Bridget & Maggie reminisce about 100 episodes of Walk-Ins Welcome. What they love, what they’ve learned, favorite episodes, and they marvel at their unprecedented consistency. They explore Bridget’s gift of gab and her genuine love for talking to people (inherited from their grandmother), discuss the need for a Hero’s Journey and how lost we can become without one, and plan for the future and what they’d like to see happen for the podcast and Phetasy. Become a subscriber at phetasy.com or make a donation and support another 100 episodes!
If I were a certain sort of woman, I’d blame it on The Patriarchy. If I were another sort, I’d blame it on A Culture Insufficiently Supportive of Life. (And, if I were a very specific sort, I’d do both.) Instead, it was the understandable result of The Powers That Be in our neighborhood hospital system not having leeway to make more fine-grained distinctions in a crisis. Which is how pregnant women, who aren’t permitted to receive any in-person prenatal care right now if they have the least little sniffle but no negative lab result for Covid-19, must go through a lengthy, frustrating, and high-exposure screening process to see if they qualify for Covid-19 testing, while the nonpregnant may simply waltz – or rather drive – through safer, low-exposure Covid-19 testing in about 15 minutes.
If you’re pregnant, though, the screening process might take hours, during which you hear, at each step along the way, that you may be ineligible for the lab anyhow – and that’s just your time spent at the walk-in screening center. It doesn’t count the hours (days) you may have spent trying to find a walk-in screening center that hasn’t run out of swabs for the day, and finding out whether you’re even eligible to visit it.
Rod Dreher said a friend texted him the following about Covid-19:
When you have lived for several generations in a powerful and wealthy country untouched by deep tragedy and awash in the deep-seated belief that you are both the Chosen Land and Master of Nature, the belief that everything is manageable becomes the biggest article of faith. And the biggest blind spot.
Twenty-three years ago today to be exact. Every detail is etched on my brain. It was one of those times when God can take an atheist and force him down on his knees for prayer.
Earlier in the evening of the previous night my wife felt the twinge of contractions. Just 29 weeks along in her third pregnancy she knew immediately that something was wrong. This was not a case of Braxton Hicks, the normal and safe contraction and relaxation of the uterus that can happen in the latter stages of a woman’s pregnancy. This was labor.
We are used to leftist opinions from the often derisively labeled Ninth Circus Court of Appeals. However, President Trump with the support of Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has seized the opportunity to firm up the Supreme Court, making wacky rulings from lower courts more difficult within the rules of the judicial game. He has steadily placed relatively reliable constitutionalist judges in lower courts, including the Ninth Circuit. This is starting to pay off in better decisions, like the latest on Title X funds and abortion. The latest Ninth Circuit decision also reflects the willingness of President Trump to actually uphold the laws passed by Congress, a refreshing change from both parties’ norms.
Statement from the Press Secretary
LAW & JUSTICE | Issued on: February 25, 2020
I went to my fifth March for Life Friday. The process was pretty much like previous years. We started with an early morning Mass, took a bus to Washington DC in four-plus hours, and found our way to Constitution Avenue, roughly parallel with the Washington Monument. We made our way into the crowd, proceeded west toward the Capitol, made a right onto First Street just passed the Capitol, and ended at the Supreme Court, two blocks in from Constitution Avenue. The distance is perhaps a mile. This time, it was so packed that we stood still for about an hour before the march started moving for us. Once we entered the crowd, it took us about two and a half hours to reach the end, including that hour of waiting.
This year, there was a special speaker. For the first time ever, as everyone probably knows by now, the President of the United States attended in person. No, I did not get to see President Trump speak. Most of the speakers at the March are in the morning. Those of us who travel that same day to Washington usually miss them. The bus from Staten Island, NY, usually gets to Washington around noon and then has to make its way down to the Mall. The prominent speakers have all spoken by then.
“O Lord… When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.” — Psalm 8:4-5
This is one of my favorite passages in all the Psalms. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like one that would support a pro-life message, but there is God’s love for His creation throughout. Yes, He must love His heavens, the immense burning stars and spheres that circle them and the moons that circle the planets, the comets with their flaming tails that streak across the solar systems, the harmony of their motions, the galaxies that they compose. How beautiful He must think. And here we are on this little planet in the corner of this immense universe, tucked away and subject to all the powerful and destructive forces, to all the corrosive and poisonous chemicals.
The most pro-life POTUS since Roe, President Donald Trump, will attend the March for Life in person Friday. God bless you President Trump for your witness to life.
The March for Life is honored to announce @realDonaldTrump will be the first U.S. President to speak at the March for Life Rally. Thank you, President Trump, for being a voice for the unborn and continuously working to build a culture of life. https://t.co/lojZssLeim
“Framing access to reproductive health care and bodily autonomy as eugenics exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of the racialized gender oppression on which antiabortionists stand. The truth is, the anti-abortion movement was born out of racist and xenophobic concerns about the falling white birth rate—echoes of which you will hear in today’s white supremacist rhetoric.”
— Alexis McGill Johnson, President & CEO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America
This quotation came from the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. Someone had written a piece criticizing Planned Parenthood. Not surprisingly, the president of the organization decided to respond by attacking the pro-life community with an outrageous accusation. Not only are her comments about the pro-life movement untrue, but she completely mischaracterizes the common understanding of eugenics.
If you knew you only had a 1% chance of surviving tomorrow, would you consider that a death sentence? What about 2%, 5%, 10%… at what point would your odds of survival be good enough you wouldn’t feel doomed? And what if you had to purchase your fairly slim chance at survival by risking the life of another? When would you do it? What balance of risk would just barely escape counting as doom?
What if you were the other whose life was risked on the slim hope of avoiding someone else’s death sentence? When would that hope be worth it, and when would it be a forlorn one? How effective must our efforts to lift another’s doom be in order to merit the price?
There’s a pro-life slogan that goes “Choose life.” I’m sure the idea is to subvert pro-choice language for a pro-life message. Unfortunately, it concedes the pro-choice worldview that life is something that can be chosen. I’m sorry to say that it isn’t.
My husband and I decided to “choose life” ten years into our marriage. Seven years later, the only pitter-patter of little feet in our house still comes from our cats, even after three rounds of inter-uterine insertion (IUI). My sister and brother-in-law decided to “choose life” with in vitro fertilization. For the first round, all five of their embryonic children died before any could be implanted. The second round resulted in four embryos. She had one implanted today; she has about a 50% chance of that child surviving to live birth. My cousin and her boyfriend managed to have a healthy pregnancy when she became pregnant accidentally and they “chose life”; her infant son died two months ago after surviving mere hours.
The wave of state abortion bans and heartbeat laws has left me thinking. I’m not going to place any bets on whether these laws are at all allowed to stand by the courts or not. I am about as pro-life as they come, and with good reason, for the odds are high enough that had […]
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Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed the state’s Human Life Protection Act on May 15, enacting one of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the nation. The key provision of this statute renders it criminal for “for any person to intentionally perform or attempt to perform an abortion,” subject only to an exception where the abortion “is necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk to the unborn child’s mother.” The drafters of the legislation refused to add any amendment that would legalize abortions in the cases of rape and incest. The legislation specifically exempts women who have abortions from any form of civil or criminal liability, but it imposes sentences up to life imprisonment for any physician within the state who performs an illegal abortion.
The law is on a direct collision course with Roe v. Wade, which in 1973 established a constitutional right to abortion, even though at the time of its passage abortions were commonly, but not universally, subject to criminal sanctions either by statute or at common law. Governor Ivey makes no bones about seeking a show-down. The Alabama laws punishing abortion are still on the books. She wants the Supreme Court to “revisit”—i.e. overrule—Roe and thinks that the latest Alabama law is the best way to force its hand. Predictably, the statute’s passage has generated intense dispute over abortions that center on the merits of the legislation and the likelihood that the Supreme Court will modify or strike down Roe.
“Bring it, Bible Bullies! You are bigots, sexists, and misogynists and I see right through your fake morals and your broken values,” Pennsylvania state representative [Brian Sims] tweeted May 5, after the pro-life group Live Action criticized a video Sims livestreamed May 2.
So begins another report in The Catholic Herald, on another Leftist going completely unhinged and trying to dox (i.e. publicize the names, addresses, and phone numbers to the world) both elderly and teenage pro-life protestors at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Pennsylvania. The alleged crimes of the people he wants to dox? Praying outside the clinic across the street, and trying to talk to women seeking abortions. Representative Sims only gets worse, according to the article:
Spend more than five minutes with a teenager and you’ll likely notice a fairly obvious observation: teenagers don’t always make the best decisions. There’s a reason God gave kids parents. We know, without a doubt, from study after study and personal experience that an adolescent’s brain is actively developing on the daily. According to a 2013 study, referring specifically to adolescence, the researcher notes, “Particularly significant changes occur in the limbic system, which may impact self-control, decision making, emotions, and risk-taking behaviors.” Yep. That sounds like a teenager to me.
Nevada Assemblywoman Ellen Spiegel seems to agree with these findings considering she recently introduced AB 187 into the current legislative session. The bill requires bicycle helmets for any child under the age of 18. When questioned why she chose 18 (many states that have similar helmet laws limit the age to 16 or 15 and under), her response essentially was that 18 is when a child becomes an adult. The implication is that minors are not capable of making good decisions about their safety.
It’s arguable that the Pro-Life Movement began well rooted in the premise of progressivism. “Right to Life” activism and legislation carried the language of what could be rather than was was and is. The future that was being extinguished rather than the violence being inflicted. Of course, the potentiality of the unborn reveals a key […]
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Recently, the Wall Street Journal had an essay in the Review section on new advancements in gene editing entitled: “Scientists Confront the Ghost of Eugenics: As new gene editing tools raise the prospect of engineering desired human traits, researchers are determined to educate the public.” About halfway through, one of the researchers revealed a telling anecdote:
Jennifer Doudna, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the inventors of the Crispr tool. She has recounted a nightmare she had about the technology. In the dream, a colleague told her that somebody wanted to talk to her about gene editing. When she entered the room, the person waiting to meet her was Adolf Hitler. Dr. Doudna and her colleagues hoped Crispr might ultimately save lives, she wrote. But the nightmare was a reminder of “all of the ways in which our hard work might be perverted.”
After interference by Hollywood, tech companies, and the courts, the creators of a movie based on Kermit Gosnell have finally released the first trailer.
A 2014 grand jury report accused Gosnell of killing hundreds of newborns over the course of decades in Philadelphia. He was ultimately convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter.
Well, not really, but that was the analogy I made in this post last November on the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra case where the state of California obliges pro-life pregnancy counseling centers seeking to encourage women not to have abortions to post the following notice:
California has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services (including all FDA-approved methods of contraception), prenatal care, and abortion for eligible women. To determine whether you qualify, contact the county social services office at [phone number of the local office].
