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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.

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National Down syndrome organizations should partner with medical organizations and testing laboratories that develop and profit from prenatal testing even while they fight for their accountability.
If advocacy efforts surrounding prenatal diagnosis focus only on the goal of informed decision-making, and the majority of even well-informed parents still decide to terminate, can we really deem that advocacy successful?
The libertarian commitment to free markets and limited government is best preserved within a broader conservative context.
In her memoir, long-time abortionist Merle Hoffman wages a war against nature’s decree that only women can keep the human race going by bearing children.
All citizens should support Pain-Capable Child Protection Acts because the unborn can feel pain prior to birth, and laws protecting them from pain are constitutional.
Social activists opposed to the use of HEK-293—a kidney cell line derived from an aborted baby—in PepsiCo products should not respond with shareholder activism, because it wreaks political and economic havoc.
Not all discrimination is wrong. While the government should regulate some forms of wrongful discrimination, other forms of discrimination lie beyond the purview of the state.
The negative side-effects of contraception are often ignored in our public discourse, but a truly free decision to use or not use them—and whether to use government to promote them—depends on a frank acknowledgement of their costs along with their alleged benefits.
The Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA) isn’t "mean-spirited," "constitutionally suspect," or "callous." It is a popular commonsense proposal that is fully constitutional.
The state should never force anyone to perform an action he or she believes to be wrong, unless it has a good reason, not merely to have the action performed, but to insist that even those who find it wrong perform it.
Unless regulations and laws are changed, there will be fewer people with Down syndrome to celebrate on future World Down Syndrome Days, making this year the high water mark of lives with Down syndrome.
Whether we call it infanticide or after-birth abortion, ending the life of newborns kills human beings who are moral persons because they are rational beings.
Artificial testosterone and estrogen use harms both individuals and society.
The challenge in preventing abortion of Down syndrome fetuses is not convincing mothers that their child is a human being with a right to life, but of assuring expectant mothers there will be support for their children after they are born.
The fertility industry is booming because we desire genetic and memetic immortality—the preservation and reproduction of our bodies and ways of life.
The controversy over the HHS mandate is not a spat about wonkish detail or tribal privilege. It remains a struggle for the principle of religious freedom, the soul of civil society.
Lawmakers must look past the “equality versus religious freedom” standoff, and consider the substantive merits of each particular case.
An ancient example of resistance to a tyrant’s attempt to coerce violations of religious conscience provides an interesting perspective on resistance to the Obama administration’s recent healthcare coverage mandate.
Were the central task of government to be seen as that of aiding citizens in their own self-constitution, oriented towards real human goods including the good of religion, the HHS mandate would be seen for the unjust imposition it is.
If marriage is to be preserved in the present struggle, our task is to sort through the influential kinds of arguments about same-sex marriage and abortion that have been introduced by Justice Kennedy.
Contrary to what Obama supporters would have us believe, there’s no precedent for the HHS mandate.
Morality is not about keeping as long a leash as you can on the harms you cause. It is about keeping upright intentions and rejecting unfair tradeoffs—neither of which Obama’s proposed revision even pretends to affect.
No one can be rightly coerced by the state to be directly complicit in the commission of a wrong. This goes for any businessman, employer, insurance company, or individual, regardless of faith.
Life’s fragility should remind us of the greatness of God, and the goodness of God’s creation should inspire us to respect life. Adapted from remarks made in the Princeton University Chapel for Respect Life Sunday.

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