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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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Recent events suggest that Commonweal and Timothy Jost need to reassess their arguments about health care and abortion
The latest decision from our judicial overlords on same-sex marriage spells trouble for republican constitutionalism and the institution of marriage.
The new health care law has endangered longstanding protections on conscience. We must act to address them or risk creating a dangerous precedent.
Under the new health-care law, pro-lifers may have to accept inferior health plans, rather than wrongly pay into abortion providing ones.
More on the red-state blue-state abortion debate: a response to Koppelman, Carbone, and Cahn
The fiftieth anniversary of oral contraceptives is a reminder of all the things the Pill lets us forget.
In a first-time feature, the editors of Public Discourse respond to the editors of Commonweal.
Promoting a sexually permissive pop-culture in the Muslim world gets the true foundations of ordered liberty wrong. In defining our ideals by rejecting our enemy’s, we go from one extreme to another, and miss the virtuous mean.
America’s abortion laws may inspire a dangerous provision in Kenya’s new constitution.
Andrew Koppelman’s claim that red states and the religious right increase abortions doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
The nature of children’s education matters to jihadists. It should matter to us, too.
The controversial Tariq Ramadan’s latest book promotes a “Western” version of Islam. Is he the “Muslim Martin Luther”?
It’s hard to credibly demand religious liberty when one is in the minority if one refuses to grant it when one is the majority. The principle “do unto others as you would have done unto you” should be a guiding ideal for all sides in the Swiss minaret controversy.
A good deal of online commentary about a recent ecumenical statement misunderstands the nature of human reason.
In response to the would-be Detroit bomber, Yemen wants more helicopters to counter terrorism. But there is no indication helicopters would have stopped him or that, over the long run, they will put an end to the activities of al-Qaeda enthusiasts. Counterterrorism efforts need to take hearts, minds, and wills seriously.
Having spent 20 years wrongly diagnosed as in a persistent vegetative state, Rom Houben reminds us that disabled persons are capable of many more substantive opportunities for human fulfillment than we are initially inclined to believe. But is bodily life just as such worth preserving? Can care-givers rightly remove hydration and nutrition?
If we are to restore confidence in free markets, we need a robust explanation of their moral value.
It is no simple matter to care for aging parents. But in the face of an uncertain future, concrete steps can be taken to make an unusual option more attractive.
Yves Simon's fierce moral intelligence highlights the sad decay of our public deliberation, but his example also gives cause for hope.
Pragmatic and moral considerations should not be allowed to distort science, nor should they distract philosophy from its pursuit of truth.
Many Muslims have been either silenced or ignored when it comes to their views of their own faith. As we grapple with the legacy of 9/11, we need to listen to these voices if we are to understand the religion they practice.
President Obama has called for vigorous debate on the abortion question. For that to happen, though, his own position must be clarified. The picture that emerges is not a flattering one.
Millions of Americans believe that states can prohibit abortion in the third trimester, yet current Supreme Court jurisprudence has manufactured a right to unfettered abortion right up to the time of the child’s birth. How did Americans become so confused on this issue and how did the Supreme Court end up where it has?
Many are pointing to Obama’s pick of an Evangelical to head the National Institutes of Health as a sign of the president's willingness to reach out to those with differing viewpoints. But his pick holds conflicted views about the human embryo and will oversee a department that, under new rules, is outsourcing the destruction of human life.

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