Notre Dame, Abortion, and the Jewish Question

Notre Dame, Abortion, and the Jewish Question

On November 3, 2022, the University of Notre Dame hosted a debate between College Democrats and College Republicans which suddenly and unexpectedly turned from contentious to nasty when the question of abortion arose. Blake Ziegler, spokesman for the College Democrats, opened the abortion segment of the debate by saying, “I proudly affirm the women’s right to choose.”1 “For nearly 50 years,” he continued, “our nation recognized this fundamental right…

Read More

Aborting Roe v. Wade

Aborting Roe v. Wade

Decided in an era when Supreme Court Justices were rationalizing their decisions by searching “penumbras” that were “formed by emanations from” explicit constitutional guarantees, the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade created a constitutional barrier to state action to protect human life. We can envision the Roe majority not in conference but in séance, searching penumbras and emanations to locate a basis for their decision. Not all Justices were impressed when the decision issued, a disquiet shared by some of their successors. Years later Justice Clarence Thomas would hang a sign in his chambers: “Please don’t emanate in the penumbras.” And the search goes on. Is that right to abortion based on privacy? Equal protection? Gender equality? Liberty? Autonomy? Something else?

Read More

Pro-Life Requiem

Pro-Life Requiem

I first met Joe Scheidler at a Judie Brown American Life League, conference in what must have been 1982 or 1983. I don’t remember his speech although I’m sure he gave one. I do remember getting into a cab with him after the conference was over and both of us were on our way to the airport. He was well-known at the time, having made a name for himself as a leader of the prolife movement; I was unknown, and so it was natural that he would ask what I did for a living. “I edit a magazine called Fidelity,” I said, referring to the same magazine which would quote him five years later.

Read More

Abortion Law in Argentina

Abortion Law in Argentina

On October 2018 I wrote an article for CW with the title “A victory in the Culture Wars in Argentina” on the failure of the pro-abortion Jewish death squad to legalize abortion then (I gave a list of more than fifty Jewish pro-abortion leading activists and institutions). In December 2020, the same article could have been published with just a minor change of title, “Defeat in the Culture Wars in Argentina,” and hardly any changes in its content, for the pro-abortion actors, mostly Jewish, and the lobbying operations and the funding and the fallacies on the pro-abortion side as well as the cynicism and ominous clerical silence of most bishops, presumably on the pro-life side, were the same. In 2018 everybody in the prolife camp knew that victory was an absolutely provisional one, for the forces of the culture of death would come back at once with a vengeance, bloodthirsty and heavily financed by the same sponsors as usual. That is exactly what happened. However, despite of it all, things could have been different but for one simple factor: if Pope Francis had spoken urbi et orbi clearly and firmly against the abortion law in his own country of birth, to which he owes his own career, and which, by the way, he has never visited as a Pope. The question still remains: Why did Pope Francis not say a word against the abortion law in Argentina? Why did he not allow any of the bishops in Argentina to say a word against abortion, let alone organize any serious opposition campaign, which, again, with Francis’ intervention would have been utterly unnecessary?

Read More

Armageddon in the Auld Sod The Conflict Between Neo-Paganism & Conservative Catholicism in Modern Ireland

Armageddon in the Auld Sod  The Conflict Between Neo-Paganism &  Conservative Catholicism in Modern Ireland

It was once known as the Isle of Saints and scholars, a title it proudly held for 1,500 years. But now Ireland has embraced a different kind of Pride: the rainbow-flag waving, Shout-Your-Abortion kind. And the learned Holy men have been replaced by witches’n’warlocks who would not look out of place in a 1970s Hammer House of Horror movie – though it would be a Hate Crime to say so.

Read More