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From the NOR Dossiers

Pro Life Issues & Culture of Death

The Short-Lived “Gay Gene”
November 2019We can challenge genetic determinism by reaffirming both our inherent free will to make choices and our inherent dignity.
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What Every Priest Should Know about Ecological Breastfeeding
October 2019Fr. William Virtue concludes “it has been the constant teaching of the Church that there is a serious obligation of maternal nursing.”
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Eugenics De-fanged or Re-fanged?
October 2019The new eugenics is essentially a man-made religion, with a false hope of perfection and immortality.
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Suicide: Human Right or Human Tragedy?
July-August 2019On the one hand, we declare suicide a human right. On the other, we set up hotlines and billboards to prevent people from exercising this supposed right.
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“Good News, Son, You’re Adopted!”
July-August 2019Blood relationship is overrated, and natural relations are less important than ones that mirror supernatural relations.
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The Hollywood Scandal Behind the Clerical Scandal
March 2019U.S. media and the American judicial system will gladly go after a high-ranking Catholic priest or bishop but will run cover for powerful Hollywood directors and actors.
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A See of the Second-Rate
March 2019The norm among the men who wear miters — men who are supposed to possess powers of discernment — appears to be gaffes, ill judgment, and an apparent blindness to reason.
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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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Is Francis’s Revised Teaching on the Death Penalty a Development of Doctrine?
December 2018The Culture of Life may be advanced by the Holy Father’s innovation, but he has forged an unsettling theological path to take us there.
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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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Humanae Vitae: A Manual for Better Sex?
October 2018Much popular Catholic literature on NFP is utilitarian, claiming that obeying Church teaching results in a happier, more exciting bedroom experience.
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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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Are We Winning?
March 2018The pro-life movement has enjoyed some happy victories recently, but abortion remains a legal, political, and cultural mainstay in America. The U.S. is aborting and contracepting itself into oblivion.
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Kermit Gosnell in the Cone of Silence
January-February 2018A review of Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer
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Pro-lifers, You've Been Played
January-February 2018Some call the Democratic Party the "Party of Death." There is no viable major American political party worthy of the label "Party of Life." We pro-lifers need to stop pretending there is.
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Isn't It Ironic?
March 2017The former Democratic presidential nominee is no friend to women; she has been a brazen bully and an enabler of sexual assault. The press willingly disregarded a mountain of evidence on this.
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All Aboard the Suicide Train
May 2016In the Netherlands an increasing number of patients now seek assisted dying because of dementia, psychiatric illnesses, and age-related complaints — in other words, non-terminal medical conditions.
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Pope Francis Doesn't Need Your Applause
November 2015Pope Francis isn't satisfied with the reductionism that narrows the Catholic ethic of life to "no abortion," or the Catholic teaching on the family to "no same-sex marriage."
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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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Eugenics in the USA: Black Life, White Justice
January-February 2015Justice Ginsburg, one of the nation's most powerful abortion advocates, has been working for 20 years to reduce those populations she doesn't "want to have too many of."
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The Birth-Control Box in the Living Room
November 2014Research has uncovered a link between soap operas and lower fertility rates in Brazil, Mexico, and Kenya. In fact, some countries have "a history of using soap operas to cut fertility."
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Advocating for the Innocent in an Abnormal World
April 2013A review of Abandoned: The Untold Story of the Abortion Wars
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Rushing Death
December 2012The elderly and the under-pressure organ donor have reason to distrust the falsely compassionate, as advocates of legalized euthanasia threaten to undermine the foundation of medical care as we've known it.
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Guaranteed Controversy
September 2012In advance of her big London Summit on Family Planning, Melinda Gates launched a campaign called "No Controversy." She may soon realize she's already knee-deep in it.
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Occasions of Truth
April 2012Sustained national discussion of taboo topics like contraception and Planned Parenthood have yielded valuable 'teaching moments' and surprisingly countercultural essays in some mainstream venues.
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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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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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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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Waiting on the Past
April 2010Two more bishops recently weighed in on what measures are appropriate to take against pro-abortion Catholic politicians.
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Free Will & Freedom of Choice
April 2010Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is one politician known to pontificate on subjects that are "above her pay grade."
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Blessed Are the Barren
December 2009For all the talk of freedom and population control, one simple fact is ignored: God is the Lord of life, and to reject the life in us as women is surely to reject Him.
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The Prolife Movement & the Culture of Violence
September 2009Senseless acts of violence should never be answered with any words other than those extended with the love of Christ.
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Contraception & Logical Consistency
September 2009Catholics or non-Catholics who practice contraception but oppose premarital or extramarital sex hold a position that is logically inconsistent.
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Everyone Knows That!
December 2008Sometimes the truth is so simple, so easily recognizable and self-evident that even children have no trouble comprehending.
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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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Heroic Mothers
May 2007"I guess she knew the secret of life, and it is not in receiving but giving."
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Situation Critical
April 2007How far has marriage sunk? Married couples in 2005, as a proportion of U.S. households, "have finally slipped into a minority."
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'Just Say No'
November 2006The modcon Our Sunday Visitor is now advocating a new vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease given to girls at age 11.
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The Betrayal at the Root of the Culture Wars
October 2006A review of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement
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In Vitro Clinics Are Death Camps
October 2006"If embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps -- with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics."
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When Will Prolifers Wise Up?
November 2005If any of our readers had any doubts about what we had to say regarding John Roberts, they can now quietly lay them to rest.
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Here Come the Catholic Cheerleaders
October 2005The Thomas More Law Center, founded by Tom Monaghan, has decided to support the nomination of Judge John Roberts, even though he called Roe v. Wade "the settled law of the land."
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Prolifers: Thanks for the Votes; We'll See You Again in Four Years
September 2005"According to the White House, Judge Roberts does not oppose Roe v. Wade." What more do you need to know?
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'Till Death Do Us Part (And Not Soon Enough)
October 2001In the style of their pro-abortion counterparts, right-to-death advocates have been busily forging a debate over when life ends.
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The Incredible Shrinking of Man
March 2000Peter Singer's philosophy of preference-utilitarianism
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In the Valley of the Shadow of Death
October 1999Malaria kills many in Kenya when there is no chloroquine, but the West consistently sends “huge stockpiles of contraceptives.”
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These Are Family-Life Experts?
July/August 1999Trustworthy advice for parents who happen upon the "Your Family" page in Time magazine
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Why Is It O.K. to Insult a Pregnant Lady?
April 1999Unsolicited conversations often turn into sermonettes, confrontations, or inquisitions if this is not the “blessed” first child.
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"Grandpa! Grandpa!"
April 1999Harold Cybulski was to be taken off life support. When his two-year-old grandson ran in, Cybulski opened his eyes, sat up, and reached for the boy.
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Contraception vs. Natural Piety
March 1999The idea of nature as something to which we ought to conform ourselves allows for benign mystery as opposed to malign mastery.
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Teacher's Dirty Books
January 1999A survey of a thousand teenage girls found 82% said they wanted sex-ed to teach them “how to say no” without hurting a guy’s feelings.
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Who Are the Real Fanatics?
October 1998“I didn’t know Christians would help me,” the expectant mother told the counselor. “I thought they were all mean.”
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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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Contraception & Compromised Intimacy
September 1998When one has passed beyond egoism, when one has truly understood that love is a mutual gift, then one comes to what is truly love.
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Babies on Demand?
May 1998If you don’t want children— contracept. If you don’t want children but you get pregnant— abort. If you do want children but can’t conceive— take fertility drugs.
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The Christian View of Sex
January 1998Men and women today are tired of unfaithfulness, tired of shallow and brief relationships. They crave something more meaningful and reliable.
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What the Pope Called the 'Culture of Death' Is Actually a Syndicate of Death
January 1998 VIEW ARTICLE

The Problem Is Not Too Many People
June 1995In most circles it is an article of unquestionable faith that the world has a population problem. But are there too many people for one earth?
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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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Earthiness as Sacred
March 1989The Church celebrates and proclaims publicly some very private human activities that might well cause some folks to feel a bit squeamish.
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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 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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The Sanctity of Life & the Right to Adequate Health Care
March 1986Infant mortality, life expectancy, and disability rates confirm that the poor and uninsured permanently suffer the consequences of our broken healthcare system.
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Seams in the Seamless Garment?
January-February 1986If the Seamless Garment links the sparing of innocent human life with the sparing of guilty human life (the murderer or invader of the household or the invader of the country) then the Garment is full of seams.
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Saying a Humble, Compassionate & Joyful “Yes” to Life
November 1985Resisting the forces of death is only meaningful when we are fully in touch with the forces of life we want to uphold.
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Saying “No” to Death in All Its Manifestations
October 1985Real resistance requires the humble confession that we are partners in the evil that we seek to resist. This is a very hard and seemingly endless discipline.
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Sterilization & An Unformed Conscience
October 1985To tamper with the generative function, as I did, is to make myself a god, or to tell God, in effect, “I know better than You do.”
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Peace, a Gift We Receive in Prayer
September 1985Just as Jesus’ command to love one another cannot be seen as a part-time obligation, so too His call to peacemaking is unconditional, unlimited, and uncompromising.
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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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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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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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