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Pillar

The Human Person

The first pillar of a decent society is respect for the human person, which recognizes that all individual human beings have dignity simply because of the kind of being they are: animals whose rational faculties allow them to know, love, reason, and communicate. It also recognizes that human beings are persons, members of the human family who flourish in a community that respects their fundamental rights and who long to discover transcendent truths about the nature of reality.

Q&A: Be Not Conformed—Girard and the Problem of Desire in a Postsecular Age

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Remembering Jane Roe and Mary Doe: The Courage of Norma McCorvey and Sandra Cano

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The shameful and irrational desire on the part of the Courts to reach decisions in Roe and Doe with no evidence—and without even knowing if the women in whose names the cases were brought actually wanted abortions—was later exposed by the courage of these two women.

How to Think About Discrimination: Race, Sex, and SOGI

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Sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) antidiscrimination laws are unjustified, but if other policies are adopted to address the mistreatment of people who identify as LGBT, they must leave people free to engage in legitimate actions based on the conviction that we are created male and female and that male and female are created for each other.

Abortion Widens the Gender Gap and Exploits Women

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The “women’s rights” argument for abortion ubiquitous in modern Western culture reframes the act of abortion as a means to women’s freedom. Yet, historically, abortion has been and continues to be a reflection of male dominance.

Trumpism, Terrorism, and Thomism

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On Thomistic principles, Trump’s ban on Syrian refugees whose lives are in danger is not morally justifiable. Bans on other travelers and immigrants, however, are not as problematic.

Neither Reformation nor Enlightenment: The Seeds of Religious Freedom Within Islam

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Contrary to what one often hears in Western media, Islam needs neither a Reformation nor an Enlightenment. Islam must—and can—find resources from within its tradition to defend the full human right to religious freedom. The second in a two-part series.

Religious Freedom in the Muslim World: A Nuanced Appraisal

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What is the status of religious freedom in Islam, and what are its prospects? An answer to this question must begin with a nuanced appraisal of the political theologies that govern different Muslim nations. The first in a two-part series.

Kermit Gosnell and the Ideology of Abortion on Demand

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If this butcher could carry on virtually in the open for so many years—if he could even be permitted one more “procedure” before police on the scene put an end to his sordid business—how many other clinics like his are there?

Racketeer for Life: The Memoir of a Pro-Life Activist

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By carefully documenting his unique contribution to street level pro-life activism, Joseph Scheidler has done an exceptionally fine service both for his readers and for the pro-life movement.

Science, Embryonic Autonomy, and the Question of When Life Begins

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A new study demonstrates that human embryos autonomously direct their own development from the very earliest moments of life—even when they are not in their mothers’ wombs.

Unconscionable: Threats to Religious Freedom and Rights of Conscience in the Abortion Debate

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Waging war against those who cannot in good conscience help perform or facilitate abortions does little to improve access for women seeking abortions, damages the integrity of those who object, and harms civil society.

Double Standards on Abortion and Animal Rights

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Abortion rights dogma can obscure human reason and harden the human heart so much that the same person who feels empathy for animal suffering can lack compassion for unborn children who experience lethal violence and excruciating pain in abortion.

Don’t Let Assisted Suicide Come to the Nation’s Capital

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DC’s assisted suicide bill is the most expansive and dangerous our country has yet seen.

Seeking Consensus: The Incoherence of a Singular Islam

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Debates about whether Islam is inherently violent obscure more than they clarify because they misconceive the nature of religious authority in Islam. A lack of central authority lies at the heart of the difficulties facing Muslim reformers and explains why it is so difficult to disentangle violence from Islam.

Abortion’s Miscarriage Problem

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By acknowledging the tragic reality of miscarriage and supporting those who grieve, we can build a culture of life and encourage our society to recognize the humanity of the unborn child.

Life Worthy of Life: Down Syndrome, Equality, and My Son Silas

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Those of us blessed by the love of someone with an extra twenty-first chromosome look forward to October. October invites me, along with all other parents of children with Down Syndrome, to proclaim loudly that our children live lives worthy of life.

The Future of Pro-Life Legislation and Litigation

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In her landmark 1971 paper, Judith Jarvis Thomson tried to defend abortion by appeal to norms of justification consistently applicable in a range of other cases. By contrast, the courts in and after Roe and Casey have treated the right to abortion as an unquestionable legal principle. This inverted approach is doomed to fail as it continues to reveal the anomalous character of abortion rights.

Autonomy or Worthiness? How to Find Dignity in Death

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There is dignity in living and dignity in dying, because the concept of “dignity” is inseparable from our humanity. Even when our autonomy is lost, all people can still undergo suffering and death with a noble and dignified serenity.

All Death is Death Without Dignity

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Advocates for “death with dignity” seem to deny reality, since no human death is truly dignified—even if a person chooses or accepts it. Instead, what ultimately gives death dignity is the kind of life that preceded it.

Mother Teresa’s 1994 Message to the Supreme Court on Abortion

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Mother Teresa of Calcutta was canonized yesterday by Pope Francis. In 1994, she submitted an amicus brief, filed by her counsel Robert P. George, pleading with the United States Supreme Court to reverse its decision in Roe v. Wade. The text of her brief appears below.

Banning Muslim Travel to the US? A Thomistic Perspective on Donald Trump’s Proposal

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Is there a moral obligation for the US not to enact Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim travel into the US?

Religious Liberty Crisis Averted in California

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The war is far from over, but a recent battle in California shows that pluralism, religious liberty, and traditional values can be defended where there is a will to mobilize and resist.

What Opponents Can Learn from Assisted Suicide Advocates

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A playbook exists for reversing the slide toward death on demand. It’s time to use Compassion & Choices’ tactics against it.

Abortion as a Positive Good: How the Abortion Movement Echoes Radical Slavery Rhetoric

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Like John C. Calhoun, who famously embraced slavery as a “positive good,” the abortion movement of 2016 has shifted from seeing abortion as a “necessary evil” to celebrating it as good for women and society.

Congress Should Protect Conscience Rights for Medical Students Like Me

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Congress should pass the Conscience Protection Act to send a message to the entire nation that our freedom of speech and religious freedom are protected and valued.
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