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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.

Behind the New Italian Ban on Surrogacy

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Public Discourse

China’s One-Child Policy: Pro-Choice and Pro-Life Must Work Together to End Forced Abortion and Gendercide

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Forced abortion and gendercide are not pro-life or pro-choice issues. They are human rights issues. Adapted from an address given at the Heritage Foundation on October 9th, 2014.
Public Discourse

The Happy Surrogate Families

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In addition to the tragic stories of surrogacy gone wrong, there are families and surrogates with “happy endings.” It is important to hear these stories, too, and to respond to the arguments they make in favor of surrogacy.
Public Discourse

Surrogacy: Children of Dreams, Parents of Means

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A new book tells the story of an infertile couple that has children through Indian surrogacy services—but it glosses over the costs to egg donors, surrogate mothers, and children.
Public Discourse

What Reason Can Know and What Government Should Legislate: A Rejoinder to Arkes

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The existence of objective moral truth that is knowable by reason does not imply that people generally, much less particular public officials, will in fact know and embrace that truth. Very often, they won’t, and that is why systematic limits on government power, such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, are good laws.
Public Discourse

Journey to Baby Gammy: How We Justify a Market in Children

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Materialism, relativism, and consequentialism are at the heart of the arguments in favor of third-party reproduction.
Public Discourse

A Time for Heroism

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If we hope to protect the unborn, promote sexual integrity, preserve the truth about marriage, and defend the freedom of religious conscience in our country, we cannot simply live good lives—we must live heroic ones.
Public Discourse

Protecting the Religious Liberty of Adoption and Foster Care Providers

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Provided agencies meet basic requirements protecting the welfare of children, they should be free to operate according to their values, especially their religiously informed beliefs about marriage. New legislation introduced this week would protect this right.
Public Discourse

After Hobby Lobby, the Struggle for Religious Freedom Continues

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According to the structure of the Court’s logic, all objecting employers should receive the same religious freedom protection given to churches and religious orders.
Public Discourse

Supreme Court to Obama Administration: You Don’t Have to Agree with Religious Beliefs to Respect the Liberty of the People Who Hold Them . . . and the Groups They Form

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Yesterday’s decision demonstrates that the Supreme Court understands what Congress set out to do when it passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Religious freedom is for all, regardless of the popularity of the belief. Congress, in passing RFRA, has said that if the belief can be accommodated, then it must be.
Public Discourse

The HHS Mandate, Unborn Life, and the Professionals: A Cog in the Political Machine

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It’s time to realize that ACOG’s priority is not medical fact but thwarting protection for the unborn.
Public Discourse

Euphemisms for Euthanasia and False Dilemmas: An Update on the Assisted Suicide Debate in the United States

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Now is the time for renewed vigilance for those who oppose euthanasia. The worst of this battle is yet to come.
Public Discourse

Science and the Embryo

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Senator Rubio was on solid ground in saying science has settled the question of when a human being's life begins. Science does not need to wait on philosophy’s pronouncements to investigate what the human embryo is and when its life begins.
Public Discourse

A Lethal Legacy: Hurricane Katrina and the Indignity of Euthanasia

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A new book tells the harrowing story of Memorial Medical Center, where some physicians took the lives of their patients during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Public Discourse

Lessons for Pro-Lifers from the Supreme Court of the Philippines

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The Supreme Court of the Philippines recently overturned components of that country’s “reproductive health” bill. What can the US pro-life movement learn from this ruling?
Public Discourse

Egg Freezing: Beating Biology and Buying Time, But at What Cost?

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Egg freezing does not really beat biology. It buys a small chance at giving birth, but at a very high price indeed.
Public Discourse

Can Science Tell Us When Life Begins?

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“Science” can tell us when life begins, provided that we already know what to look for. Empirical biology alone cannot tell us what that is. Once we establish a metaphysical account of life, then empirical embryology can tell us whether the relevant conditions are met.
Public Discourse

Premature Talk of Surrender on Same-Sex Marriage

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Conservatives must defend marriage for both principled and practical reasons. The Republican Party cannot surrender the cause of marriage without also surrendering the cause of life.
Public Discourse

Abortion, Slavery, and Constitutional Meaning

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Abolitionism provides the example for how to fight for a cause: underscore the humanity of those whose humanity is denied, provide compassionate care for those affected, name the lies that dehumanize and kill, and tirelessly argue for the truth about “who counts.”
Public Discourse

Paid for Her Silence: The Exploitation of Kylee Gilman

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No one should prey upon vulnerable cash-strapped women, recklessly endangering their health and well-being in order to harvest their eggs.
Public Discourse

Men, Abortion, Sin, and Salvation

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Abortion is not, in the end, about “sin” or “redemption.” It is about human life and its extermination.
Public Discourse

Intention, Choice, and the Right to Life: A Response to Nigel Biggar

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“Intention” and “choice” are complex concepts, but we must achieve clarity about them in order to protect human life and upright willing, as we should never choose to damage or destroy human life by intentionally killing a person.
Public Discourse

Who is Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has based her conclusions on her own and other Muslim women’s experiences of trauma and torture, forces us to confront uncomfortable facts. Brandeis’s treatment of Ali represents a troubling trend that limits freedom of speech on college and university campuses.
Public Discourse

Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Brandeis University: A View from Campus

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Civic freedoms come hand-in-hand with responsibilities. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has the right to criticize Islam, but she fails to fulfill her responsibility to do so without resorting to sensationalism and overgeneralizations.
Public Discourse

Health Regulations and Roe: The Fifth Circuit got it Right in Planned Parenthood v. Abbott

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In staying out of the legislative fray, the Fifth Circuit humbly recognized the limits of its due process jurisdiction. Now it’s up to the Supreme Court to do the same.
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