, congratulations on the Vances’ pregnancy!
Around National Review
• Me: Why I Might Skip JD Vance at the March for Life Rally
Let the Pro-Life Movement Declare Independence
• Abigail Anthony: An Obama Judge’s Absurd Reasoning for Restoring Funding to the American Academy of Pediatrics
• Wesley J. Smith: Australian ALS Patient Denied Disability Support, Chooses Euthanasia
Canadian Bioethicist: Euthanasia Should Not Be Considered ‘Special’
• Monique Chireau Wubbenhorst: Elephants Crowd the Room as Chemical Abortion Gets a Senate Hearing
• Michael J. New: An Important March for Life
There are so many other things to write about — but there are double the number of events I’m supposed to be at right now. Please pray for an end to abortion. And for healing. There is so much of that needed.
And on the healing front: Please take a look at this upcoming N.Y.-area retreat regarding miscarriage, and consider if you or anyone in your family might benefit from it.