Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube Rss
Public Discourse

Deciding Who Gets Religious Freedom: The Latest HHS “Accommodation”

By
In the latest proposed version of the HHS mandate, the government presumes to say which employers get religious freedom and how much they get, but all religious employers are obligated to live out their beliefs and should have the freedom to do so.
Public Discourse

The Wealth of Nations Depends on the Health of Families

By
Family, church, and school are the three basic people-forming institutions, and it is no wonder that they produce the best results—including economic and political ones—when they cooperate.
Public Discourse

Bad Science and Failed Freedom Protections in the HHS Mandate

By
The latest proposed amendment to the HHS mandate still draws on empirically unsound data and violates religious freedom.
Public Discourse

Simple Justice: Kids Deserve School Choice

By
Rather than cave to self-interested protests against school choice from teachers unions, we should do what we can to make Catholic schools a viable school option for low-income children.
Public Discourse

Reflections of a Former Fetus and Former Incubator

By
Radical pro-choice rhetoric attacks the most basic facts of our human existence: that the human body comes in two different but complementary types, male and female. They cannot forgive women who embrace femininity rather than neuter themselves.
Public Discourse

A New Way Forward on Abortion

By
Pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike should consider a constitutional amendment that would allow, but not require, states to ban abortion in the second trimester.
Public Discourse

Is Religion Outdated in the Twenty-First Century?

By
Religion isn’t outdated simply because some people claim that we can only know what the natural sciences tell us. Philosophy and theology are the next steps in our search for truth about nature, human nature, and God.
Public Discourse

An Unrecognizable America

By
If the HHS mandate is enforced, our government may provoke a schism in the American Catholic Church and will reduce faithful Catholics to second-class citizenship.
Public Discourse

Abortion and the Constitution in Another Forty Years: A Right to Life for 2053

By
As we recognize the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, pro-lifers should consider supporting a constitutional amendment to abolish abortion forty years from now.
Public Discourse

The Paradox of Persons Forty Years After Roe

By
The Roe Court’s suppression of a foundational question—who is the law for—means that the decision could be overturned by any of several feticide cases that could reach the current Court.
Public Discourse

The Real Reason to Criticize Roe

By
Pro-lifers need to better understand the history of the pro-life movement and what Roe did to it.
Public Discourse

Abortion Promises Unfulfilled

By
Forty years after Roe v. Wade, the promise that legal abortion would guarantee fewer out-of-wedlock births, less child abuse, and lower crime rates remains unfulfilled.
Public Discourse

Forty Years Later: It’s Time for a New Feminism

By
A feminism that promotes abortion as the key to women’s freedom does not help us flourish, preserve our dignity, or protect us from evils. We must support women so that the “choice” between life and abortion is no longer difficult because life is the natural choice.
Public Discourse

On the 40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade: A Public Discourse Symposium

By
Witness to the truth matters for its own sake, but persistent, winsome witness also tends to bear good fruit, even if it takes 40 years and counting.
Public Discourse

An Environmental Conservatism?

By
Roger Scruton argues that conservatism is a better home for good environmental policy than liberalism.
Public Discourse

We Must Preserve the Founders’ Classical Vision for Our Nation’s Capital

By
The plan of our nation’s capital and the architecture of its core buildings and monuments must carry on the classical vision the Founders intended as the physical manifestation of America’s form of government and political ideals.
Public Discourse

Conscientious Abortions? We Don’t Need New Laws Protecting Abortionists

By
A recent argument that abortion providers deserve the same legal protection as pro-life medical providers is philosophically flawed and ignores legal and popular consensus on the evil of abortion.
Public Discourse

Law’s Logic at the End of Life

By
To its detriment, Howard Ball’s new book on end-of-life law focuses more on the emotions and biases of the law’s defenders than on law’s history and content.
Public Discourse

Lessons from France on Defending Marriage

By
Unlikely characters, including gay men, are leading the French people in protest against redefining marriage. A repeating refrain is “the rights of children trump the right to children.” Americans should follow their example of mobilizing across party lines.
Public Discourse

The Meaning of Place in America: How and Why it Shapes Lives

By and
While globalized technology promises to make human beings more like each other than ever, our places of residence and origin still differentiate us, whether by shaping our cultural beliefs, our habits, or our manners.
Public Discourse

Let’s Talk About Just War

By
In a country where we oscillate between the extremes of realism and pacifism, learning the history of the just war tradition is important. A new book by David Corey and J. Daryl Charles offers us an introduction.
Public Discourse

Bringing Marx into the Abortion Debate

By
Two points can best persuade young people about abortion: our need for laws that protect the weak and vulnerable and the deadening of conscience that often accompanies pro-choice sentiment.
Public Discourse

Sneering Social Constructionists

By
Sneering at persons who are not social constructionists has become commonplace. Until defenders of inherent virtues, natural laws, divine beings, and other things that transcend social reality learn to overcome this initial set-up, they will be forever on the defensive.
Public Discourse

It’s a Wonderful Strife

By
Yes, George Bailey destroyed Bedford Falls. Good riddance! The entrepreneur creates new ways of life that restore our moral bearings when old ways of life become—as they do in every age—cynical and dysfunctional.