Topics
From the NOR Dossiers

Abortion

Be the Champion!
January-February 2025We’ve made little progress in convincing Americans that abortion is wrong, and now we don’t even have a major pro-life political party since the Republican abdication.
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Why Must Man Work?
January-February 2025That which is the first object of our making is not stuff but — like God — life itself, which means friendship, justice, generosity, love, peace, and children.
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The Rise & Fall of the Human Life Amendment
November 2024Dobbs was the triumph of the “states’ rights” approach to abortion, an approach that never had the consensus backing of the pro-life movement.
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The Eternal Advent of Pro-Life Activism
July-August 2024My friends have been jailed for “conspiracy against rights,” an Orwellian term the federal government is using to slap decade-long sentences on pro-life activists.
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Are We Weimar?
June 2024Abortion rates are sky high. Birth rates are at rock bottom. Americans are rejecting parenthood on a scale not seen before. What does this mean for our nation's future?
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Reply from an American to a “Letter from an American”
January-February 2024Abortion was a crime in the extant states in 1868 and in the territories that became states after 1868 and the District of Columbia. Yet later, Roe was called “settled law”?
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Engaging the Morally Unconscious Person
November 2023The appropriate message for such a person is a stern warning to “Wake up!” reminiscent of Jesus’ dismay at finding His disciples asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane.
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The Case for Reviving the Rescue Movement
September 2023Unlike the invisible, nameless, voiceless, and forgettable preborn child, the rescuer is visible, named, memorable, and possesses a voice.
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It’s Time the Church Declared the Personhood of the Unborn
May 2023With our advanced scientific knowledge of fertilization and fetal development, there is really nothing standing in the way of a definitive doctrinal affirmation.
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An Amazing Turn
January-February 2023She wanted to fly in and meet. At the airport, he was disappointed by how she looked in person. But by that stage in his life, he didn’t think he could do better.
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The Pontifical Academy for What?
December 2022The Academy for Life’s horizons are so broad that it seems to have lost sight of its mission to promote and defend the Church’s pro-life teachings.
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After Dobbs: What’s Next?
September 2022Our shared vocation as Christians is showing our neighbors that destroying preborn babies cannot be an act of justice, much less of love.
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The Eucharistic Theology of Pro-Abortion Catholic Politicians
October 2021Now it is pro-abortion Catholic politicians who are teaching the bishops the meaning of the Eucharist, something as absurd as it is unprecedented.
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Why the Modern Democratic State Needs Abortable Children
March 2021Liberalism is, in its essence, universal sovereignty premised on the expendability of life inside the individual’s sovereign domain.
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The Nowhere Between Life & Death
January-February 2021The unborn exist in a borderland between the shedding of innocent blood and the sacrificing of children so that individual sovereignty remains intact.
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Unmasking the Executioner
March 2020I contend that the state in 2020 has been so corrupted by institutionalized murder that it has no authority to carry out executions of anyone.
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Parental Love vs. Loveless “Rights”
January-February 2019"Abortion Rights: For and Against" is exceptional in showing with startling clarity how the fight over abortion is really a battle between love and lovelessness.
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Gosnell: The Bigger Picture
December 2018Gosnell’s attorney asks why Gosnell should be convicted of murder in the case of “Baby A” but not in the cases of the countless other babies.
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A Pro-Life Pivot?
September 2018Pope Francis’s new appointees to the Pontifical Academy for Life have expanded the pro-life umbrella to include migrants, technology, and the environment.
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Briefly: September 2018
September 2018Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality... The Maternal Face of God?: Explorations in Catholic Sophiology... Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion... An Introduction to Ethics: A Natural Law Approach
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Infinity War: A Call to Action
July-August 2018The final scene of Infinity War is particularly haunting for millennials; a whole third of our generation has been destroyed by abortion.
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The Femi-Swedes' Hijab Détente
April 2017Sweden's "first feminist government" sent a delegation to sign a trade deal in Iran, where the women felt compelled to wear headscarves and heavy coats.
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Planned Parenthood: Seventy Years of Defying the Law
October 2016David Goldstein once was a militant socialist who thought life's chief struggle was economic. But he came to realize that "life's battle is primarily a moral battle."
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What Goes on Inside the Clinic
October 2015The practice of abortion as a Satanic ritual is confirmed in a disturbing interview with a former leader of the Church of Satan.
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Consumed by Zeal for the Culture of Death
September 2015People who run no hospitals and who do nothing to help the world's poor are envious of the Church's works of mercy and aim to persecute her.
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How the Pro-Life Movement Became Warm & Cuddly
April 2015A new wave of pro-life Catholics reduced the significance of murder of the innocent to just another item in a long list of social issues.
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Scenes from Ground Zero of the Abortion Holocaust
January-February 2015In modern-day America, human life is destroyed on a massive scale with the cruel, evil, and machine-like efficiency characteristic of the Nazis.
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My Catholic Hospital's Cooperation with Evil
June 2014As more and more institutions offer abortion, sterilization, and contraception, will we just accept them as part of everyday life?
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The Prayers of Moloch's Modern Priestesses
March 2014Moloch's modern priestesses, who can be found roaming the American halls of power, recast abortion as sacrosanct and inviolable -- a right protected and made possible by the benevolence of an ambiguous deity.
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The Modern-Day Little Shop of Horrors
January-February 2014In the "reproductive health industry," moral questions are rarely considered when there is money to be made.
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Dare We Hope for the Salvation of the Unborn?
October 2012God's mercy is unfathomable, and He is truly the Good Father who knows how to give what's best to His children.
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Too Late Have I Loved You
September 2012Though I didn’t suffer the physiological consequences of abortion, I couldn’t escape the psychological ones.
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How to Change a Culture
July-August 2012The outcome of the pro-life struggle hinges on the legal status of abortion. As long as it remains legal, we're losing; once it's outlawed, we've triumphed.
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The Numbers Game
July-August 2012Pro-abortionists love nothing more than to expose any inconsistencies or dishonesties perpetrated by pro-lifers. We've got to maintain hold of the moral high ground.
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Is America Becoming More Pro-Life?
July-August 2012If there's a large discrepancy between the number of Americans who identify as pro-life and those who believe abortion should be outlawed, then there's a growing misunderstanding of what it means to be pro-life.
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Are All Human Beings Persons?
March 2012"'Person' is not a generic term," writes Robert Spaemann, "it is the way in which individuals of the human genus exist." One's neighbor is unique and non-fungible.
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The Perils of Promoting Personhood
January-February 2012Conspicuously absent from a coalition of pro-life advocates supporting a personhood amendment in Mississippi were the bishops of Jackson and Biloxi.
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Abortion & the Creed of Progress
January-February 2012The creed of progress has destroyed community, the family, and the bond between man and woman, as it has destroyed countless unborn babies.
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Behind the Mask
December 2011The media hype a world population of seven billion, but growth is decelerating and we’ll face a new problem: under-population.
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The Rise of the Abortion Party
November 2010Suppose that, in the 1960s, several hundred Americans in favor of overturning the conventional prohibitions on abortion established a new political party...
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The Virtue of Reverence & Respect for Life
October 2010Every human being possesses dignity, value, and worth. There are factors that can obfuscate our ability to see their dignity, but it exists whether we see it or not.
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The Future Ain't What It Used to Be
June 2010Charlotte Allen has made the provocative assertion that the project of Catholic dissent has "lost steam as an intellectual movement."
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Global Population Control
April 2010The demand for the "rights" of women, homosexuals, animals, and trees is a front for the goal of regulating human breeding as if we're stockyard animals.
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The Road to Hitler Was Paved With Abortions
December 2009The Weimar Republic was distinguished by "the lowest birth rate in the Western world." Contraception was widespread and abortion laws were liberalized.
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Abortion Referrals at Catholic Hospitals
October 2009Catholic hospitals and medical personnel are not permitted to assist people, directly or indirectly, in obtaining an abortion, sterilization, or the Plan B pill.
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The Five Most Pathetic Words
October 2009For the sake of your own immortal soul, and for the sake of the lives of the unborn children your ideology menaces, please rid yourself of this delusion.
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Toward a Personhood Amendment
February 2009It is time for us, as individuals and as Catholics, to stand up and be the kind of people who always put faith first.
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Where Do We Go From Here?
January 2009With the humiliating failures of the prolife cause, it's difficult to see how the 2008 election could not be considered a referendum on abortion.
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What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate (Catholic Teaching)
January 2009Barack Obama has been billed as the most extreme pro-abortion president ever. Yet 54 percent of Catholics voted for him. How could that be?
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As Boston Goes, So Goes the Nation
November 2008Lawler's book shows how cultural and social attitudes developed during Boston's "Catholic century" would ultimately lead to decline.
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Life, Precious & Precarious
November 2008Cardinal Gracias of Bombay condemned all abortions and promised a poor couple that the Church would raise their baby if he were allowed to live.
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A Lesson From the Past
November 2008Will Archbishop Niederauer exert the supremacy of the Catholic Church over Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi?
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Wonderful Are Your Works
May 2008Every life is valuable in and of itself. Every life is capable of giving glory to God, and therefore every life is worthy of our protection.
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Muddier Waters
May 2008The U.S. bishops did not intend to suggest that Catholics who vote for a pro-choice candidates are putting their souls in jeopardy.
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A Perplexing Political Potpourri
February 2008The U.S. bishops have buried the burning political issues of the day under an avalanche of lesser considerations.
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Dissecting the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban
July-August 2007Pro-lifers were completely misled by what was at best lip service, but what was in reality a cementing affirmation of the precedent established by Roe.
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We Are Grateful That Partial-Birth Abortion Has Been Outlawed, But...
June 2007We are grateful that partial-birth abortion has been outlawed, but we recognize that not one baby will be saved by this decision.
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Pro-Abortion & Anti-War?
January 2007If you are anti-war and pro-abortion, and you won't recognize that you are making war on the unborn, you are not really anti-war.
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Not in the Limelight
January 2007Jim Holman is a Catholic who knows his money and talents are only a loan, and that he will have to account for them on Judgment Day.
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The Physicians' Crusade Against Abortion
November 2006Physicians were largely responsible for the passage of laws to counter an epidemic of induced abortions among married Protestant women.
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No Situation Justifies Taking the Life of a Baby in the Womb
November 2006If there is universal salvation, then abortion is not an "abominable crime" -- God automatically forgives everything.
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Margaret Sanger & 'The New Woman'
September 2006Margaret Sanger worked to overturn the laws against obscenity, birth control, and abortion mainly because her secret lifestyle made all these things necessary.
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Abortion & Muslim Terrorism
May 2006Abortion is far worse than Muslim terrorism for the sheer breadth and scope of the death and devastation it has wrought. But where is the GOP?
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The Person & the Court
April 2006Precedent is a major component, but the law can become confused and contradictory when an underlying moral question is ignored.
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The Fr. Richard Rohr Phenomenon
March 2006He refers to God as Mother, encourages homosexual advocacy, denies the spiritual reality of Original Sin, and denies the necessity of the Cross for redemption.
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A Prolife Semantics Guide
February 2006As verbal engineering has preceded today's abortion culture, honest vocabulary is vital to restore life's protection.
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The Miers Disaster
December 2005Democrats and Republicans alike seemed to agree that Harriet Miers is not an "ideologue" or an "extremist" -- code words for a prolifer.
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The Exception Proves the Rule
December 2005LIberals say the cure for abortion is contraception, but more than half of all abortions occur when women have used contraceptives.
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When It Comes to Abortion, Rationality Goes Out the Window
February 2005what is it about abortion that makes rational people suddenly go idiotic?
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For Catholic Dissenters, Abortion Is Like Mowing Grass
October 2004The authors say abortion is "like pruning one's rose bush." Pruning a rosebush makes it bloom more abundantly. But when one aborts a child, does her capacity to grow improve?
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Abortion & the Golden Rule
June 2004Abortion advocates can't claim for women the right to abortion — as they do — but with the exception of their own mamas. That's a double standard.
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Chastity & the Prolife Movement
May 2004The prolife movement of the 21st century must adopt chastity as the fifth pillar of advocacy for preborn children.
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The Wages of Roe v. Wade
January 2004Shakespeare showed what murder does to murderers. We, too, can examine what abortion has done to abortionists and the mothers and fathers of those killed.
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Bishop Weigand's "Bait & Switch"
July/August 2003The bishop of Sacramento admonished Governor Davis for his pro-abortion stance, but he would not follow his admonition with denying him Communion.
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A Purely Secular Argument Against Abortion
November 2002Because the question of when life begins has a true answer, opinions have no bearing or influence upon what that “truth” is — yet people erroneously act as if it does.
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Demography Is Destiny: Babies Trump Bombs in the End
March 2002Osama bin Laden was the 17th born in his family. America has the bombs, but the Muslims have the babies. Military power can’t hold off people power.
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Bring Back the Pictures
November 2001Pictures of aborted babies depict a gruesome reality, and that's precisely why Americans need to see them — see them often.
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A Brief, Air-Tight Argument Against Abortion
September 2001My opposition has nothing to do with the Bible or the Church; it is based squarely upon biological science and the political principles upon which our government was founded.
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Weaving the Tangled Web
January 2001A great irony of history is that in Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court announced its adherence to a prescientific concept of fetal life.
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Woe to the Bloody City!
November 2000“Find out how you can turn your patient’s decision into something wonderful” reads a brochure sent to abortionists by a fetal tissue “wholesaler.”
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For Dear Life
November 2000During in utero fetal surgery, the unborn infant stretched out its little hand and clutched the finger of the surgeon.
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Unwanted Children? Disposable as Last Sunday's Paper
March 2000"The birth of every wanted child represents an act of faith...", say what?
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From Abortion to Family Breakdown & Child Abuse
January 2000With today’s lax morals, children witness loose, impermanent, and immature relationships among the adults on whom they depend.
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News Too Good to Be True
October 1999Is Baby Doe an irreplaceable historical landmark? Why, yes.
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Ritualizing Abortion
March 1999To those who would invoke old gods at their convenience and choose human sacrifices for them: Be careful what god you pray to.
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The Looming Civil War Over Abortion
February 1999Either Christianity will rebaptize the heart of the nation or secularism will drive out Christianity, but one or the other will be victorious.
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Ebenezer Scrooge at Christmas Today
December 1998Scrooge stated, “Let those poor go to the prisons and the Union workhouses. And if they’d rather die, they had better do it."
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When Abortion Discriminates
November 1998Why is it wrong to abort unborn female babies because they are female, and not wrong to abort those who just happen to be female?
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The Least of the Least of Our Brethren
October 1998How can we convert this culture of death? Through education, public action, pastoral leadership — and faith.
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A Woman's 'Right to Choose' Is a Woman's Right to Lose
June 1998Childhood hunger, single motherhood, and other problems that proponents of abortion claimed would be solved by abortion have only gotten worse.
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You're an "Unborn Baby" if She Wants You, a "Terminated Fetus" if She Doesn't
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Time to Communicate What Catholicism Is & Is Not
July/August 1996Do you renounce Amerigod? Do you renounce the Spirit of Feelgood, the Motherfather, the Genderblender gods, and all their empty promises?
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The Rose vs. the Venus Fly-Trap
March 1996Review of When Life and Choice Collide: Essays on Rhetoric and Abortion
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Trapped In the Rhetoric of ‘Choice’
October 1995A survey of 1,800 pro-life pregnancy centers found boyfriends and mothers are often the most vigorous promoters of abortion.
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A “Pro-Choicer’s” Explicit No to Life
March 1995Review of Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn
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America's Children Are in Jeopardy
October 1989Suggesting that the very young, born or preborn, are not persons is exclusivist. It makes the betrayal of children almost morally palatable.
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The Extinction of the Human Race Has Already Begun
March 1988Can we expect nuclear annihilation to pass us by while daily, in each major city of the U.S., hundreds of innocent human lives are systematically erased?
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Should a Pregnant Woman Be Executed?
January-February 1988Would any reasonable person think it appropriate to execute a duly tried and convicted pregnant woman before the birth of the baby?
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The New Right & the Pro-life Movement: How Solid is the Marriage?
July August 1986March for Life organizer Nellie Gray had little patience with those who would solicit pro-life support simply to boost the bomb, bolster corporate profits, or get fluoride out of the water.
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Surveillance of the Unborn: A Human Rights Issue
July August 1986While the March of Dimes may do valuable work toward helping conquer birth defects, other unborn handicapped children are denied life because of its support of prenatal testing.
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The Seamless Garment in a Fragmented World
January-February 1986The consistent ethic does not demand that everyone become a dilettante who dabbles a bit in every political issue involving human life.
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The Conflict Between Civil Piety & the Right to Life
November 1985America is in desperate need of hard love. Whether or not pro-lifers are adequate to the task of providing it only they themselves can answer.
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A Chestertonian Adrift in an Ideological World
November 1985If you favor the cause of orthodoxy or tradition in Catholic faith and morals, you should break the close link that exists between that cause and the cause of the political Right.
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Evangelical Protestant Leaders Look at Abortion
October 1985A quality of life ethic tries to decide for others who can have a relationship with God and who cannot, who is or is not created in the image of God.
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Further Thoughts on Abortion
June 1985A poor woman I knew regarded herself, when pregnant, as the recipient of a gift from God. For me, the matter was at once abstract and circumstantial.
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Six-Day Fast for Life at an Abortion Clinic
May 1985To women and men alike, just passing by or going into the clinic, I’d repeat my 22-second message with no nuance. You come quickly to the point. You have to.
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Beyond “Left” & “Right”
April 1985How can we honestly ask God to remove the scourge of abortion from our land when we are prepared to abort entire other countries with nuclear fire and brimstone?
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The Consistent Pro-life Ethic
January-February 1985The prophet gives words that echo an understanding of the heart. He understands the tragic situation and speaks of comfort, solace, hope, and then begins to help.
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Stirring Things Up in Western Europe
January-February 1985Many peace & anti-abortion advocates find themselves on opposite ends of the political spectrum. In the U.S. and Western Europe, stirring up the desire for reconciliation is a crucial task.
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Anti-Abortion Atheist Doctor
December 1984Ex-abortionist Dr. Nathanson refers to “permissive abortion” as a “crime” and “an unmitigated evil."
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The Seamless Garment
September 1984How can good-hearted people, whose hearts bleed for peace and for poor people, not feel the excruciating pain of the child who is destroyed in the womb?
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Teenage Pregnancy: A Moral Matter
July-August 1984Young women also are spiritually hungry for a sense of purpose and meaning in life, for something or someone to believe in, for moral direction.
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Abortion as “Growth Experience”
June 1984Almost all abortion ideologues refuse to address the core question: Is the unborn child a fellow member of the human family, one to whom we owe love, life, and justice?
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The Return of Socrates
April 1984One’s heart can be too hardened to participate in dialogue; today’s Herodian slaughter of the innocents involves something more than intellectual blindness.
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Failed Exposé
March 1984The author proves that rich fundamentalists give to fundamentalism, and rich Rightists give to the Right. A real eye-opener, for sure.
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On Abortion
October 1983In one way or another, through greed and aggressive manipulations and callousness and self-serving rationalizations, we shun our obligations to others.
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Abortion: The Hard Cases
September 1983It is as proper for Christians to work for laws to protect the unborn as to support and work for laws against water pollution and kidnapping.
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