I got extremely upset when an area code changed in New York State almost 30 years ago. How was my father going to know how to call home?
He had died. And obviously he wasn’t calling. But that’s where my mind decided to go.
Pain of any kind can manifest in many ways and be comforted in unusual — often irrational — or very traditional ways. The Dorion Family Pediatric Center opened this July in Jacksonville, Fla. It’s got music, art, an elaborate Tree of Wonder with butterflies, a phone to call heaven, a chapel, medical and other resources, and community.
It’s for palliative and hospice care.
Yes, for children.
And it is uplifting.
Because it’s about real-life accompaniment in situations that most of us don’t want to think about, never mind live. And yet, when you do, you do.
I talked with Annie Tuttle, vice president of community impact and philanthropy, about the new center and the work that the Foundation of Community Hospice & Palliative Care does, being available to families who need them. It’s a labor of love, and if you listen to Tuttle or watch one of the videos on their website, I think you will have a little shot of hope. People are capable of the most remarkable love when they know they are not alone.
Listen to my conversation with Annie Tuttle here. Meet — and don’t forget — a young man named Dalton, among others, here.
In the video I just linked to, Patrice Austin, director of the Community PedsCare program involved in the project, says: “It’s okay to talk about this. It’s okay to normalize this.”
In fact, we are all better off if we do. This is love. In every circumstance.
And, goodness, when it involves children and their families!
Not only them, though.
Caring for the orphan covers many an abandonment scenario. And cannot go unaddressed.
No one alone.
A Few Good Men for the Choice of Life
Have you ever heard of abortion-pill reversal? If you are a pro-life activist, doctor, or the rare woman who has made use of it, sure. But beyond those crowds? Don’t worry if you haven’t. But join me in making sure people do. There are abortion advocates who don’t want anyone to know it exists, even though it may just be the most modest miracle known to man — certainly to the onslaught of chemical abortion in America. Abortion-pill reversal is a simple hormone protocol that can work to undo the damage that the first pill (mifepristone) of the typical abortion-pill cocktail (misoprostol is the other) inflicts on a pregnancy.
It’s progesterone. Which is, honestly, just about the most normal, natural hormone involved in a pregnancy. Many a woman is well aware that it can kinda come with the territory of being a woman.
Planned Parenthood, by the way, will give a man progesterone if he’s decided he’s a woman. Just thought we should note that.
This maddening insanity is why I was happy to see Salvatore J. Cordileone and Michael C. Barber, the archbishop of San Francisco and bishop of Oakland, respectively, take up the “Houses of Worship” column in the Wall Street Journal last week in opposition to the audaciously cruel position of the State of California in an ongoing court case against Heartbeat International and Real Options pregnancy-care centers. (Gift link here.) The Golden State is prioritizing going to war on abortion-pill reversal — insisting it not be spoken of, arguing that it’s been promoted “despite knowing that there is no scientific evidence that shows it is effective or safe.”
You don’t have to be an ob-gyn to know the California case is preposterous. Ideologically, pure and simple.
Abortion-pill reversal, meanwhile, has saved lives.
Back to the bishops.
Men typically get attacked for speaking out — and working to defeat — abortion. We are told to believe that “her body, her choice” should rule the day, even as pregnancy necessarily involves two bodies and so choices for two patients. Meanwhile, it is a good thing for civilization to see men stand up and protect the vulnerable unborn and insist that women deserve better than abortion — women who are often severely and desperate vulnerable themselves.
It is too often because men are not stepping up to the plate of responsibility, too conditioned and even hardwired to use women, that a woman winds up resorting to abortion — often believing that ending the life of her unborn child is her only plausible choice.
That’s unacceptable. And if you are reluctantly pro-choice — unsure what choices women do have in difficult unplanned pregnancies — and aren’t blinded by sexual revolutionary mantras about radical autonomy, you likely agree.
And so the bishops write:
Reading the depositions of these women is a painful experience. To be a Catholic priest these days, as we both are, is to have heard many similar stories of women who felt pressured to have an abortion they didn’t want.
Everyone should oppose this. But these women especially need support from the religious—those who hold that creation in God’s image means life is endowed with a dignity that can’t be trampled by a government determined to punish those who oppose unquestioned abortion. [Emphasis added.]
They conclude by writing about a case they began the piece with, an example of a woman who was struggling and went to Planned Parenthood for help. The clinic pushed abortion; she took the first pill. Her boyfriend texted that he was in for family life together, and she became desperate to undo the abortion process. She found Heartbeat International online and got an appointment with a doctor — she’s raising her child today because of abortion-pill reversal.
The Thomas More Society is defending Heartbeat & co. in court in California and has a “Defending Second Chances” page dedicated to abortion-pill reversal, the case, and other related news. You might plant a lifesaving seed, if the Culture of Life Silencers don’t have their way.
I smiled when I saw the Cordileone–Barber op-ed. I suspect no one planned it, but it was a great opener for the Knights of Columbus annual convention that was about to happen in Denver.
I didn’t go this year, but I often attend the Knights convention — sometimes as a speaker, sometimes as a writer, always as a woman inspired to know there are men who prioritize faith and family and to be a fatherly and brotherly presence in their parishes and communities. Many of these are the men you want young people to see and learn from — young men to emulate and young women to come to expect as their suitors, friends, colleagues, and leaders.
It’s good, hopeful stuff. This year head Knight Patrick Kelly said in his annual report:
Through ASAP — the Aid and Support After Pregnancy program — we have now donated more than $22 million to more than 2,700 pregnancy centers and maternity homes. And we have placed more than 2,100 ultrasound machines across the country. All told, those ultrasounds are worth more than $100 million. But that’s just money — and it’s a small price to pay for helping moms and saving babies.
He had a shout-out to the Sisters for Life for the work they do to protect human life, saying:
They have done more for women and children than any of us will ever know. The Sisters of Life serve every woman who knocks on their door, no questions asked. And across America, pregnancy resource centers are serving more women than ever before. With so much demand, they need a constant supply of outside help. And we are there for them.
The convention also highlighted one Knights council that renovated an old credit union in Gladstone, Mich., into a pregnancy center. The members of the council saved more than $100,000 by being the manpower behind the rebuilding project. The Knights have a cool — encouraging — video about it here.
Speaking of good men: Pope Leo XIV sent a greeting to the convention, which included:
The Knights of Columbus have worked together for well over a century to show Christ’s love to the unborn, expectant mothers, persecuted Christians, victims of war and human trafficking, the poor and vulnerable, and those who live on the margins of society.
Keep up the good work, good Christian men.
Other Things
• ABC News: Parents speak out after baby undergoes groundbreaking in-utero surgery
• Students for Life points to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll that suggest Americans are not comfortable that the abortion pills are safe. (They are not.)
• New York Post: Surrogate fighting for baby’s life against abortion-pushing biological parents: ‘Every life matters’
• WRAL News: “Warrants: Durham couple faces charges after woman took abortion pills in third trimester.” A newborn with a pulse was found in a toilet.
• New York Times: These Nuns Wake Up at Midnight to Pray for New Moms
The Norbertine Canonesses, an order of Roman Catholic nuns in the Tehachapi Mountains of California, are famous for their selflessness. They sleep for an hour or two before their alarm goes off at 11:45 p.m. every night. They climb out of bed, pull habits over their hair and walk to a cold chapel for the first of their seven daily prayers. They wait in the pews, quiet, for midnight to arrive. When it comes, they begin to chant and pray for anyone who may need help — with insomnia, addiction or a crying newborn.
“Just as the mother rises in the middle of the night, so we rise,” the leader, Mother Mary Oda, told me.
That night, I rose with them. I’d come to visit the nuns because they had gone viral. New mothers online had been moved that someone, somewhere, would get up each night to feel their pain.
Around National Review
• Wesley J. Smith: RFK Jr. Decertifies Kentucky Organ Procurement Organization
Michael J. New:
• No, Pro-Life Laws Are Not Increasing Suicides Among Teenage Girls
• New Guttmacher Report Finds That Many Women Circumvent Pro-Life Laws
Me:
• Telling the Truth About Todd Blanche and Abortion
• My Friend Dovie and New York’s Assisted-Suicide Cruelty
• Fighting the New Antisemitism Every Single Day
• Never Forgetting with Boy George
• Peggy Noonan on Fauci’s 5th/Diaries and Our Societal Chernobyl
Upcoming & Resources
• Find or apply to lead a 40 Days for Life fall campaign leading up to the midterm elections. The prayer vigils run from September 23 to November 1.
• 2026 Virtual Frosty 5K Run for Adoption, August 7–23. (Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption)
• August 14-16: Hawthorne Dominican Discernment Retreat
These are for single Catholic women ages 18–40 who think they might have a consecrated religious vocation to serve terminal cancer patients. They also have a Zoom on October 24 (RSVP required) and another in-person weekend: November 6–8.
They’ve been in the news because of New York’s assisted-suicide law. One of the sisters joined me for an interview here.
(Ditto on nuns in court in N.Y. on the next item.)
• October 9–11: Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm Discernment Retreat
Single Catholic women ages 18–35. The retreat theme is “Thérèse and Teresa: Following God’s Will.”
• Rehumanize International is accepting proposals through August 15 for its fall conference in October (Chicago). The theme is immigrants, and they will have a dedicated emphasis on pregnant women.
• Have you gotten your tickets for the Human Life Foundation Great Defender of Life Dinner in New York City on September 28? They are honoring Cardinal Timothy Dolan, and I’ll be making an introduction. Details here.
• From the New York Catholic Conference: “Now and at the Hour of Our Death: A Catholic guide to end-of-life decision making.”
Before We Go
Do take some time before Labor Day to find out what your local maternity home, pregnancy-care center, and nonprofit hospice are. Don’t wait until you need them. Find out what they need. Annie Tuttle talked with me about how she got into pediatric palliative and hospice care because she was grateful to those who helped her family through her mother’s breast-cancer living and dying. Her kids became part of the work — volunteering with families being served by the Foundation for Community & Hospice Care in Jacksonville. There may be something similar in your future. There may be something you will only come up with when you ask people what they need. Keep coming back here for profiles on beacons of love to counter the darkness of doomscrolling.
And send me your solutions, pro-life and campus speaking needs, or anything else at klopez@nationalreview.com.
Thank you and God bless you.