“I never expected to be the poster child for sterilization,” Rachel Daimond told Suzy Weiss in a recent article titled, “First Comes Love, Then Comes Sterilization” focusing on a troubling trend among American young adults. For several months, Diamond has been using social media, especially Tick Tock, to document her decision to undergo sterilization to guarantee that she would never have children. Diamond, like a growing number of young adults, is part of the “intentionally child free” or anti-natalist movement. Weiss notes that many of the young adults embracing this movement cite concerns about climate change, with one study finding that 39% of Generation Z does not want children because they are concerned about the environment. But as Weiss’s article shows, there is more to the story. Many young adults who are choosing not to have children and even sterilizing themselves to make sure they remain child-free also express a hostility toward the very idea of family.
One young woman, Isabel, told Weiss that she is planning a “sterilization celebration” at a local sushi joint, explaining that she believes it is morally wrong to bring children into the world because “no matter how good someone has it, they will suffer” and because she hopes to retire in her fifties or earlier.
In response the Dobbs v. Jackson,the upcoming Supreme Court case challenging Roe v. Wade, Dr. Jon Shields of Claremont McKenna is arguing that the case should serve as a catalyst for the pro-life movement to compromise with the abortion movement. Pointing to research that shows a large number of abortionists dislike and even refuse to practice late second-trimester and third trimester abortions when an unborn child “becomes more recognizably human,” along with the fact that most Americans support restrictions on later abortions, Shields argues that pro-lifers and abortion proponents should reach a compromise. “Since pro-choice and pro-life philosophers respect the reasonableness of their intellectual foes, perhaps they, too, have rational grounds to accept a liberal compromise on abortion,” he concludes.
What Shields fails to grasp is that there is no room for a “compromise” in which pro-lifers are expected to be fine with baby-killing. This is not a question of “reasonableness.” Abortion, at any stage, is radical by its very nature because abortion takes an innocent human life—there is nothing “reasonable” about advocating for or accepting this practice.
The compromise that Shields proposes could be described as the Abortion Doctor Compromise — as Shields relates, most abortion doctors positively refuse to perform late-term abortions because they personally find them horrific, but will end the lives of 12-week-old babies all day every day. So in Shields’s compromise, the slightly less radical wing of the abortion lobby will accept restrictions on the forms of abortion that they already find too horrific to practice and defend while asking that pro-lifers accept these restrictions and absolutely nothing more. Those advocating for this so-called “compromise” would not change their position at all, they would simply demand that pro-lifers accept their terms. Doesn’t sound like much of a compromise.
In many ways, the decision to terminate a pregnancy is not unlike the decision to go through transition: It is a fundamentally private choice that can be made only by the individual in question — a person who alone knows the truth of their heart, who alone can understand what the consequences of their choices will be in the years to come.
While Boylan is incorrect in how the two movements are two sides of the same coin, it is true that abortion and transgenderism are rooted in the same set of ideas. Both rest on the assumption that one’s “true self” or personhood can be separated from biological realities and both have a distorted understanding of the purpose of medicine.
Just as the abortion movement insists that an unborn child is not a person even though science has proven that life begins at conception,the transgender movement insists that a person’s “true self” can be separate from his or her physical body. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Anthony Kennedy infamouslystated, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." In that statement, he captures the mindsetthat is behind both abortion and transgenderism — the idea that each of us has the “right” to define our own concept of existence.
Ahead of last weekend’sWomen’s March in Washington, D.C., marchers were offered a reminder of what to bring and what not to bring. On the “to bring” list was “Your feminist spirit, bring your defiance to injustice bring your demands for abortion justice.” The “don’t bring” list included weapons and illegal substances, as well as a note reminding abortion activistsnot to use “coat-hanger imagery” saying, “We do not want to accidentally reinforce the right wing talking points that self-managed abortions are dangerous, scary and harmful.”
Abortion is never safe. Over the years, whether or not the abortion industry is willing to acknowledge the danger of abortion has depended entirely on what is most convenient for them at any given time. Only a few years ago,abortion activists used coat-hangers as a symbol of their claim that the abortion movement used coat-hangers as part of a narrative claiming that banning abortion will lead to a dangerous, dystopian future full of “back alley” abortions and to insist that banning abortion will not end abortion, it will only make it less safe, even though the evidence shows that abortion bans really do save lives by decreasing abortion rates.
This week is Banned Books Week,a week that the American Library Association claims “brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.” However, in a year that saw major corporations engaging in viewpoint discrimination, two books that faced bans this year for daring to question the transgender agenda, When Harry Became Sally by Ryan T. Anderson and Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier, were notably absent from this year’s “Challenged book list.” As Thomas Spence, President of Regnery Publishing noted, Banned Books Week is proving itself to be nothing more than a “gimmicky promotion [that] caters primarily to those who believe that schoolchildren should have access to anything bound between two covers without the interference of those busybodies we call parents.”
Earlier this year, Amazon removed Anderson’s book on transgenderism without any warning or explanation. When they finally broke their silence, they doubled down, insisting that When Harry Became Sally, which had been listed on their website for three years without any issues, violated their standards.
The Supreme Court has set a date for oral arguments in the potentially ground-shaking Dobbs v. Jackson case, which could throw out the Roe v. Wade standard that states cannot restrict abortion before fetal viability.
The court will hear oral arguments in the case starting December 1, with a decision expected early next summer.
That means it’s a great time to read the great brief submitted by our own Renee Carlson of True North Legal, along with Professor Teresa Collett of the University of St. Thomas, and Vice President Mike Pence’s organization Advancing American Freedom.
“Until I’m told otherwise, I prefer to call you ‘they,’” wrote a Yale Law School professor in a Washington Post op-ed this week. Professor Ian Ayres explains that his new “default rule” of using gender-neutral pronouns until told otherwise keeps him from “misgendering” students. “I would never intentionally misidentify someone else’s gender — but I unfortunately risk doing so until I learn that person’s pronouns. That’s why, as I begin a new school year, I am trying to initially refer to everyone as ‘they,’” he explains. He goes on to encourage readers whose “preferred pronouns” are either he or she to adopt “he/they” or “she/they” instead “because it would give others the freedom not to specify your gender when referring to you.”
In other words, at one of the top universities in the world,a law professor would like all of his students, and for that matter, the population at large, to join him in a daily denial of the reality of male and female. To refer to someone as “they” until you have learned his or her “gender identity” is to pretend that humans are fundamentally gender-neutral. This denies an essential reality of what it is to be human. As Carl Trueman recently remarked in First Things, “when we decry pronouns that assume the reality of bodily sex, we are coming close to denying the universal truth that all humans are embodied beings.” To be human is to be embodied, and to be embodied means that we are either male or female — “he” or “she,” not “they.”
A recent Wall Street Journal investigation offered a glimpse into the world that a minor when scrolling through Tik Tok, the most popular social media platform among America’s teenagers. It wasn’t pretty. The journalists set up 31 fake Tik Tok accounts posing as 13–15-year-old users and discovered that the algorithm very quickly started showing them sexually explicit content, sexual violence, and links to OnlyFans. The fact that the age set on each of the 31 accounts was set at 15 or younger made no difference as pornographic content and links made their way into each account’s feed.
It’s not just Tick Tock — in their book Treading Boldly Through a Pornographic World, Daniel Weiss and Joshua Glaser report that, while 18% of 13–17-year-olds report that they seek out pornographic content on a weekly basis, over 20% say that they come across it unintentionally on a weekly basis. We live in a pornified culture, and parents today are presented with the challenge of navigating a world in which most children will have been exposed to pornography by the time they turn 13 and a growing number of children are addicted to pornography. In light of this sobering reality, it is imperative that families and churches gain a clear understanding of this issue and respond wisely as we embrace beauty of God’s design for sexuality and reject the distortions that our culture offers.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his “husband” Chasten recently created a stir by announcing that they had adoptednewborns Penelope Roseand Joseph August.In a rather uncomfortable photo-op, the two men are pictured in a hospital bed as if one of them had just given birth,despite the glaringly obvious fact that neither of them ever have or ever will. Not pictured, somewhere, out of frame, Penelope and Joseph have a mother who recently brought them into the world. And they will grow up without her.
But what is the response coming from mainstream media and fawning twitter followers? “Beautiful!” “Wonderful” “Hope for the future!” If the future is children being raised without a mother (or without a father) in order to fulfill adults’ desires,then the future is not as rosy as people claim.
Placing the desires of adults over the needs of children should not be normalized and it certainly should not be celebrated. These two little ones will grow up with anything money can offer, but what they will be missing is something that money can never buy: a mother.
Even before the Pfizer vaccine received full FDA approval, public and private employers across the United States began to announce vaccine mandates for their employees. With the COVID-19 vaccine’s FDA approval, we will only see more of them. For many Christians, these mandates spark concerns about religious freedom as multiplestates have moved toward minimizing religious exemptions for vaccination requirements, and a growing number of employers, including here in Minnesota, have begun mandating COVID-19 vaccinations.
Vaccine mandates are a bad idea
Recently, one Minnesota employer expressed optimism that mandating vaccines would “help” any employees who were on the fence about the vaccine to change their minds. But coercion is not how “persuasion” works. Vaccine mandates show a deep disrespect for people’s ability to make rational decisions for themselves, and because of this, they remove the possibility of meaningful and respectful conversations about the vaccine. This kind of disrespect is on display in New York City right now, where anyone who wishes to dine indoors must present proof of vaccination. Recently, New York Mayor Bill de Blasioannounced that people may dine indoors immediately after receiving the first dose of the vaccine. Since immunity does not begin immediately upon receiving the first dose of the vaccine, there is good reason to suspect that this mandate has far less to do with preventing the spread of COVID-19 than it has to do with punishing those who choose not to get vaccinated.
Adams frets that today’s youngsters are “barren of the behavior, values and hopes from which human beings have traditionally found higher meaning … or even simple contentment.” Adams calls them “hollowed out,” a generation living solitary lives, hyperconnected to technology but unattached from their families, churches or communities. He cites statistics showing teen depression rose 63 percent from 2007 to 2017 while teen suicide grew 56 percent. Tragically, he writes, suicide has become the second leading cause of death for the young.
On the podcast, we discussed how we got to the current precarious situation in Afghanistan, and reiterated our appeal to let us help you contact congressional leaders if you’re aware of American citizens or Afghans who would qualify for US visas who need to leave the country.
This week on the podcast, we discuss Roseville’s Ryan Vernosh, principal of Brimhall Elementary School. Vernosh, a decorated educator, recently took to Facebook to call traditional views of male/female “bigoted bull****” after being confronted by a fellow Roseville citizen.
On the podcast this week, we discuss the chaos in the GOP following the revelation that major Minnesota Republican donor Anton “Tony” Lazzaro had been arrested and charged with several offenses, including sex trafficking of minors. His accomplice who was also arrested was the chair of the University of St. Thomas Republicans. After the resignation of MN GOP chair Jennifer Carnahan, what’s next for the party?
In May of 2018, a nurse at the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) was called into the operating room to assist with a “surgery.” Upon arrival, she discoveredthat the “surgery” she had been called in to help with was in fact an abortion and that she had been lied to. Although she was on the hospital’s list of conscientious objectors who had made clear to the hospital that they were morally opposed to abortion and there were other nurses available who were not on the list, UVMMC staff refused to call in a replacement and she was faced with losing her job and possibly her license if she refused to participate.
In response to this clear violation of conscience rights, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in 2019 against the hospital, signaling their support for the religious freedom of healthcare workers. That changed in late July when the Biden administration quietly dropped the lawsuit, leaving the nurse with no further recourse.
If all goes as planned, the US military presence at Kabul International Airport will end on August 31, 2021. U.S. citizens and Afghan nationals who are eligible for transport out of the country have until that time (if they’re lucky enough to get through the Taliban cordon around the airport) to leave the country.
That’s why I'm sending out this urgent appeal. Do you know of any American citizens, for example missionaries, or Afghan citizens who are eligible for Special Immigration Visas (SIVs) to leave the country?
In this episode, Grace Evans interviews pastor Jeff Evans of the Church Ambassador Network (CAN). Pastor Jeff shares about CAN’s mission of bringing faithful pastors from around the state to visit the Capitol, meeting with legislators (regardless of party or policy), and praying for them along the lines of 1 Timothy 2:1-4. The beautiful truth is that the gospel builds bridges!
“Tying the knot sometimes means paying more in taxes,” warns the headline of an article cautioning newlyweds to be prepared for some potential surprises from the IRS when filing their taxes. But in many cases, policies that penalize marriage are more than simply an unpleasant surprise from the IRS. Marriage penalties, either in the form of increased taxes or loss of access to means-tested benefits, have harmful effects, especially on working-class families. Studies indicate that marriage penalties are associated with lower rates of marriage and higher rates of cohabitation. A 2016 report found that almost one-third of American adults knew someone who had not married for fear of losing means-tested benefits and that middle-class families with moderate education levels were the most likely to say that they knew someone who had not gotten married out of fear of losing welfare, Medicaid, or other benefits. Policies that penalize marriage are especially concerning as marriage rates have recently hit an all-time low and many couples are choosing cohabitation instead of marriage.
You have probably heard much about the so-called “infrastructure bill” over the past few weeks, culminating with its passage in the United States Senate just a couple of days ago. The bill now heads to the House of Representatives for a vote. But did you know that the infrastructure bill isn’t just about highways, railroads, and broadband?
That’s right – tucked away in the bill are hidden provisions known as “SOGI language.” SOGI stands for “sexual orientation and gender identity.” The infrastructure bill, which just passed the Senate, proposes to elevate the SOGI groups to federally protected classes, even though those classes are poorly defined.
Another mask mandate? MN 4th graders are being given required “equity surveys” with questions about gender identity? Biological males competing against female Olympians? There’s so much to keep up with this week! Tune in to get the facts & stand for truth with your hosts, Grace Evans and Moses Bratrud.
