Paul Tuns: On May 5, Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, addressed the parliamentary Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying examining whether to continue with the March 2027 plan to expand euthanasia to patients suffering solely from mental illness. He argued that not only should Parliament resist the expansion, but that it should conduct a thorough review [...]
Paul Tuns: Toronto Cardinal Frank Leo wrote an open letter dated April 20 to Prime Minister Mark Carney and federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser, encouraging the government to block the expansion of euthanasia to people suffering solely from mental illness. Noting that both he and Carney are Catholics, the Cardinal wrote “our Catholic faith opposes the taking of any human life” and [...]
Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling, Jonathan D. Cohen (Columbia Global Reports, $27.95, 185 pages) Jonathan D. Cohen, senior program officer for American Institutions, Society, and the Public Good at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, writes, “There have always been Americans driven to ruin by gambling. But never have so many been driven to ruin so easily, and [...]
Review: Making Sense of Suffering, by Peter Kreeft (Ignatius Press, $17.95 USD, 215 pages) Ignatius Press has re-released Peter Kreeft’s 1986 book Making Sense of Suffering and although the causes of our suffering might have changed, mankind’s reaction to suffering has not. It was, and remains, one of the main arguments against God: how could an all-powerful, all-good being allow innocent people to [...]
Mary Zwicker, European Correspondent: A foreign pro-abortion activist group is interfering in a pro-life country by distributing illegal abortifacient pills to women. On April 15, Women on Waves, a pro-abortion activist group from the Netherlands, announced that it would be helping women in Malta and nearby Gozo to illegally access abortion pills through the use of secret lockboxes placed in various locations across [...]
Oswald Clark, U.S. Correspondent: On May 14, the Supreme Court of the United States permitted the on-going mail distribution of the abortion pill when it stayed a lower court decision that sided with the state of Louisiana in its challenge against the Food and Drug Administration’s 2023 rule that allowed mifepristone to be prescribed and dispensed without an in-person appointment. Danco Laboratories [...]
Oswald Clark, U.S. Correspondent: On May 13, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin told a U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee hearing that he did not know anything about abortion-related contaminants in the country’s water supply even though he has been personally briefed on the issue by Liberty Council Action. Zeldin was asked by Senator Patty Murray (D, Wash.) during the budget hearings [...]
Selected Letters of John Updike: Edited by James Schiff (Penguin Random House, $73, 912 pages) John Updike is perhaps the preeminent example of what is called a man of letters – the author of short stories, novels, critical essays. A number of his letters are collected in a large volume, Selected Letters of John Updike. At 912 pages, one might remark that [...]
Modern Monsters: Political Ideologues and Their War against the Catholic Church: George Marlin (St. Augustine’s Press, $45.50, 227 pages) Version 1.0.0 George Marlin, chairman of Aid to the Church in Need-USA, has written an accessible examination of a dozen or so intellectuals whose ideas have, in his estimation, greatly harmed society by attacking the Catholic Church and the Christian view [...]
Pornocracy: Jo Bartosch and Robert Jessel (Polity, $36, 183 pages) In their introduction, Jo Bartosch, a journalist, and Robert Jessel, a human rights campaigner, argue that pornography defines our culture, calling our society a “pornocracy” which they define as, “A society in which political power, culture, relationships and identity are shaped or dominated by the purveyors of pornography.” Bartosch and Jessel continue: [...]
Mary Zwicker, European Correspondent: The United Kingdom is planning to expand abortion access by incentivizing abortion providers to offer “lunch hour” or “same day” abortions. In April, the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care published the “Renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England.” This strategy includes plans to increase abortion access in England by removing former financial incentivization which stretched out the [...]
Paul Tuns: On May 14, thousands of Canadians took part in the largest annual demonstration on Parliament Hill, the National March for Life, organized by Campaign Life Coalition. Before participants marched through the streets of the nation’s capital, they heard pro-life speakers [...]
Paul Tuns: Nova Scotia Education Minister Brendan Maguire said that parents do not have “rights over a child.” Maguire, a Liberal who crossed the floor to join the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative government of Premier Tim Houston in 2024, was answering a question about Bill 201 in the provincial House of Assembly. Bill 201 proposes to, among other items, make it illegal [...]
Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist David Bather Woods (Chicago, $39, 294 pages) Arthur Schopenhauer has been described as a miserable philosopher who saw human life swing between pain and boredom, suffering that is relieved only partially through aesthetic contemplation and the renunciation of desire: “the world and life can afford us no true satisfaction.” The only antidote [...]
Sarah Stilton, Review: The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto by Leah Libresco Sargeant (Notre Dame University Press, $37.95, 219 pages) Leah Libresco Sargeant, an author and speaker, provocatively argues in her brief The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist that it is not women who form families by choosing marriage and motherhood that betray the sisterhood, but rather radical feminists who ignore or hide [...]