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IVF

IVF Provider Immunity in Alabama: A Challenge to National Conservative Unity on Pro-life Issues

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The new Alabama IVF provider immunity law, recently praised by former President Trump, will have pernicious national consequences on parents’ rights to hold IVF providers accountable and will negatively affect Republican unity over pro-life issues.
Public Discourse

Federal Court Precedent: A Defense of Judge Roy Moore and the Alabama Supreme Court

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The US Supreme Court has set a precedent upholding the right of states to define marriage as the union of husband and wife. All federal and state judges—including those in Alabama—are bound by that precedent.
Public Discourse

The Death of The Rule of Law in Alabama

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The constitutional crisis now unfolding in Alabama is a direct and foreseeable result of Judge Callie S. Granade’s orders.
from the editor's desk

From the Editor’s Desk: Public Discourse’s Monthly Roundup, February 2024

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Reflections on right reason plus a roundup of this month's essays
IVF

Location, Location, Location

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Location is simply one more of those many factors that make no difference where the most foundational moral principles are concerned. The human embryo is a human being, whether in utero, undergoing cell division in vitro, or temporarily (or permanently) in frozen stasis in a “nursery,” as the Alabama Supreme Court tellingly, but somewhat ironically, calls it.
Donald Trump swearing in ceremony

Is Donald Trump Disqualified from the Presidency? A Response to Matthew J. Franck

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People have a right to protest supposed electoral fraud even if they are obviously and verifiably wrong. They do not have the right to commit violence. No one has the right to commit violence in a political cause. But not all political violence is insurrection.
Surgeons

The Transgender Movement’s House of Cards Is Falling

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A growing number of doctors, patients, and whistleblowers are beginning to question the medical establishment’s recommendations for children with gender dysphoria.
Closeup of the document of Juneteenth National Independence Day Act. Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States.

The Making of Juneteenth

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The principal irony of Juneteenth is that slavery was still a legal institution in the United States on June 19, 1865—if not in Texas because of the Emancipation Proclamation, then certainly in Kentucky and Delaware, where slavery would not be blotted out until the ratification of the thirteenth amendment. This would not, however, be the only irony in the history of American emancipation, and certainly not the last.

Professional Hockey’s Inquisitorial “Pride Nights”

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Of course the law gives Americans wide latitude to be nasty, unkind, and intolerant of one another. But that doesn’t mean we should strive to live in an uncivil and fragmented society. It certainly doesn’t mean that the NHL must continue hosting events that breed animosity and intolerance, the opposite of what they claim to aim for.
supreme court

Women, Witches, and Abortion: A Misguided Attack on Justice Alito

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A Minnesota law professor’s attack on the draft Dobbs opinion seems based more on desperation than scholarship. This and other misguided efforts to demonize critics of Roe need to be refuted so we can focus our attention on the real issue of the ugly realities of abortion.
Sleeping baby in mom's arms

Casey v. Casey

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Let Casey stand, and its abortion license fall.

A Church Without Walls, Behind Walls: How Evangelicals Are Transforming American Prisons

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Correctional facilities must grapple with unprecedented levels of overcrowding, violence, and suicide, as well as rampant mental illness among inmates. The tightening of budgets and the resulting loss of vocational, educational, and treatment programs pose additional difficulties. In the midst of these struggles, faith-based approaches, led by faith-motivated volunteers and prisoners, are providing the most innovative, holistic, and effective programs available in correctional facilities today.
Congress

Could Passage of an Extreme Abortion Bill Come Back to Haunt Democrats?

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As the Democratic Party at the national level moves further into abortion extremism and the exclusion of those who dissent, it is hard to imagine the party embracing a more moderate and inclusive stance. But electoral consequences in the 2022 midterms could prompt this awakening.
Man getting covid vaccine

Vaccines, HEK293 Cells, and Cooperation with Evil: A Response to Michael Pakaluk

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Neither Michael Pakaluk’s criticisms of a statement by pro-life scholars on COVID-19 vaccines nor his positive arguments against those vaccines hit their mark. The purchase and use of HEK293 and similar cell-lines are not intrinsically impermissible. Well-formed people of good faith may be moved by the very strong reasons that exist to take the vaccine to do so.
hand shake

Between the Trenches of the Culture Wars, But Not with Ill Will: An Exchange

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How to achieve a lasting peace in our cultural conflicts is the great difficulty remaining for us. We should not paper over important differences. But, as Andrew Koppelman and Adam MacLeod demonstrate, we can discuss them in a conciliatory spirit of friendship.
Voting in front of Flag

Christian Witness Demands That We Defend Truth—and Reject Donald Trump

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Once we no longer care about the truth, our own deliberations become corrupt. When the positions we take and the policies we advocate are not restrained by truth, it no longer seems to matter how we bring about our agenda. All that matters is that we win.
Gettysburg

Lessons from Gettysburg: A Conversation with Professor Allen Guelzo

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For Abraham Lincoln, the victory at Gettysburg appeared almost as a ratification of the Declaration of Independence and its principles.
Woman

Pressing Pause on the Global Transgender Youth Pandemic

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Before Covid-19’s pernicious spread, another health phenomenon had reached epidemic proportions and is still occurring on a global level. Unlike the virus, its vulnerable population is the young—especially young girls.
Interview

Friends Clashing—Yet One More Time—On Free Speech

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Hadley Arkes and Robert Miller go one more round on the moral norms that govern speech and the government’s authority in prohibiting immoral speech.
Quran

American Muslims Challenge Transgenderism—and Each Other

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In amicus briefs to the Supreme Court in cases about sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity, some American Muslims argue from their beliefs while others push LGBT causes. This contrast provides non-Muslims a window into the teachings of Islam, and a ringside seat for intra-Muslim conflicts. At stake is whether truth claims or identity politics will prevail.
suicide, depression, assistance

Assisted Suicide: The Ethics, the Laws, and the Dangers

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The people most harmed by this agenda are seriously ill people hearing from society and physicians that death by overdose will end their problems; other patients suffering from a reduced commitment to care; people with disabilities who are next in line to be seen as a “burden” on others; and lonely and depressed people of any age, seduced by the message that suicide is a positive solution. Adapted from a lecture delivered in June 2019 at the Vita Institute, an educational program for pro-life leaders sponsored by the University of Notre Dame's de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.

False Choices: Religion’s Role in the American Revolution

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In eighteenth-century political reasoning and rhetoric, ministers and statesmen were not obliged to choose between pragmatism or piety, orthodoxy or heterodoxy, reason or revelation. As we grapple with the role of religion in the American Revolution, we should not impose false dichotomies routinely used by modern scholars but were unknown to their subjects.

Pro-life Laws Don’t Establish Christianity and Religious Liberty is Not a License to Kill

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It makes no sense to claim that laws restricting abortion tread on the free exercise of religion because they do not allow abortions to be performed by people who have no religious objections to them. No serious interpretation of religious liberty allows people to do whatever they want simply because their religion allows or promotes it.

No, Legislatures Cannot Abolish Marriage

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Common-law marriage can never entirely be abolished. The duties of marital relations are generated and vested by the actions of the parties themselves.
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