A roundup of news and commentary from around the interwebs.
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Sometimes the headline really says it all. Like this one, at Salon: “Why Satanists may be the last, best hope to save abortion rights in Texas.” From the article:
The “nontheistic” organization, which is headquartered in Salem, Massachusetts, joined the legal fray this week by sending a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration demanding access to abortion pills for its members. The group has established an “abortion ritual,” and is attempting to use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (which was created to allow Native Americans access to peyote for religious rituals) to argue that its members should be allowed access to abortion drugs like Misoprostol and Mifepristone for religious purposes.
The Satanists have been doing this for awhile, but it is fitting that as the abortion wars heat up, the Satanists move to centre stage in defence of killing children.
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David French has an interesting piece on abortion titled “The Pro-Life Movement Must Transcend Politics.” I particularly like his advocacy of social assistance targeted at new mothers. Measures such as these have been effective at reducing the abortion rate around the world.
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Over at Unherd, Tomiwa Owolade has a great essay on Josiah Wedgwood titled “Why woke capitalism works.” I wrote about Wedgwood extensively in the first chapter of my 2017 bookSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion; I actually have one of Wedgwood’s original “Am I Not A Man and a Brother?” medallions. Owolade’s insights are fresh and fascinating.
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Pete Buttigieg tweeted out a photo of he and his partner Chasten holding twins with the announcement: “Chasten and I are beyond thankful for all the kind wishes since first sharing the news that we’re becoming parents. We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to our family.”
A few observations about this are in order. First, the mother of these children is nowhere in sight. It is a tragedy for children to grow up motherless, and it is ludicrous that it is controversial to say so. Second, Pete and Chasten had the photo taken on a hospital bed. As several commenters noted, this is a strange choice considering that neither of them gave birth—the mother of these children was either a surrogate or chose to give the children to these two men. But still, the photo they chose to put out was one connected to birth. It is an attempt to normalize motherless children.
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After years of only occasional column-writing and at least one abandoned book project, the great Mark Steyn has been writing again in the wake of the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. His columns are grimly humorous—like a court jester at the fall of Rome. Here’s his latest, “The Great Complacency.”
