A roundup of pro-life news from around the interwebs.
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Unsurprisingly, the new American royal family Harry and Meghan are receiving an award for deciding to limit their family size. From the New York Post:
A British charity, committed to limiting family size to help save the environment, this week gave Prince Harry and Meghan Markle an award for their decision to have just two children.
Population Matters will award the couple, who welcomed their second child last month, the equivalent of $695 for their “enlightened decision” to have a small family and for serving as “role models for others,” according to reports.
“Having a smaller family reduces our impact on the Earth, and provides a better chance for all our children, their children and future generations to flourish on a healthy planet,” the charity said in a statement. “We commend the duke and duchess for taking this enlightened decision, and for affirming that a smaller family is also a happy family.”
The couple told British Vogue in 2019 that they were planning “two maximum” to reduce their impact on the environment. Last month, they welcomed their second child, a daughter named Lilibet. Their first child, Archie, was born in 2019.
Read the whole thing.
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Over at First Things, Dr. Robert P. George of Princeton has an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court: “Roe Must Go.” An excerpt:
The pro-life movement is founded upon two premises. The first is moral: that every human being, born or unborn, possesses inherent and equal dignity and an inalienable right to life. The second is legal: that there is no constitutional right to elective abortion on any responsible reading of our national charter; that this “right” was unconstitutionally fabricated by the Supreme Court in what dissenting Justice Byron White, a John F. Kennedy appointee and a Democrat, denounced as an “act of raw judicial power”; and that Roe and later cases based on it must be overturned. Reversing Roe is the only path consistent with the rule of law and basic justice.
A new Louisiana law requires abortionists to notify women about the abortion pill reversal process should they decide to change their mind. If you’re wondering how the abortion pill reversal process works, check out my interview with the pioneer of this life-saving treatment.
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The New York Times has an interesting analysis of Texas’ recent abortion law, which effectively deputizes citizens to sue abortion clinics—doing an end run around limitations to pro-life laws. Critics call it a “hack” of the legal system and abortion advocates are struggling to figure out how to respond. It is a creative new approach, much like the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn we see being created across the United States.
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NPR recently published a fascinating essay on the impact of China’s One Child Policy, which was discontinued after Chinese officials realized that the birth rate was plummeting and the population was not replacing itself. An excerpt:
“The doctors would inject poison directly into the baby’s skull to kill it,” Chen says, drawing on recordings he made of interviews with hundreds of women and their families in Linyi. “Other doctors would artificially induce labor. But some babies were alive when they were born and began crying. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies.”
The terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth.
“Officials would kidnap you if you tried to have two children. If you were hiding and they could not find you, they would kidnap your elder relatives and make them stand in cold water, in the winter,” remembers Lu Bilun, a resident.
Lu says the harassment became so savage that elderly residents of Linyi became afraid to leave their homes out of fear they might be kidnapped. Lu says he paid a 4,000 yuan fine to have his second son in 2006 (about $500 at the time), after hiding his wife for months. “This was not your average level of policy enforcement. It was vicious,” he says.
Read the whole thing. China’s One Child Policy was one of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century.
