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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.

English for the Dazed and Confused

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The Supreme Court vs. Women’s Health

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The Supreme Court’s latest abortion decision is a significant setback for women and the unborn.

Handshakes, Islam, and Religious Tolerance in the West

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True religious freedom demands that we allow space in our society for difference, even when we don’t understand the reasons for a particular religious practice. Having to live without fully understanding others comes with the territory of genuine diversity.

Some Choices You Don’t Get to Make: What’s Wrong with Me Before You

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A new film in which the main character commits suicide sends the message that “me and my needs come before you and your needs.” It is a tale of autonomy run amok—a result of the radical and ludicrous idea that we do not live connected to, dependent on, or in relationship with others.

Mystery vs. Mastery: Reframing the Debates in our Culture Wars

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The bitterness of competing narratives in today’s culture wars can give the impression that no agreement is possible between opposing sides. Margaret Somerville proposes a way forward through a shared ethic of wonder at the mystery and dignity of human life.

To Defend or Defund? Evangelicals Go Wobbly on Planned Parenthood, Public Justice, and Moral Judgment

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Despite arguments to the contrary, pro-lifers simply cannot support federal funding for Planned Parenthood. If the price for a seat at the public justice table is taxpayer funding for the nation’s leading abortion provider, it may be time to think about another table.

Never Do Evil So Good May Come of It: Why Legislators Must Stop Justifying Surrogacy

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The law is a teacher. By legalizing surrogacy, Louisiana legislators are teaching people that it is morally permissible to use people as means to an end.

Can We Make Ourselves More Moral? Designer Babies, Hormone Therapy, and the New Eugenics of Transhumanism

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If a non-teleological process produced human morality, then how can we find a measuring rod for morality outside of nature that allows us to prefer “moral” behaviors to “immoral” behaviors?
baby feet

Even Very Sick Children Deserve Medical Care: Why Every State Needs “Simon’s Law”

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Parents of very young, very sick children deserve the right to make medical decisions for their sons and daughters, no matter how difficult those decisions may be.

The Evolving HHS Mandate: A Play in Three Acts (So Far)

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A play in three acts, each consisting of a meeting between the CEO of a religious charity and the agent representing her health insurance company.

Women and Abortion: Getting to the Heart of the Matter

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Pro-abortion groups promote stories that present abortion as an empowering experience, but those in post-abortion recovery ministries know a different reality. Many women and men are deeply wounded by their experience of abortion.

Renting Wombs is a Human Wrong, not a Human Right

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The Council of Europe has rejected a report recommending the legalization of surrogacy. This decision is a victory for human rights: Despite arguments that surrogacy is “compassionate,” its history of contentious litigation and documented human rights abuses make clear that it is a grave wrong.

The Ideological Diversity of the Pro-Life Movement

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Daniel K. Williams’s Defenders of the Unborn offers an in-depth history of the pro-life movement in the years before and after abortion’s legalization. Williams does his readers a great service by highlighting the ideological diversity of pro-life activists throughout the movement’s history.

IVF, Designer Babies, and Commodifying Human Life

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IVF has created more problems than it has solved, especially helping to create the mindset that human life is a commodity to be used and manipulated. This mindset has been instrumental in paving the way for the approval of research involving the genetic modification of human embryos in the UK, research poised to usher in a host of ethical and legal issues we can only begin to imagine.

Moral Complicity at Court: Who Decides?

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American history is rife with examples of conscientious objectors whose right to religious freedom was respected, even if it conflicted with governmental interests. The Little Sisters of the Poor deserve the same respect, and all Americans who value religious liberty have the duty to stand with them.
Public Discourse

Freedom of Conscience and New “LGBT Rights” in International Human Rights Law

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“LGBT rights” are being elevated above conscience rights when the two come into conflict—but this trend is to the detriment of human rights, which can stand the test of time only when they are grounded in transcendent, fixed authority.
Public Discourse

Ex Machina, Artificial Intelligence, and the Ethical Dangers–or Benefits?–of New Technology

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Very soon, the classic scenarios of artificial intelligence from science fiction will become reality. Recognizing the moral and ethical concerns such achievements will raise can help us begin to address them. Whether the development of new technology will be good or bad will depend on how we use it.
Public Discourse

Immigrants, Assimilation, and Religion

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Our nation faces an assimilation crisis as many Middle Eastern immigrants reject our culture, which they perceive as libertine. We could improve the situation through a renewed commitment to our founding principles, particularly the reunification of faith and reason.
Public Discourse

Setting the Record Straight on Texas’s Abortion-Safety Law

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The Supreme Court is a vote away from unraveling years of incremental pro-life legislation as it examines the case surrounding Texas’ abortion-safety law HB2. But holding the abortion industry to a high standard of care should not be controversial, as the health of real women is at stake.
Public Discourse

Girls Just Want to Be Born

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The global pro-life movement will continue to speak out and defend the girl child. We must work to oppose all acts of gender based violence, protect women’s and girls’ lives, and seek consistent non-discriminatory life-affirming laws and policies.
Public Discourse

The Hippocratic Oath: Quaint Relic or Solemn Vow?

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Despite its naysayers, the original Hippocratic oath remains an enduring icon of medical ethics because it eschews the unbound and nebulous principles of modern bioethics in favor of traditional virtues and transcendent truths.
Public Discourse

The Fight over Abortion in the UN’s New International Development Agenda

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Pro-life countries must arm themselves against the UN’s intense pressure toward population control, while at the same time supporting and holding the UN accountable to its legitimate development objectives.
Public Discourse

What Conservatives Can Learn from the Liberal Case against Assisted Suicide

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A new book written from a liberal humanist perspective provides insight for conservatives who want to make a more broadly compelling case against euthanasia. It also suggests a basis for an effective coalition between liberals and conservatives.
Public Discourse

From “Physician Knows Best” to the Cult of Autonomy: A Seismic Shift in Bioethics

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As American medical ethics shifted from a model of paternalistic beneficence to a model of patient autonomy, self-determination became enshrined as the paramount value—ironically to the detriment of our society’s most vulnerable members.
Public Discourse

Margaret Sanger’s Eugenics Heyday in the Federal Government

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On both the state and federal level, long-acting reversible contraceptives are being pushed as a means to reduce the birth rate of the poor. These initiatives will have a disproportionate impact on the childbearing of racial minorities.
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