Who’s the Murderer? Mom, Dad, or the Abortionist?

Last week, the Gospel Coalition published an article by Scott Klusendorf titled “Why Equal Protection Bills Harm Pro-Life Efforts.” His basic premise: charging aborting mothers with murder will lead to more abortions in the end. Two days later, Seth Gruber posted a response via Substack in which he publicly took Scott to task for his “poorly reasoned” position. Though these are not names that will mean anything to the average American, both men carry significant clout within pro-life circles—which is why it’s distressing to see them publicly at odds. Distressing, but not surprising. This is the era of ideological infighting, after all. Schisms are the new black.

For my part, I’ve known and admired Scott Kluesendorf since the beginning of my pro-life career some three decades ago.…

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The Problem of Faith in a World Full of Evil

The existence of evil has never been a philosophical problem for me. How can there be wickedness in a world created by a good God? Because he gave his creatures the freedom to rebel. Or at least the angelic and image-bearing ones. We did (rebel, that is) and here we are. That’s enough explanation for me. It’s the problem of faith that I struggle to get my head around. If you have the faith of a mustard seed (ie a very little), Christ told his disciples in Matthew 17, you can say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will obey you. Or in the less poetic and well-known rendering from Luke: If you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, be planted in the sea, and it will. Though we might question the practical value in transporting mountains or planting trees in the ocean, the basic takeaway seems pretty clear. If you have faith, the normal laws of nature are no longer binding.

Some years ago, my wife and I planted a small tree in the corner of our backyard. But then we decided we wanted it smack dab in the middle. So with tremendous faith, I approached the tree and told it in no uncertain…

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Move Over, Kansas & New Mexico, Massachusetts Has Gone All In on Out-of-State Abortions

When I first saw Massachusetts’ abortion total for 2024, I assumed there was a mistake. Based on historical data, it simply wasn’t plausible. In 2023, a reported 20,008 abortions took place in Massachusetts. For 2024, Guttmacher put the state total at 20,990—and their estimates are almost always too high. In fact, among the 23 states where abortion remains legal and 2024 abortion totals have already been reported, the Guttmacher estimate was higher than reported 23 times. That’s 100%. Their overall abortion estimate for those 23 states was inflated by 27%. But all that changed last week with the publication of the 2024 Massachusetts Induced Termination of Pregnancy Report. Guttmacher’s estimate, it turns out, was 81% too low. The actual 2024 abortion total for Massachusetts was 49,450. That’s more than twice what it was in 2023 and three times what it was in 2020.

In 2020, there were roughly 16,000 abortions in Massachusetts against 66,000 live births. In 2023, it was 20,000 abortions versus…

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Amidst a Catastrophic Fertility Crisis, England Paid for 272,000 Abortions

I have never been to England. In fact, I have never set foot on any continent but my own. I am neither young enough nor rich enough to travel the globe, but I’ve always been rich enough for books and television—which have allowed me to vicariously cross the pond for going on half a century. I have almost religious affection for Austen and Dickens and hold C.S. Lewis in even higher regard—as does virtually every literary Christian of every liturgical stripe. Only Jesus is more popular among the brethren, by a hair’s breadth. I never turn down an invitation to 221B Baker Street (on screen or on the page), and though Agatha Christie lacks the critical acclaim of her compatriots, there’s a reason she’s outsold everyone to ever walk the planet. Then there’s J.K. Rowling, the once broke single mom who is so talented that she built a global empire with nothing but her words. And if streaming television has added anything to my life, it’s been a slew of British crime dramas that have taken me across Jolly Old England, both past and present. Like many Americans, I have a fondness—or even a reverence—for Great Britain. Which…

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The Difference Between Good Walls and Bad Walz

The Horse and His Boy is my favorite Chronicle of Narnia. That’s almost certainly a minority position, but I have a soft spot for hidden gems—which may explain why Rogue One sits atop my Star Wars pantheon. It’s so good that it doesn’t even need lightsabers, just as The Horse and His Boy is so good that it doesn’t even need children from our world to capture the imagination. The reason I bring it up is because there’s a scene about halfway through that presents a rather foreign dilemma to we Americans. The story’s intrepid young quartet must enter and pass through the Calormen city of Tashbaan without being noticed and captured. This would be a fairly simple endeavor were it not for the fact that the entire city is surrounded by a wall. There is only one way in from the south, one way out to the north, and the city gates are locked at night. Something of the same difficulty is faced by Jean Valjean when he must gain entrance to Paris without being discovered by the relentless Inspector Javert. And even the rebels in Rogue One could only gain access to Scarif by circumventing its “walls”…

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No, American Support for Abortion is Not 80%

I like listening to Batya Ungar-Sargon—who shows up with some frequency on The Megyn Kelly Show and The Free Press. She is charming and energetic and generally full of astute analysis, but her takes on abortion and gay marriage are less commendable. Batya’s argument is essentially this: The country wants gay marriage. The country wants abortion. It’s time to move on. Perhaps I should expect such thinking from a self-described "MAGA leftist,” but it’s her framing of the issues that irks me the most. By attributing to both more cultural support than either actually enjoys, she infers for herself a dubious moral loophole. It’s the Pontius Pilate approach to avoiding culpability. I do not support this miscarriage of justice, but who am I to thwart the will of the people? Batya said something to Megyn Kelly back in November that prompted me to DM her the following:

I was dismayed this week when you equated support for gay marriage with opposition to transgender ideology. “The right side of those two issues…

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