Category: The American Spectator
How pro-life leaders betray the one truth they can’t afford to compromise
Many pro-abortion activists brazenly say that abortion is health care. Anti-abortion Christians must respond to such falsehoods by rejecting the premise, instead affirming that abortion is murder — the unjustified taking of a human life made in the image of God.
But here is a widespread problem in the pro-life movement: While pro-life groups broadly reject the claim that abortion is health care, they undermine their own position when they support laws to regulate abortion as health care rather than criminalize abortion as murder.
They should instead agree with the truth of God concerning abortion and work toward criminalizing abortion as murder.
The most recent examples of this sorrowful trend are Ohio Right to Life and the Center for Christian Virtue, two of the leading pro-life groups in the state of Ohio, and their support for House Bill 324, known as the “Patient Protection Act.”
This legislation, according to a press release from the Center for Christian Virtue, would require “in-person exams, clear disclosure of risks, and follow-up care for drugs that cause serious adverse effects” in more than 5% of patients. Ohio Right to Life similarly said that any woman who wants to murder her pre-born baby would first be “required to make an in-person visit to her doctor and be informed of the dangerous side effects before taking the abortion pill.”
House Bill 324 would indeed create an indirect way to target mifepristone — one of the two major substances used in the typical abortion pill regimen. Because a recent study from the Ethics and Public Policy Center asserts that 11% of women who take abortion pills experience “serious adverse events,” the legislation purports to restrict abortion pills because of dangers to women who want to murder their own babies.
There are some unfortunate methodological questions about the study, which likely overstates the extent to which abortion pills actually harm women, a reality that will jeopardize House Bill 324 if eventually passed into law. But in any case, the actual text of House Bill 324 does not even directly mention abortion.
The legislation would require that any “dangerous drug” that causes “one or more serious adverse effects” in more than 5% of “patients” mandate an “in-person examination” and scheduling for a “follow-up appointment.”
RELATED: Why defunding Planned Parenthood is a distraction from the real fight
House Bill 324 does not prescribe any criminal penalties for distributing or taking abortion pills, but instead asks the “director of health” and the “state board of pharmacy and state medical board” to maintain a list of dangerous drugs meeting the requirements of the legislation.
Beyond the flawed legal case for House Bill 324, the entire project surrenders all anti-abortion moral high ground to the pro-abortion side.
When anti-abortion groups say that abortion is murder, then functionally treat abortion as less than murder in the laws they support, those groups erode their own moral witness to the culture and the elected officials of their states.
The very decision of choosing the “Patient Protection Act” as the name of the legislation asserts that women who murder their own babies with abortion pills are patients to be protected instead of perpetrators to be penalized.
House Bill 324 explicitly treats abortion as health care — and by regulating the practice of murdering a pre-born baby with abortion pills, the effort merely legitimizes abortion in state law.
If this legislation passes, then using abortion pills in Ohio would be treated in the law much like removing an appendix or a wisdom tooth rather than murdering a pre-born baby.
Ohio Right to Life and the Center for Christian Virtue claim to reject the premise that abortion is health care. But actions speak louder than words — and that includes their refusal to support legislation in their state that actually treats abortion as murder.
RELATED: Stevie Nicks just said the quiet part out loud about abortion — and it’s horrifying
Another piece of anti-abortion legislation called House Bill 370, known as the “Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act,” would affirm that “the sanctity of innocent human life” created in the image of God must be “equally protected from the beginning of biological development.”
The legislation would protect pre-born babies starting at “the moment of fertilization” simply by extending Ohio state laws against murder and assault that already protect born people.
House Bill 370 is also the only legislation that meaningfully challenges the abortion amendment in the Ohio Constitution by invoking the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Because the highest law of our land requires states to establish equal protection of the laws for all persons, the abortion amendment in Ohio should be treated as null and void.
Rather than supporting House Bill 370, the leadership of Ohio Right to Life explicitly opposes the effort — even calling the legislation “out of bounds” and “inappropriate” — and the Center for Christian Virtue has publicly declined to offer its support.
In other words, two of the leading pro-life groups in Ohio have chosen to reject the “Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act,” which is the only legislation in the state that would treat abortion as murder. Instead, they have functionally conceded the malicious pro-abortion falsehood that abortion is health care.
There are thousands of pre-born babies murdered every single year in Ohio. While the abortion amendment in the Ohio Constitution is an unfortunate obstacle, pro-life groups will certainly not advance their cause with morally and legally confused legislation.
They should instead agree with the truth of God concerning abortion and work toward criminalizing abortion as murder — fighting to establish equal protection of the laws for all pre-born babies and thereby laboring to abolish abortion once and for all.
Northwestern Agrees To Reverse Concessions to Pro-Hamas Protesters in Deal With Trump Admin
Northwestern University on Friday agreed to terminate its deal with pro-Hamas protesters and pay the United States government $75 million to restore the nearly $1 billion in federal funds frozen over its response to anti-Semitism and racial discrimination on campus.
The post Northwestern Agrees To Reverse Concessions to Pro-Hamas Protesters in Deal With Trump Admin appeared first on .
A Requiem for Orphanages
I came out on Nov. 29, 1994, in the most visible of news outlets, the op-ed page of the Wall…
Missionary Ridge and a Legacy of Courage
One hundred sixty-two years ago, on November 25, 1863, 18-year-old Lt. Arthur MacArthur picked-up the Union flag from the second…
Flying Too Close to the Sun? Palantir’s Ambitions and the Future of Warfare
The Philosopher in the Valley By Michael Steinberger Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 304 pages, $33 Michael Steinberger’s…
Thanksgiving Isn’t for Atheists
It’s that time of year again. You know, that time of year when the price of a 16-lb turkey —…
Make America Healthy Again: Restoring the Republic’s Vitality
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump may not have been obvious allies — one hailing from…
USDA secretary: Trump ‘resolutely focused’ on affordability
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said President Trump is honing in on affordability measures ahead of the new year, as polling shows his approval on the economy is tanking. During a recent appearance on Fox Business’s “Kudlow,” Rollins recounted the president telling her, “’Brooke, we’re not going to have plastic eggs at the Easter Egg Roll…
How smartphones expose your kids to predators — and why Congress must step in
Handing a smartphone over to a child in 2025 is like putting a child in the middle of a junkyard and calling it a playground.
Yes, the space contains useful tools and materials for adults who know what they are doing. They arrive with knowledge, caution, and protective equipment. They know where to step and what to avoid. And if the adult should get hurt through recklessness or inattention, they have enough life experience to know how to mitigate the harm.
Missing red flags is not just possible — it is inevitable.
And even if you post warning signs at the gate, the environment itself remains full of hazards — rusted metal, broken glass, exposed wiring, spilled gasoline. A child placed in that environment is vulnerable not because the child disobeys the signs, but because the space was never designed for them to navigate safely. The danger is structural.
But kids are naturally curious, and they like to explore. Five out of every 10 children who spend time in that “playground” will be significantly, perhaps even fatally, harmed by the experience.
This is the situation we have created by normalizing smartphones for children. Smartphones were never intended for young users, yet in the U.S., more than 60% of children ages 5 to 11 and 84% of teens now have one.
Those devices are portals to an enormous ecosystem of apps — approximately 1.8 million available in Apple’s App Store alone. According to Apple’s 2023 Transparency Report, 500 experts assess about 132,000 apps each week. That breaks down to around 265 apps per reviewer per week or about nine minutes per app.
Nine minutes to determine how the app collects and stores data, whether it enables account creation (and deletion), whether it uses copyrighted materials, whether it meets hardware and software standards, whether it contains illegal or harmful content, and whether it can be used to facilitate illegal or harmful activity
Most readers could not read the Apple App Review Guidelines in nine minutes, let alone meaningfully evaluate an app’s design, mechanics, and community-risk profile.
All that before you even get to questions of safety.
Little wonder, then, that so many apps that seem innocuous at first blush are later discovered to be a predator’s playground.
RELATED: Is your child being exposed to pedophiles in the metaverse?
Francisco Javier Ortiz Marzo/iStock/Getty Images Plus
A recent New York Post headline warns, “Wizz is like ‘Tinder for kids,’ as teens use the app to hook up while adult predators lurk.” Wizz is marketed to users ages 12 to 18 as a way to meet new friends who share common interests. In practice, it functions more like a teen version of Tinder, complete with profile swiping and private messaging that connects minors with total strangers, including adults posing as teens. The Post details three cases of adult men who allegedly used the app to meet underage girls.
Wizz is far from the only example.
This fall, a married 42-year-old father of two was convicted in the U.K. for encouraging a child to self-harm. The man created six fake profiles on Discord and Snapchat, each one posing as a teenaged boy, in order to ensnare, blackmail, and abuse a 13-year-old girl.
The investigation was hampered by the fact that he had used stolen identities and fake accounts to communicate with his victim and by the fact that the apps he used to communicate with her allowed him to set the messages to “auto-delete,” which left no digital trail for investigators to follow.
Kik, an anonymous messaging app, was considered a haven for child predators because it provided anonymity and allowed users to communicate without sharing phone numbers. Vice reported in 2019 that the app was shutting down, but it is still available for download on Apple’s App Store and, as recently as this summer, was linked to a number of child exploitation cases.
Any social media platform targeted specifically to young users is ripe for abuse, but often parents do not know about the dangers until the harm has already been done. We rely on the imagined expertise and authority of professional reviewers.
If the app is available on an app store, we assume it has been properly vetted.
But the truth is that app stores rely on developers’ self-reported age-ratings and safety claims. And with less than 10 minutes to spend reviewing each app, the deck is stacked against children and families. Missing red flags is not just possible — it is inevitable.
Congress must act and pass the App Store Accountability Act.
The bill would require app stores to be transparent about how apps handle data, how they moderate interactions, and for whom their products are intended. It would establish clear responsibility when apps marketed to minors become vehicles for grooming, harassment, or exploitation. And it would ensure that companies profiting from child-facing platforms cannot simply shrug and point to the fine print when harm occurs.
The App Store Accountability Act will not eliminate every risk, but it will help end the era of Big Tech reviewing itself and calling it protection. That would be a big win for families.
America’s new lost generation is looking for home — and finding the wrong ones
A friend who works with high school students recently said to me, “I overheard a group of boys talking about ‘international Jewry.’” He was in disbelief to hear these seemingly mild-mannered kids express views that, not 20 years ago, would have been considered taboo.
What is going on with Gen Z?
I have written elsewhere that Gen Z is experiencing a kind of church resurgence. That remains true. But at the same time, Gen Z is one of the most polarized generations in American history.
Social systems that seek to reorient reality by means of uprooting history and tradition will ultimately create a rootless and disaffected class in search of belonging.
In 2024, Gen Z — led in part by young activists like Charlie Kirk and Scott Presler — shifted toward Donald Trump. He won 46% of Gen Z voters — 56% of young men and 40% of young women. This led many to expect that a younger, more populist generation would shift the country rightward. But now in 2025, the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won 78% of the youth vote in New York City — 67% of young men and 84% of young women. Far from being locked into any one existing political party, young people are more divided than ever.
One cause of this is what I call “nomadic progressivism.” Kids born between, say, 1997 and 2012 have been thoroughly inundated with progressivism and identity politics from birth. They came of age amid several key developments that shaped their moral and social formation:
- The Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015 and the legalization of same-sex marriage.
- The killing of Trayvon Martin and the rise of Black Lives Matter.
- The surge of transgender activism that dominated headlines in the early 2020s.
- The appearance of Greta Thunberg and the new climate movement.
- The explosive growth of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and Vine.
We could list hundreds of others, but these movements captured Gen Z’s moral imagination. Each sought, in the name of justice or progress, to undermine the inherited order, replacing the inherited structures of culture with moral and social uncertainty.
Gen Z grew up bullied by progressive ideology, and until the shocking election of Donald Trump in 2016, there was no visible reaction. Society appeared to be marching unopposed toward progressive utopia. But Trump’s election broke the spell. His first term was marked by protests, the rise of transgender ideology, and a wave of social revolt.
Then came COVID-19. As the left preached “safety,” Gen Z was locked inside, immersed in a digital environment, and wracked by depression and anxiety. Created for engagement and real community, young people were instead sent to their rooms and told to stay there.
This, I believe, is the key: Progressivism prepared the soil for radicalization. It removed the roots — churches, families, communities — that once grounded Gen Z’s moral life. It left young people searching for belonging in a barren landscape.
The philosopher and novelist Simone Weil wrote in “The Need for Roots” that “human beings have roots by virtue of their real, active, and natural participation in the life of a community, which preserves in living shape particular treasures of the past and particular expectations for the future.” When that participation is stripped away, people search for roots elsewhere.
For Gen Z women, that search often led to Instagram and other social media platforms. They heard celebrities and influencers denounce the status quo. They were told marriage was oppressive, men were vile, and independence was the highest good. But that “empowerment” was often just loneliness in disguise.
RELATED: Young, broke, and voting blue: 2025’s harsh lesson for the right
Photo by Jeremy Weine/Getty Images
As for Gen Z men, constant ridicule and belittlement left them disoriented. Why invest in a society that despises you? Why build what the world condemns? In this vacuum arose the “manosphere.” Figures like Andrew Tate offered refuge. They told men it was OK to be men — and as they were among the only ones saying so, they had free rein to define what it meant. If honor, discipline, and respectful courtship were only going to get you mocked and condemned, manosphere influencers reasoned that you might as well double down on boorishness, lust, and aggression.
As distrust of the government and institutions grew, young men turned elsewhere for truth. In gnostic fashion, figures like Nick Fuentes promised to reveal “how things really are.” But as Christopher Rufo has noted, it is a ruse. Fuentes exploits the crisis of masculinity to peddle resentment and historical denialism. Progressive Gen Z women, seeking fulfillment in the depths of the online space, are little different from the young men seeking connection and meaning from those like Fuentes.
Gen Z is a generation longing for roots. Its members are trying to find them on the fringes of society, since their own roots were dug out years ago. Progressivism creates nomads. Social systems that seek to reorient reality by means of uprooting history and tradition will ultimately create a rootless and disaffected class in search of belonging. And they will find it in dark places.
The men and women of Gen Z are not uniquely radical. They are uniquely rootless. They have inherited a moral landscape stripped of shared meaning, through which they drift amid ideologies that promise belonging but deliver only bitterness. The progressive order unmoored them; now the reactionary order recruits them. And unless a deeper renewal of faith, family, and community takes root, this generation will continue to wander — searching for the very home that modernity taught them to forget.
Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.
