Tag: Women

women

US resolution to protect women and girls faces uphill battle at the UN

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The U.N. Commission on the Status of Women is wrapping up this week amid historic disagreement between delegations over what it means to be a woman. You read that right. Diplomats at the annual international meeting focused on “women’s issues” are engaged in negotiations and backroom maneuvers to avoid clearly defining what they mean by the word “gender.”

By Grace Melton

Last week, when the meeting opened, it was the first time in the commission’s 70 years that the “agreed conclusions”—the negotiated document that the diplomats usually adopt by consensus—had to go to a vote.

The U.S. diplomats requested that the commission members take more time to negotiate a document that all countries could agree to, and then subsequently proposed amendments to the document that would have brought it more in line with U.S. policy. The U.S. opposed the “ambiguous language promoting gender ideology,” as well as references to “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” which U.N. agencies use to promote abortion.

But the chair of the Commission on the Status of Women, Costa Rica’s Maritza Chan Valverde, used procedural machinations to require that the proposed U.S. amendments be packaged together, effectively killing their chances of passage. She was able to censor the countries that shared some of the U.S.’ objections to the document but were unwilling to join in opposition to all of them.

Ultimately, the controversial “agreed conclusions” were adopted by a vote of 37 in favour, with six abstentions and only the U.S. voting “no.”

This ideological battle is nothing new. The U.N. bureaucracy and European countries routinely push gender ideology and a radical abortion agenda under the guise of women’s rights and gender equality. And over the past several years they have labeled their opposition—those who hold traditional beliefs about the sanctity of life and the protection of the family—as “the pushback” or “anti-rights actors.”

Last year, the newly reelected Trump administration opposed the business-as-usual progressive agenda at the Commission on the Status of Women. And this year, the U.S. is taking its defense of women and girls a step further. As the new Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance Policy illustrates, the Trump administration intends to “promote human flourishing” by opposing abortion, gender ideology, and DEI activities at home and abroad.

After losing the vote last week, the U.S. delegation is now proposing a new resolution on the “Protection of Women and Girls Through Appropriate Terminology.” It seeks to reaffirm the original language from the 1994 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which defines “gender” according to “its ordinary, generally accepted usage, as referring to men and women.” It rejects any expansion of the term to include “gender identity” or other subjective and ideological terms.

Pro-life and pro-family organizations, including Family Watch International, are encouraging the many countries that consistently oppose radical gender ideology to join with the U.S. in sponsoring the resolution.

While the U.S. resolution faces an uphill battle—some say insurmountable—these countries would be wise to support it nonetheless. A strong showing of support would challenge any assertion that customary international law has developed to expand the meaning of gender to include “transgender” or other so-called gender identities.

Such support would build on the momentum of the successful vote late last year in the General Assembly to remove controversial “sexual orientation and gender identity” language from a resolution on implementing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. And it would send a clear message to U.N. bureaucrats that U.N. Member States have the sovereign right to define U.N. policy through transparent processes.

The dangers of gender ideology are not theoretical. Reem Alsalem, U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, has highlighted many of them in her recent report on sex-based violence against women and girls. Women’s dignity, privacy, safety, and opportunities are at stake when men can violate female-only spaces by claiming to “identify” as women. 

Sadly, much of the world is only beginning to understand the horrific physical and psychological harms that those who have attempted to “transition” to another sex, boys and girls alike, have experienced under the euphemistically named “gender-affirming care” regimen of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgeries that aim to change the appearance of their bodies.  

For too long, activists on the Left have insisted that abortion is necessary for women’s empowerment, that motherhood and family are impediments to personal fulfillment, and now, that “gender identity” is something real that others must validate.

These are lies that hurt women and girls. In the decades since the Beijing conference, more people have come to recognize them as ideological deceptions that hurt men, women, and children alike. Now it’s time for more countries to confront those lies at the U.N., even when that means they’ll likely lose a vote.

Republished from The Daily Signal.

About the author: Grace Melton is senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Human Flourishing.

my voice my choice

Response to EU initiative, “My Voice My Choice”

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Endeavour Forum’s US-based chief administrative officer, Denise Mountenay, has written this response to a proposal by the EU to fund the travel expenses of women wishing to procure an abortion in a foreign country. The “My Voice My Choice” campaign aims to accommodate women whose own countries limit access to abortion.

Pro-life legal expert, Nicolas Bauer, calls the initiative, “a new step in the pro-abortion lobby’s strategy to promote abortion through supranational institutions”, giving the following as examples of how the new law would work: “… a French woman who is 22 weeks pregnant, and therefore outside the legal time limit for an abortion, could travel to the Netherlands and have an abortion there with EU funding. A Polish woman whose child has Down syndrome and who wishes to have an abortion for this reason could travel to France to do so, with EU funding.”

Concerns Regarding the “My Voice My Choice” Initiative and Its Implications for EU Competence & Women’s Health & Human Rights

by Denise Mountenay

Dear President of the European Commission & ALL Commissioners:  

I am writing to respectfully express my deep concern regarding the upcoming decision of the European Commission concerning the “My Voice My Choice” initiative. As proposed, this initiative would enable EU‑funded travel for women seeking abortions in Member States with more permissive laws, effectively allowing individuals to bypass the legal safeguards, gestational limits, and ethical frameworks established by their own countries.

This raises significant concerns regarding EU competence, Member State sovereignty, and the ethical diversity protected within the Union. Abortion legislation has always been the responsibility of Member States, reflecting their constitutional, cultural, and moral values. The EU has no competence in this area, yet it does have competence to support motherhood, families, and social protection—areas that deserve strengthening rather than displacement.

I also write from personal experience. As a former abortion patient, I—like many young pregnant women—was misinformed, deceived, and pressured into undergoing abortions. My experience is not isolated. A recent study by David Reardon et al. documents the widespread reality of women being pressured into abortions they do not truly want. This is a serious women’s‑rights issue that deserves recognition.

There is also a substantial body of scientific literature raising concerns about the health consequences of induced abortion. More than 60 published studies in peer‑reviewed medical journals have identified a statistical association between induced abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer. Numerous studies document cervical and uterine trauma, contributing to preterm birth in subsequent wanted children. Additionally, dozens of studies report significant mental‑health impacts, including depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and trauma‑related symptoms. A Finnish government study found that women who undergo abortions are six times more likely to attempt or commit suicide compared to women who give birth.

For reference, I encourage you to review the research compiled at:
www.afterabortion.org
www.bcpinstitute.org

Beyond the medical concerns, induced abortion raises profound human‑rights questions. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that “Everyone has the inherent right to life.” Modern embryology is clear that human life begins at conception, when a genetically complete human organism comes into existence. By 3–4 weeks, the embryonic heart is beating. By 8–9 weeks, the developing child has arms, legs, fingers, toes, and rapidly forming organs. These are biological facts, not matters of ideology.

To permit the deliberate ending of these young lives simply because they are small, dependent, or temporarily residing in their mother’s womb is deeply troubling. Their size or location does not diminish their humanity. Nor should the economic interests of those who profit from abortion override the rights of the most vulnerable. These children have no voice; many of us who have lived through abortion and lost our children now speak on their behalf.

Rather than facilitating the destruction of unborn children across borders, the European Union should prioritize support for pregnant women, including financial, medical, and social assistance, and ensure that fathers are held responsible for their children. Strengthening support systems would uphold both women’s dignity and the rights of their children, without undermining Member State sovereignty or ethical diversity.

I respectfully urge the Commission to:

  • Recognize that abortion remains outside EU competence
  • Uphold the principle of subsidiarity
  • Protect the sovereign right of each Member State to determine its own laws
  • Prioritize policies that support women, motherhood, and families

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I trust that the Commission will carefully consider the legal, ethical, and social implications before taking any action.  We look forward to your reply.

Respectfully,
Denise Mountenay

NGO-Endeavour Forum Inc. In Consultative Status with ECOSOC

Chief Administrative Officer

Denise Mountenay is the chief administrative officer of the Endeavour Forum Inc. and is based in Canada. Since 2009, Denise has been leading teams into the United Nations headquarters in New York City to participate at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). She has also represented Endeavour Forum at the UN headquarters in Geneva as a voice for the voiceless. Denise is founder of Together for Life and pursues pro-life film-making with Advancing Truth Alliance

contraceptives

Lack of demand for contraceptives?

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A recent report from the Guttmacher Institute intended to promote increased funding for contraceptives admitted that most women don’t actually want them.

By Rebecca Oas.

A recent report from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute intended to promote increased funding for “sexual and reproductive health,” including family planning, admitted that, in fact, the majority of so-called “need” for contraceptives is made up of women who have expressed no openness to using them or have rejected them explicitly.

The latest edition of Guttmacher’s Adding It Up continues to promote the concept of an “unmet need” for family planning, which is often misconstrued by family planning proponents like the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as a lack of access.  In reality, as a 2016 report by Guttmacher reveals, only five percent of women described as having a “need” say the reason is lack of access.

The new report introduces the concept of “unmet demand,” described as the “narrowest” subset of “unmet need,” which is made up of women “who want to avoid pregnancy and say they are interested in or open to using contraception in the future.”  This category includes an estimated 78 million women—less than half of the total 214 million with “unmet need.”

The broader definition of “unmet need” includes women who want to avoid pregnancy but are not using a family planning method, regardless of the reason.  This aligns with the metrics used in previous Adding It Up reports, as well as indicators in use at the United Nations for decades.  However, as Guttmacher admits, “it is not the most appropriate estimate of actual need for contraception.”

This is because, when asked, most women with a “need” cite concerns about health risks and side effects of contraceptive methods, personal or religious opposition, or infrequent sex as their reasons for non-use.  Based on the 2016 estimate that five percent of “unmet need” was due to lack of access, even most of the women in the narrower category of “unmet demand” are making a personal choice not to use contraceptives.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, “[f]ocusing on this [narrower] group helps prioritize limited resources.” However, they insist that “broader investments will ultimately be needed to reach the many other women who also face barriers to contraceptive care.”  Based on Guttmacher’s own data, these “barriers” are likely to be women’s own priorities and decisions.

The Adding It Up report estimates that it would cost $104 billion a year to address the “unmet demand” for contraception, all maternal and newborn care, abortion services, and treatment for sexually transmitted infections for women in low and middle-income countries.

However, it emphasizes that “[e]very dollar spent on contraceptive services beyond the current level would save $2.48 in the cost of maternal, newborn and abortion care.”  While this may sound like a way to reduce abortion, there are two important problems.  First, it presumes that funding more contraceptives will result in increased use, despite the evidence coming from the same organization demonstrating that the market for family planning is approaching saturation.

Secondly, and more importantly, the Guttmacher Institute is calling for investment in “sexual and reproductive health” organizations that provide abortions and lobby for abortion in pro-life countries and are explicitly trying to siphon funding away from maternal and child health services in favor of contraception.  This does nothing to build the basic health infrastructure required by the women who will want to become mothers, and their children, in the poorest regions of the world.

By Rebecca Oas. C-FAM: The Centre for Family & Human Rights was founded in the summer of 1997 in order to monitor and affect the social policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions. C-Fam is a non-partisan, non-profit research institute dedicated to reestablishing a proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person.

campus

Campus life by a young Christian woman

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A previous article featured an essay from a conservative male college student entitled Gen Z,
Social Media, and Envy. This month we present an essay on campus life from a female Christian
perspective.

I am a young, conservative, Christian woman attending a large state university. I chose to attend state university because I wanted a good education in Economics and I thought it would give me valuable opportunities and cost less than attending a solid liberal arts college. While my time spent at the university has been fruitful and I have learned a great deal, it has also opened my eyes to many cultural problems with Gen Z in particular, as well as with our public higher education system.

I desire to pursue knowledge, while simultaneously pursuing the good, the true and the beautiful. I find that at state university, school is often drudgery instead of enjoyment in the challenge of pursuing truth and knowledge. Many students dread showing up to class, skip when they can and eagerly anticipate the end of the semester. When I hear from other students at smaller liberal arts colleges, many of them have their ups and downs, but overall they enjoy their education and the challenges that come with learning and mastering difficult subjects and ways of thinking.

What is different about the state university world? First of all, I have noticed my generation’s chronic
reliance on technology on my campus. It’s practically revolutionary to have a class that’s “tech free”
(including tests)—I have one of those, and it’s refreshing. In between class periods, the majority of
students walk to their next class with eyes glued to their phones or impenetrable headphones covering their ears. Students rarely make eye contact when walking, and when they do, they quickly avert their eyes.

Starting a conversation with a stranger—even to ask for directions—is one of the most intimidating things you can do. Discussion does happen in class, but it usually takes a while to get going. When students refuse to engage verbally, our professors are noticeably disheartened, but there’s not much they can do.

More tech, less reading

As technology use increases, it seems that reading is decreasing. Just last week, when I walked into class with a three-volume set of Civil War history that I was taking home, my classmate looked shocked.

I showed him what I had, and he told me that he had a couple of boxes of Encyclopedia Britannica books from his grandmother, boxed up in his basement. He said he was going to put them up on shelves by his TV. “Not to read,” he explained—“just for show.”

“Are you not much of a reader?” I asked.

“Why would I read?” he replied.

“To learn?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t read a book since probably sophomore year.” He is a senior in college.

As someone who was raised to love knowledge and reading, I found his statements discouraging. On a broader note, this makes me more concerned for my generation. Covid-19, with its lockdowns and cancelled school, forced students my age online. Now, tech use is through the roof, and hobbies and necessities that used to be common, like reading, are in steep decline.

In terms of the university’s approach to reading, we do not read economic theory in my economics classes. We discuss policy ideas, and we briefly mention famous economists, but all we know about these economists is roughly when they lived, and what equation or concept they popularised. We do not read Friedrich Hayek, Adam Smith, Milton Friedman or even Karl Marx. The most economic theory reading I have done thus far in my time at college is in my technology-free class on the history of Western political thought.

Campus Professor: ‘Friedman was wrong’

As an example of the economic theory teaching we get, my professor in my (required) environmental economics class began the semester by telling us that “Friedman was wrong.” He proceeded with a less than adequate two-minute summary of who Friedman was and why he was wrong, and then moved on. He ended that inaugural lecture by stating that “binary thinking is born from simplification” and encouraging us to be openminded, always looking for things to change our minds about.

I was shocked by his obvious lack of belief in objective truth and saddened that a public university was promoting—and even requiring—a class that encouraged this. We reduce problems to policy and an equation. Instead of looking to history to formulate solutions for present problems, we blindly plow full speed ahead, ignoring the wisdom from those who came before us.

This is not a problem that is unique to the economics department. A couple of my friends have expressed their annoyance with classes and professors that are not challenging them. It seems to be a common pattern throughout the humanities to offer a relatively small number of in-person courses, require few if any tests, provide open-note quizzes and short-answer questions, mandate online discussion boards (as opposed to in-person dialogue) and require minimal reading of primary sources and the classics. As students, we often pay hefty sums of money for our education. If we are not learning useful, challenging material, what is the point?

In the realm of civil discourse, it’s even more difficult—particularly for me as a conservative. Not all of my professors are liberal, but I can usually tell which ones are, aren’t or don’t care. It’s hard to challenge a professor when he is an “expert” in a topic and in charge of a class, and you are neither. It’s even harder when your fellow classmates don’t say anything.

It’s also difficult to bring up questions about politics, policy or religion with my classmates. Growing up, my generation was taught never to discuss politics, religion or money—yet those are the very things we should be talking about, especially as young people! We are all in school, wrestling with what we’ll do with the rest of our lives. Universities used to be great forums for debate. Now we’re afraid we’ll offend someone by asking a genuine question.

Dating by phone apps, hookups

Another problem is the dating aspect. I didn’t attend college with the belief that I would find my husband here, but of course there’s always that hope. Yet my generation was raised with a dependence on phones, video games and dating apps. Don’t want to leave the comfort of your home to meet someone? No problem. There are countless apps you can get that enable you to “meet” someone in every way possible except for the one that truly matters—face to face.

Walking around my campus, I’ve been disheartened to see that many of my schoolmates find greater enjoyment in the party and hookup culture than they do in searching out a spouse with whom they can faithfully spend the remainder of their lives. No wonder it’s hard to find a good man here.


Radical feminism doesn’t help

Add to that the problem of radical feminism. The men in my generation have been taught since birth that women are entitled to exactly the same treatment as men. Women can work all the same jobs as men, women can and should provide for their families, women are just as strong as men, etc. Gone is the chivalrous protector role that men used to strive to fill.

I’ve been shocked recently at how rare it is for my fellow male students to hold doors for the female
students. Since there is no longer a difference between the sexes, there is no longer a need—or even a desire—for men to step into a provider role. In my experience, this has led to young men who are afraid
to ask young women out, unsure of their place in their girlfriend’s life, and afraid of committing to long term relationships.

They also struggle with their role as a natural-born leader. I only know a few openly conservative men on campus—most of my conservative friends are female. I have more male friends who are deeply religious, but they tend not to speak publicly about their political beliefs.

Conservative women exist on campus

And yet, there is hope. In a culture where we’re told that Gen Z women are the most liberal demographic, most of my conservative friends at the university are women. They are women who want to do something to save America and her people. My best friend wants to be a lawyer, another good friend wants to teach history to kids, another wants to work in state and local government, and another wants to work in international politics.

All of these women are strong, godly and driven to make changes. We are equipped to make these changes and find community through a few clubs on campus, internships, and fellowship and seminar opportunities.

I have had incredible opportunities to network and build relationships with likeminded conservative students through a political dialogue club on campus and through the campus College Republicans club. I have the privilege of serving both as an officer. I met my best friend through the political dialogue club, and I was able to join up with some of my conservative friends to restart our defunct College Republicans chapter.

Clubs and internships

In the College Republicans chapter, we are continuing to recruit new members and planning events where conservatives can meet one another and find friendly community in the face of opposition.

Our goal is to develop responsible, conservative citizens, change the minds of others through respectful debates and dialogues, and protect conservatism on our campus. Through working with fellow students to advance conservative values, we have built a community of intelligent and driven young people who I am confident will continue the fight for truth at our university long after I graduate.

My conservative professors have helped me with internship and networking opportunities as well, including an internship at the Heritage Foundation this past summer. At Heritage I was blessed to work in the DeVos Center for Human Flourishing (formerly the DeVos Center for Life, Family, and Religion), where I did focused research on issues such as abortion, transgender hormone “therapy” and vaccines.

Through our weekly lecture series, I learned about domestic and foreign policy issues, the natural law, and the definition and application of conservatism, among other things.’

All the interns were given copies of Russell Kirk’s The Roots of American Order and Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions. One of the policy directors, who had majored in economics, gave me Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and encouraged me to read it.

The goal of the internship directors, and I believe everyone at Heritage, was to equip us as young conservatives to go out on the offensive for conservative values—not just defending them but promoting them.

At Heritage, I made friendships that will last my whole life, learned what it means to be a “happy warrior” and emerged equipped to further the conservative movement wherever I find myself in the future.

In addition to my time spent at Heritage, I had the privilege of interning for the Acton Institute and twice for the Center for Arizona Policy. Through these wonderful experiences, I learned the process of lawmaking, took notes on numerous legislative floor sessions, committee and caucus meetings, performed topical research, catalogued books, learned hospitality and reception work, and so much more. My time spent at the Center for Arizona Policy is even more applicable now, after my summer at Heritage.

At Heritage, I was more focused on learning conservative policy and values and implementing those in a focused area. At the Center for Arizona Policy, those values connected directly with lawmaking of all shapes and sizes. These experiences have shaped my understanding of America and her political system, and I am excited to apply what I have learned wherever I may go.

While sometimes I regret not attending a conservative liberal arts school, when I reflect on the experiences and opportunities I have had at state university, I repeatedly conclude that I would not be where I am today if I had not chosen to attend state university. And, despite its shortcomings, I do believe there is hope for the state university world—but it is not found in more federal funding or in forcing students to write more papers.

How to improve classes on campus

Instead, it will be found in

  • teaching good, comprehensive, challenging history and humanities courses,
  • supporting students in pursuing knowledge with excellence,
  • fostering a more Socratic method of teaching and interacting with teachers and fellow students in the classroom, and
  • encouraging students to respectfully debate and challenge one another’s ideas of religion, policy and more.

The young conservatives I have met at my state university are intelligent, motivated and dedicated individuals who are committed to working together to defend and promote conservative values. There may not be many of us at our university now, but our hope is that our actions now will change the future.

This article is published by the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation in St Louis, Missouri, USA. The original article is available from the foundation’s website:  www.mindszenty.org. The Mindszenty Report is not copyrighted, and readers are invited to forward copies to their local bishops, priests and pastors.


Gen Z social media

Gen Z, social media, and envy

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Social media causes desensitisation to things that should disturb us and hypersensitivity to things that should not disturb us. It afflicts Gen Z with a toxic culture of envy.

My generation, Gen Z (born between 1996 and 2010), finds itself in the throes of individual depression, pessimism about the future, and a strong tendency not to take personal responsibility. As a 20-year-old college student, I have witnessed this firsthand. I believe much of the problem can be traced to social media and its creation of a make-believe world, a world defined by pronounced social envy.

Only 39 percent of Generation Z aged 18-29 believe that achieving the American dream is still possible, while 60 percent do not.1 It is disheartening, to say the least, that a large majority of our youth do not believe in the American tradition of achieving success through hard work and determination.

Gen Z has grown up in a different world from previous generations—an online world, one that immerses them in fantasy. Fantasy leads inevitably to disappointment as this made-up online world creates unrealistic expectations for the real world.

Abundant research shows that social media is harmful to youth. Social media use is correlated with rising instances of self-harm and suicidality in boys and girls.2 At the same time, American girls use social media far more than boys.3 While boys are off playing video games or consuming online porn, girls succumb to toxic self-comparison at a time when they are most confused about their identity. This allows them to be taken advantage of by predators, by influencers espousing extreme ideology, and by other women who tell them to prioritise themselves above all others.

The results of this gender gap are ominous for the future of America. More young men than young women report wanting to have children.4 At a time when America’s birth rate continues to plummet below replacement, Gen Z is dropping the ball on family formation. It is not just apathy towards having a family. Gen Z is growing more anti-capitalist, more anti-natalist and more callous about the deaths of others. Reactions on social media in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s horrific assassination come to mind.

Social media causes desensitization to things that should disturb us and hypersensitivity to things that should not disturb us. It afflicts Gen Z with a toxic culture of envy.

The inside view

Generation Z’s ailments are clear from the outside, but even more so from the inside. It is important to note that the author is a member of Gen Z himself, born just a few years after the turn of the millennium. I have been spared the despair of my generation because of my family.

Raised in a large family with close bonds with my siblings, I was never alone in the sense that many Gen Zers report themselves feeling. My parents ran a household that was strong in moral teachings and founded upon family values. Furthermore, my parents had the foresight to withhold social media from my siblings and me far longer than most of our generation. We were not subject to the culture of envy that we watched our friends endure. I made it all the way to my 19th birthday before I became curious, suspecting that social media might prove useful or practical as an adult in college.

I deleted all my accounts in less than a year. My experience on social media was far from anything I had expected. Perhaps I was naive to expect pictures of pleasant scenery and the occasional post about a family trip. But I could not have foreseen the extent to which social media is riddled with depravity, dishonesty and delusion. What I saw as an outsider to my own generation made plain precisely why my close friends and peers seemed so distant and anxious. It was clear why they had lost faith in themselves, their communities and the American dream.

The reason social media has had such a horrendous effect on American youth is that, fundamentally, social media is not what it seems. The photos and videos that are posted online are often edited into an unrecognizable version of the truth. What is presented as a casual selfie is often an hours-long commitment that requires professional equipment, painstaking attention to detail and constant revision. Instead of honest photos, our youth sees perfection. But it is perfection presented as something attainable. Or rather, something that seems attainable, but isn’t attainable in reality. This is the root of Gen Z’s envy.

Incessant comparison

Social media’s inherent culture of envy is bad enough. But what makes it particularly dangerous to Gen Z is that members of my generation are obsessed with comparing themselves to their peers. Gen Zers average about nine hours of screen time every day.5 It is not unusual to have a screen time of 10 or even 14 hours a day. Some of my friends can spend 20 hours a day looking at screens.

Social media takes up a significant amount of these appalling screen times. Sixty percent of Gen Z spends at least four hours a day on social media, and 22 percent report spending seven or more hours a day.6 Time spent on social media is time not spent socializing, working, exercising, reading, spending time with family, and more. Rather than engage with the real world as much as possible, a sizable majority of Generation Z spends the greater part of their day in an online fantasy.

Living in the fictional world of social media is a major cause of Gen Z’s pessimism, and Gen Z’s members know it. About 83 percent of America’s youth have tried to limit their social media use, albeit largely unsuccessfully.7 Gen Z recognizes the harms of social media as a group. But while 48 percent of teenagers agree that social media is harmful to people their age, just 14 percent believe that social media affects them personally.8

What these statistics reveal is an element of denial. The youth culture’s expectation of perfection requires hiding imperfections. But upon a closer look, it becomes clear that this perfectionism is a symptom of envy. The desire to be as affluent, powerful, attractive and popular as influencers on social media comes from spending too much time in the online world. Carefully curated posts that are funneled to the right audiences create an infinite network of nested mini-worlds in which our youth have become lost. The resulting lack of direction is part of why Gen Z feels so pessimistic. Generation Z’s pessimism expresses itself in many ways: class resentment, hetero-pessimism, apathy and sensitivity.

Class resentment is the byproduct of economic forces on social media. Online sites kick consumer culture into hyperdrive. It begins with extravagant displays of wealth. Influencers who advertise perfect dress, flawless appearance, ideal travel experiences, luxurious homes and fine dining inevitably attract viewers for the simple reason that wealth is desirable. Considering that Gen Z is significantly more dissatisfied with their economic situation than other generations, it is no surprise that young people are drawn toward such content in large numbers.9 Much of Generation Z sees what they want but cannot have, for hours at a time each day.

Displays of unrealistic wealth

Individual envy is then amplified into pessimism. Social media algorithms recommend to users what they are most likely to click on. The more outraged users are, the more likely they are to become even more outraged and to be connected to other users who reinforce their indignation. Since Gen Z is uniquely susceptible to economic pessimism, they are at a greater risk of falling victim to this outrage. As time passes, young social media users fall farther down the rabbit hole, becoming more radicalised and more pessimistic.

The consequence is a strong current of anticapitalism and economic pessimism that views the American system as fundamentally unfair. And so long as they remain isolated in their online echo chambers, my peers will continue to be overexposed to the shortcomings of American capitalism and underexposed to its many benefits.

The hyper-individualization of Gen Z encouraged by social media applies to dating and family dynamics as well as economic concerns. Just as algorithms radicalize the youth into anticapitalism, they do the same for hyperfeminism.

Recent surveys continue to show that young women are ranking their career and individual interests ahead of starting a family.10 This is unsurprising given the prominence of anti-male trends on social media. As of late, a proliferation of social media posts with the hashtag childfree suggests that childlessness as an identity is growing.

There are also movements encouraging women to become “boysober” and swear off all emotional and physical relationships with men.11 Some women online are using the term “mankeeping,” which is primarily used to complain about the burdens of supporting their partners through hard times. Popularized in 2016, the MenAreTrash movement swept social media platforms and gained rapid popularity for disparaging men and heterosexual dating in any way possible.

Toxic feminism

The online environment culminates in a general pessimism about dating and family called “hetero-pessimism.” Originally coined in 2019, hetero-pessimism refers to a movement where women are ashamed of being straight and view “heterosexuality as a prison within which they are confined against their will.”12 Gen Z women are especially vulnerable to trends like hetero-pessimism.

Again, considering the radicalising nature of social media algorithms, it is easy for girls to fall for ideas that promote individualism and the prioritisation of self over pair-bonding or community. As a result, teenage girls sometimes enter the dating scene with unrealistic expectations because of exposure to fake relationships on social media. Young men who encounter such women are then treated to a rude awakening where they are expected to act as an accessory to a woman who is more interested in superficial pleasures and material wealth than true partnership.

It is worth pausing to emphasize that this is a somewhat extreme characterization of a complex phenomenon. Not all young women who use social media are anti-male. Yet, anti-male sentiment weaves itself into social media in various ways.

social media

More widespread than hetero-pessimism is the creation of echo chambers by social media algorithms that amplify and radicalise opinions and perspectives.

Consider the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk. In the era before social media, it may be true that the victim of such a horrific and violent act would have received near total sympathy from the American public, including its youth. Regardless of whether this was the case in the past, it is certainly not true now.

Apathy—and in some cases jubilation—from the left over the murder of Charlie Kirk is not originally because of inherent cold-heartedness and cruelty. It is because of desensitisation. This is an important distinction. Desensitisation by social media is what leads to coldheartedness and cruelty when left unchecked. Such apathetic and jubilant individuals did not express sympathy because that is not what they were shown. Social media algorithms likely predicted that such viewers, especially some progressive youth, would not have clicked on such content. Instead, they were fed increasingly extreme posts that dismissed or mocked the death of Charlie Kirk. And in viewing such posts, their views were validated and radicalised instead of moderated.

The condoning of Kirk’s assassination that spread across the internet is emblematic of a growing apathy towards the plight of persons outside each individual’s social media bubble. Within these anonymous echo chambers, algorithms supercharge this apathy into a callous joy that is not just inappropriate, but dangerous.

The tyranny of online policing

Online policing of political correctness reached a fever pitch during the Covid-19 pandemic, when American society was as far from the real world as it had ever been. This had a detrimental effect on Generation Z, given that they came of age around the use of chosen pronouns, progressive terminology like “safe spaces,” and leftist ideology that accused most social and economic institutions of being inherently bad. So rather than work to develop empathy for those different from them, Generation Z was immersed in a ruthless online culture that focused on the faults of those who were different from them, instead of what we have in common as Americans.

Generation Z is steeped in a fabricated version of reality that amplifies outrage, promotes individualism and heightens our differences. The culture of envy engendered by social media has made our youth so pessimistic that many of them no longer believe in the American dream. Who can blame them? Because of social media, much of Gen Z is entering adulthood unchallenged, un-self-aware, and unable to see that they are part of something greater than themselves.

As a member of Gen Z, I place my hope in those of us who are strong enough to stop looking at our screens and start looking at all that is happening around us. For when we do so, we begin to see that the beauty of reality is far more rewarding than any online illusions of perfection.

This article is published by the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation in St Louis, Missouri, USA. The original article is available from the foundation’s website:  www.mindszenty.org. The Mindszenty Report is not copyrighted, and readers are invited to forward copies to their local bishops, priests and pastors.

  1. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/02/americans-are-split-over-the-state-of-the-american-dream/ ↩︎
  2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6278213/ ↩︎
  3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9176070/ ↩︎
  4. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/ ↩︎
  5. https://www.hiddengemsaba.com/articles/average-screen-time-statistics ↩︎
  6. https://theharrispoll.com/briefs/gen-z-social-media-smart-phones/ ↩︎
  7. Ibid ↩︎
  8. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/22/teens-social-media-andmental-health/ ↩︎
  9. https://www.mtlc.co/how-to-handle-the-optimism-pessimism-paradox-of-gen-z-at-work/ ↩︎
  10. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/among-young-adults-without-children-men-are-more-likely-than-women-to-say-they-want-to-be-parents-someday/ ↩︎
  11. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/03/style/boysober-celibacy-hope-woodward.html ↩︎
  12. https://thenewinquiry.com/on-heteropessimism/ ↩︎
A good pro-life law

What makes a good pro-life law?

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by Kathy Clubb

The most commonly proposed pro-life laws are those centred on limiting abortions above a certain gestational limit, but is it wise for those opposed to abortion to support them?

Such a measure has been put forward in South Australia by Independent MP Sarah Game, a member of the state’s parliamentary upper house. She has recently proposed an abortion amendment bill, which, if passed, would restrict access to abortions after 23 weeks’ gestation. 

In light of this proposal, it may be timely to look at what kind of pro-life laws are the most, or least, helpful for the pro-life cause. As will be shown below, there are better options than merely seeking to place an upper-limit on abortion availability. 

‘Term limits’ convey the wrong message

Paul Hanrahan, the Australian CEO of Family Life International, makes the point that, far from uniting the pro-life community, such laws create deep divisions due to the different principles being employed by opponents of abortion. 

While acknowledging that the media attention garnered by these bills does have the benefit of raising the issue of abortion in the mind of the public, he reminds us of the biblical moral principle that “we must never do evil to obtain a good” (Romans 3:8). He told Endeavour Forum that “This kind of bill embeds and lends support to the notion used most to defend abortion — ‘my body, my choice!’”

“It is wrong to ascribe an unborn baby’s “viability” to an arbitrary age, such as 24 weeks. All unborn children are viable from conception. The fact that they wouldn’t survive outside the womb until a later age is irrelevant. So long as they have time and nourishment, they are viable, living human beings and are entitled to the full protection of the law.”

Speaking specifically about Victoria’s failed Infant Viability Bill of 2016, Mr Hanrahan added,

“It was legally ridiculous to carve out an exception in the bill from prosecution for the mothers. Of course, we are all aware of the tragic circumstances some mothers are placed in, and that often they are cajoled or coerced into an abortion they don’t want. However, if a person complicit in a crime has reasons that reduce or negate their culpability, then the Court would decide that. They would then receive a reduced sentence or be found not guilty. The legislation cannot decide that in advance.” 

‘Exceptions’ undermine pro-life case

John Smeaton, of the UK’s Voice for the Family, heartily agrees. He believes that pro-life groups should not be “campaigning for politicians to vote for abortion in the case of rape, or in the case of disability, or in the case of a baby being below a certain number of weeks’ gestation”, concluding: “We will never defeat abortion by campaigning for politicians to vote for abortion in particular circumstances.”

In his article, “Upper-limit abortion legislation a step in the wrong direction for the UK’s anti-abortion lobby”, Mr Smeaton asks:

“Is it not likely that one of the reasons why the evil of abortion is so overwhelmingly accepted in particular circumstances by our fellow citizens, including by our fellow Catholics, is that pro-life groups themselves have almost universally been prepared to accept legalised abortion in certain circumstances?”

In the same article, he makes the additional point:

“Imagine it was lawful in our countries to kill children up to six months after birth. Imagine a parliamentarian putting forward legislation to stop the killing of children after three months, while authorising killings of children up to the three-month limit — and with exceptions for disabled children who could be killed up to six months or even later. It would clearly be wrong to vote for such a law or to campaign for such a law, however many lives, allegedly, such a law would save, on the [flawed] basis that it would be ‘a step in the right direction’.”

A realistic alternative?

New South Wales parliamentarian John Ruddick, a member of the Libertarian Party, is currently putting forward a private member’s bill addressing sex-selective abortion practices. His Abortion Law Reform Amendment (Sex Selection Prohibition) Bill 2025 aims to outlaw abortions based on gender — the incidence of which has been documented in a Western Australian study published earlier his year.

However, with the text of the bill not yet available, the devil is literally in the details. Does the bill apply equally to boys and girls? Does it, like so many flawed pro-life laws, contain a positive right to abortion in its text, with sex-selection given as an exception to this right? This is the weakest part of any pro-life law, generally.

In practice, enforcement is often the most difficult aspect of a bill of this kind. Do we really expect our pro-abortion governments to provide the resources for policing abortion-providers in order to enforce a law like this? Or are abortion-providers expected to self-monitor and self-report? Are the parents desiring an abortion based on their child’s gender expected to reveal this as the reason for their abortion? 

Chemical abortions

Another alternative anti-abortion law is being put forward by a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, August Pfluger, from Texas. The Republican congressman’s bill, named the Second Chance at Life Act, would mandate that chemical-abortion providers fully inform mothers about the possibility of reversing the drugs’ effects. This is meant to alert women to the possibility of their baby being saved if they change their minds part way through proceeding with a chemically-induced abortion. 

Yet even this is a fraught area, with possible unforeseen consequences. Dr Debbie Garratt, researcher and founder of the discontinued Real Choices Australia organisation, had this to say about the proposed law: 

“With all the pressures women experience toward abortion, I believe that for many, this could be experienced as a potential ‘way out’. 

“I can take the pill and still change my mind and it will be okay.”

This, however, is not the case. I coordinated a national network of doctors providing progesterone — a hormone that supports pregnancy — to women in such circumstances for five years, then coordinated a world-first clinical trial doing the same. 

While results are good, they are not guaranteed with treatment being time-critical. Gestational age also appears to make a difference. Therefore giving women a false hope that what they are about to do could be reversed does not resolve any issues and may add extra pressure.

Legislation should be focused on the provision of actual informed consent, including risks of mental health harm, and information about ways women can be supported to navigate whatever circumstances have prompted them to consider abortion. This information should be given to women both verbally and in writing, and a waiting period should be enforced. 

However, as all informed-consent legislation relies on the abortion-provider giving accurate and complete information — and we know that doesn’t happen now — it’s hard to see how it would be effective. 

I do think that those two things combined achieve the aim of educating about and highlighting the real reasons women seek abortion and ensuring women are informed about supports. A waiting period, which ensures some distance from the possible pressure of abortion-clinic staff, and time to seek out alternatives would also help.”

As the examples make clear, the only way pro-life legislation could work would be for an independent body to monitor abortion-providers to ensure that the laws were being adhered to. The chances of that happening while our governments are committed to supporting the abortion industry are slim to none.

Education is vital

Some states in the U.S. are taking a different angle when it comes to new pro-life laws. One example is Ohio, which has just introduced its Baby Olivia Act. The Act, inspired by a video created by the pro-life group, Live Action, requires public schools to expose children to scientifically-accurate depictions of prenatal development. Live Action’s video was made with input from medical experts and uses computer animation to show a baby’s development throughout its time in the womb.

In this way, legislators hope that children will grow up with an understanding of a baby’s humanity which would preclude them from seeking abortions later in life.

It is difficult to see any moral problems with this kind of legislation, and it could hold the key to creating a new generation of citizens who have the kind of respect for motherhood and parenting which would one day make abortion unthinkable. Not only children would benefit; teachers and parents could potentially have their pro-abortion opinions challenged by exposure to this kind of information.

Conclusion

The preceding examples show that the area of creating good pro-life law is full of pitfalls, and that wide consultation among many different groups is necessary — from health legislation experts, pro-life leaders and even from psychologists. No one person or group has all the answers when there is a risk of putting in place a morally flawed or practically unworkable law.

While there are ways to legislate that potentially decrease the public’s reliance on abortion, we must begin with the understanding that many proposed measures have the potential to do more harm than good.

About the author. Kathy Clubb is an Australian mother and grandmother and has home-educated her children for the best part of 30 years. She has undertaken official pro-life work for 10 years, first in Tasmania, and then in Victoria. In 2016, Kathy was part of an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Victoria’s abortion exclusion-zones, which led to a constitutional challenge in the High Court of Australia in late 2018. Her articles have also appeared at LifeSiteNews, Family Life International, Caldron Pool and Fidelity magazine.

Phyllis Schlafly and Babette Francis

Phyllis Schlafly – friend and role model of Babette Francis

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John Morrissey gives a brief overview of the friendship between American conservative powerhouse, Phyllis Schlafly and Babette Francis, founder of Endeavour Forum.

Only months before Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016, there occurred the death at the age of 92 of a hero of US Christian conservatives, Phyllis Schlafly, who gave him her blessing in his run for the presidency. This Harvard graduate and mother of six left behind her 50 years of activism on behalf of the nation itself, traditional family interests and values, and the pro-life movement in the US and abroad. Her first publication in 1964, A Choice Not an Echo, was a best seller, calling on the Republican Party to distinguish itself from the drift to the progressive Left in the Democratic Party’s reorientation away from traditional American values.

Phyllis Schlafly and Babette Francis
Babette Francis (right) with her long-time friend and political ally, the late Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum, at its HQ in St Louis, Missouri, 2016.

Some Australian viewers might have been aware of Phyllis Schlafly when her character was played by Cate Blanchett in the TV mini-series “Mrs America” on Fox Showcase in 2020. The series focused on her leading the opposition of Christian conservative women to defeat the 1970s feminist campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution. In no way related to the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, ERA professed to explicitly prohibit sex discrimination, but it was a charter for the radical feminist agenda. 

Phyllis is shown opposed to a line-up of the famed feminists of the time, including Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Shirley Chisholm. The images presented of twinset-and-pearls ladies with neat coiffures lobbying legislators with packages of homemade banana-bread while urging them to reject the amendment were remarkably true to life. In contrast and despite the very attractive portrayal of Steinem by Rose Byrne, the hippy appearance and wrangling among these radical feminists made them appear more like a “coven of witches”, as one writer to the Melbourne Age Green Guide likened them. Much of the credit must go to Cate Blanchett’s superb performance in a production which was rated in the top ten of TV series that year and won numerous nominations and awards.

As Phyllis was taking out a law degree and building her profile with numerous media interviews and debates – she conceded that women could “have it all”, but not at the same time – she made her mark on the Republican Party and its platform. Written in her final year, How the Republican Party Became Pro-Life (2016) tells the story of how she and her Eagle Forum followers, now drawn from many states, devised strategies to gain control of the party platform in the latter 1970s, in the wake of Roe Vs Wade. At the Republican Convention in Missouri in 1976 her motion to “protest the Supreme Court’s intrusion into the family structure” and “to seek enactment of a constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children” was approved. She was also involved in Helm’s amendment to oppose accommodation and detente with the USSR, her original interest in politics having been in defence strategy.

It is difficult to pinpoint when contact was first made, but the first mention of Phyllis in the “Women Who Want to be Women” (forerunner of Endeavour Forum) newsletter was in September 1980 when Babette met the author of The Power of the Positive Woman in Chicago. By this time Babette was a regular attendee of UN and other conferences overseas, where she delivered many hard-hitting papers on her key topics of the interests of women and families.  The November 1980 issue of the newsletter celebrated the successful election of Ronald Reagan as President of the US and noted that a “platform that is solidly pro-life and opposed to the feminist ERA can WIN”. Babette also paid tribute to the “energetic” Baptists of Georgia, who showed that abortion is not just a “Catholic issue”. When The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority, a biography of Phyllis by Carol Fesenthal, was boycotted by many US bookshops and libraries, the newsletter fumed at the “censors and book-burners” responsible.        

At the invitation of Women Who Want to be Women (WWWW), in 1983 Phyllis toured the eastern states of Australia, speaking against a Sex Discrimination bill, warning of unintended consequences for women, just as she had warned concerning the ERA proposal in the US. She was described in the Catholic press as “a charmingly feminine lady …. very youthful looking, always perfectly disciplined, always perfectly groomed in appearance”. Speaking at Monash University, she never lost her cool when heckled after affirming that sex outside the marriage bond was sinful. She was guest speaker at WWWW’s first annual convention, where she delivered a paper with the title “Is the Family an Endangered Species?” on problems faced in the US which were also evident in Australia. In the February 1985 newsletter it was reported that Eagle Forum members rejoiced in the re-election of Ronald Reagan, “a vindication of the moral and patriotic values dear to the hearts of Americans”, which reflected the deepening ties. In1994, Phyllis’ sister-in-law, Eleanor Schlafly, visited Australia on a speaking tour organized by Babette. Moreover, at its annual celebrations Endeavour Forum has long awarded a Phyllis Schlafly Eagles certificate to a chosen “Homemaker of the Year”, invariably a lady active in the local pro-life movement.

Phyllis Schlafly went on to build a formidable organization with branches across the US, especially in the South and the Mid-West. As did Babette, she consistently argued that equality of the sexes does not mean reducing the innate differences between them to reproduction and social conditioning. She is credited with having much to do with the rise of the Moral Majority movement which shifted the shape of the US political landscape. 

Today the Phyllis Schlafly Eagle Forum maintains a large membership who play an important role in the Republican Party. Its HQ is an impressive building in St Louis Missouri and the Schlafly family still play a part in its work. The successor to Phyllis was Ed Martin, who in 2017 also visited Australia for a speaking tour organized by Babette. He is now an important member of Donald Trump’s team, having already filled in as D.A. for Washington D.C. and at present is Pardons Attorney, responsible for freeing US citizens unjustly imprisoned by the Biden administration. 

In 2018 I was invited to attend with Babette a grand Eagle Forum conference in St Louis. There 600 members thronged a Marriott hotel over a long weekend to be addressed by speakers who included members of the Trump administration, delegates from branches across the US, persons of special interest and guests like Babette and me. When she entered the dining room on the first evening she was welcomed as a VIP and invited to the top table. Before meals we said grace, recited a loyal pledge to the Constitution and sang the National Anthem. It was truly inspiring. Donald and Melania Trump were there in spirit, or rather as large cardboard cutouts on stage. It was a truly inspiring example of patriotism which shames us here in Australia.

by John Morrissey

Purcell

Georgie Purcell: a next-generation abortion advocate

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Victorian MP, Georgie Purcell, has understandably drawn criticism from the public for including a promotion of abortion during her pregnancy announcement. She recently made the announcement via a lengthy post on the social media platform, Instagram. Her prominence as a politician as well as her large social media following mean she is well-placed to push her pro-choice agenda onto impressionable Australians. Ms. Purcell represents a new wave of abortion advocates who make no attempt to hide their discrimination against the unborn or against the pro-life community.

A former stripper and topless waitress, Georgie Purcell is no stranger to controversy, initially positioning herself as an advocate for sex workers and as a role model for young Australian women. After joining the Animal Justice Party and being elected to the Victorian parliament, Ms. Purcell drew on her own abortion experience to lobby for increased abortion access for all Victorian women, especially in rural areas.

A Political Pregnancy Announcement

When Ms. Purcell recently made public her latest pregnancy, initially announcing it to her 212,000 Instagram followers, it included the following reference to her abortions:

“If you’ve followed my work for a while, you’ll know that this isn’t my first pregnancy. But it’s the first I’ve chosen to continue. As I prepare for motherhood (beyond cats, dogs, horses and sheep) I carry with me the stories of my abortions. They are not only part of my advocacy as a politician, but also part of who I am. I am more grateful than ever before that I have had access to choice so that I could do this on my own terms and timeline, and will always fight for everybody to have the same.”

Rather than expressing regret for aborting her first two children, Ms. Purcell seemed to relish the fact that she possessed the power to have them killed.

Elsewhere on the social media account, Ms. Purcell unironically states that Gaza is “currently the most unsafe place in the world for a child”. Without playing down the humanitarian crisis occurring in Gaza. it must be said that the most unsafe place for a child these days is in its mother’s womb. This fact seems lost on Ms. Purcell even though her own experience provides ample evidence.

Purcell
From Georgie Purcells’ Instagram account
Purcell

Public Backlash

Understandably, members of the pro-life community responded to Ms. Purcell’s post by pointing out the inconsistency of joyfully welcoming some children while unashamedly disposing of others. This backlash was met with an article on the feminist website, Women’s Agenda, in which Ms. Purcell attempted to justify her position.

The article, entitled, Abortion will always be part of my journey, reiterated the content of her social media post and included her latest statements from the Victorian Parliament. Ms. Purcell told Parliament that her pregnancy “has only solidified [her] belief in reproductive choice” and went on to explain her gratitude for “access to options”. She decried the “anti-choice”, “anti-women activists” who criticised her promotion of abortion, saying that their comments renewed her passion for advocating for “reproductive rights”.

Yet, the backlash wasn’t only from the pro-life quarter: others, perhaps more closely aligned ideologically with the Animal Justice Party, have also criticised Ms. Purcell’s cavalier attitude to abortion. Ms. Purcell herself notes that many who believe in a woman’s “right to choose” one abortion may balk at the thought of two, considering that to be irresponsible.

Blaming Pro-Lifers

Ms. Purcell’s new-wave abortion advocacy includes laying the blame for any abortion-related inconvenience at the feet of the pro-life community. Despite being criticised by people who identify as pro-choice, Ms. Purcell prefers to aim her barbs at pro-lifers.

When speaking about the so-called “Safe Access” zones that operate in Victoria. Ms. Purcell openly states that her first abortion took place before the 150m exclusion-zones were introduced, and claims to have been “severely harassed” by pro-lifers as she entered the abortion business. Although that ‘harassment” allegedly consisted of being told she was “killing her baby”, was that not precisely the purpose of her visit? Is stating a fact synonymous with harassment?

No-one who is about to commit a grave error likes to be reminded of the fact, and experience shows that being told that one is about to kill one’s own baby has, in some cases at least, led mothers to re-evaluate their decision to abort their children. Unfortunately for Georgie Purcell’s first two children, that was not the case in her situation. Rather, she went ahead with her abortions, preferring to paint pro-lifers as the villains.

In an article she wrote in 2022, Ms. Purcell continued the blame-game, going so far as to accuse pro-lifers of forcing regional GP’s not to prescribe the abortion pills. She wrote that because there are fewer GP’s in the country they are “more vulnerable to being targeted by anti-choice activists.”

For someone who is so concerned about “choice”, Ms. Purcell seems reluctant to admit that some doctors live out their choice not to be a party to abortion. It is also doubtful that any doctor would appreciate being characterised as a weak, malleable personality who capitulates his or her pro-choice principles in the face of pro-life opposition.

Pro-life Hospitals Deny Care?

The discrimination by Ms. Purcell against conscientious objectors to abortion continues on the issue of abortion provision in hospitals. Like other abortion zealots, Ms. Purcell repeats the narrative that some hospitals, in refusing to perform abortions, are thereby denying women ‘lifesaving” care. She cites her own experience of needing a hormonal birth control device removed as it has dislodged and was in danger of perforating her uterus. She claims this led her to seek help at a non-religious hospital because “all over Victoria, there are hospitals conscientiously objecting to all reproductive healthcare services…”

It is difficult to believe that any hospital – even a Catholic one – would refuse to remove an IUD that threatened to perforate a woman’s uterus. Additionally, Ms. Purcell does not make it clear if she was actually turned away from a private hospital or whether she merely assumed she would not be helped. In any case, there is certainly no shortage of facilities where this kind of removal can be done and it seems polemical to suggest that religious hospitals should be accused of putting women at risk.

Dehumanisation is complete

It is Ms. Purcell’s references to animals that most blatantly indicate the direction in which abortion advocacy is now heading. By claiming that caring for cats, dogs and so on is no different from caring for children, the dehumanisation of the unborn is complete. In fact, the new narrative is that animals are actually superior to children in the womb.

For example, if an animal is too sick to continue treatment or is deemed to be unwanted, it is gently put to sleep, usually caressed lovingly in the arms of its owners or animal shelter staff as it passes away. Such an animal is assisted by caring, sympathetic veterinarians who do their utmost to provide a quiet atmosphere for the animal’s last moments.

Contrast this with the intentional death of a child in utero: it is either unceremoniously dismembered without sedation, as is the case with a first trimester surgical abortion, or it is starved via chemicals then violently expelled into a toilet. A baby in this situation is not held nor comforted and dies alone, surrounded by fear, rejection and cold calculation.

When it comes to the decision itself, of having an animal put down, this is usually the result of weeks or even months of consideration by a pet’s owner. Owners are usually grieved at the thought of having to make such a difficult choice. By contrast, an abortion, which we are told is “never an easy decision” is in reality often made without much hesitation or even forethought. Indeed, Ms. Purcell admits that as soon as she discovered her unplanned pregnancy at the age of 21, she “knew what she wanted to do.”

She explains, “I got an abortion because I didn’t want to have a child. I think that is important to say, because too often, we defend abortion by using the most extreme examples of why they’re necessary – such as sexual assaults and unviable pregnancies. But when it comes to making the decision to have an abortion, no one needs a justification or an excuse.”

Next-generation abortion zealots like Georgie Purcell are to be greatly pitied, since their lives eventually become one continuous justification of their abortions. They do untold damage to their living children who grow up knowing that they are lucky to be alive, yet are forced into imitating their mothers’ zeal for abortion. We must hope that Ms. Purcell soon realises the grave damage her example is inflicting on impressionable young women and men and that she somehow acknowledges her errors and finds a way to make up for her moral crimes – something that is never out of the scope of God’s mercy.

by Kathy Clubb

Chemical abortions are not safe

Chemical abortions: not safe for mother or baby

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Australia has loosened restrictions on chemical abortions yet new data proves they are less safe for mothers than the authorities would have us believe.

The abortion pill has become the preferred method of terminating a pregnancy for most Western women, including in Australia. Legally available since 2006, it now accounts for up to 60% of Australia’s 90,000 abortions.1

This increase has been exacerbated by a loosening of restrictions around who can prescribe the pill. Yet a new study from the US should be raising the alarm among those who believe that medication abortion is a safe option for women.

Chemical abortions in Australia

In Australia, the abortion pill is produced by Marie Stopes International under the name MS-2 Step and was formerly known as RU-486. The new name reflects the two-stage protocol for a chemical abortion: first the drug Mifepristone is consumed to stop progesterone production; this effectively stops the unborn baby from accessing nutrition from its mother. Then 36-48 hours later, the drug Misoprostol is taken to expel the dead child.

If the second pill is not consumed and high doses of progesterone are given to the mother after the first pill, then there is a good chance that the action of the abortion pill can be reversed and the baby saved.

Doctors previously required special certification in order to prescribe MS-2 Step, but since August 2023, the Therapeutic Goods Act has allowed any GP to do so. Additionally, nurses, midwives and other medical professionals are now legally able to prescribe the abortion pills, as explained in our previous article.

New South Wales’ new bill

The state which most recently jumped on the abortion access bandwagon is New South Wales.  The bill,  put forward by Greens MP Amanda Cohn, brought NSW into line with the other states except Tasmania, enabling chemical abortions to be prescribed by endorsed midwives and nurse-practitioners.

Major amendments saw the most controversial sections of the bill scrapped, including a section that would force health professionals who had a conscientious objection to abortion to facilitate the termination of pregnancies and another that would have forced pro-life doctors to refer women for abortions.

There were concerns that parts of the bill could have led to the closure of Christian and Catholic hospitals for refusing to perform abortion procedures. Even though the bill’s authors said it referred to public institutions and contained no mechanism to enforce compliance, the possibility for amendments to be made in the future caused a huge backlash.

One upside to the new law is that the section related to data collection was expanded – something sorely needed in all those Australian states which currently do not collect data, ie all states and territories other than South Australia and Western Australia.

A timely new ctudy

Yet a new study, released by the American Ethics and Public Policy Centre (EPPC) in May of this year, could throw a spanner in the works of this expanded access to the abortion pill. The study, the largest of its kind, analysed the insurance claims related to more than 800,000 mifepristone abortions over a period of six years.

The results were startling, with almost 11% of women reporting a serious adverse event within 45 days of their abortion. The study did not include ‘mild’ or ‘moderate’ adverse events in its conclusions; mental health consequences were included in the category ‘other abortion-specific complaints.’

Serious adverse events included: repeat surgical terminations due to an incomplete abortion; haemorrhage, including some requiring a blood transfusion; sepsis and ectopic pregnancy. A staggering 5% of women required a visit to a hospital emergency department. The findings call into question the existing FDA statistics of adverse events after Mifepristone occurring only ‘0.5%’ of the time.

Chemical abortions adverse events statistics

SOURCE: Ethics and Public Policy Centre

The EPPC is calling for a thorough investigation of the drug by the FDA, which is still using data from its original decade-old studies, and in recent days, the Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration has committed to conducting a review of Mifepristone. However, without providing any details or an official statement from the FDA, a review remains to be seen.

Those studies relied on a relatively small number of cases, whereas the EPPC study uses data from 28 times as many abortions. Additionally, the EPPC is calling for the FDA to return to its original, more stringent guidelines for dispensing Mifepristone, such as physician-only prescription in a clinical setting with ready access to high-level medical intervention, if required.

Those guidelines may be contrasted with the current ones, in place since 2023, which mean that women can access a mifepristone abortion after only one telehealth consultation with any approved healthcare provider – who doesn’t have to be a physician. Additionally, healthcare providers have no obligation to report an adverse event unless the patient dies. In the US, the drug is also available by mail-order pharmacy for those living in states which have banned abortion.

Ineffectiveness of chemical abortions

Included among the serious adverse reactions to the abortion pill is a high failure rate. The American study found that more than 5% of chemical abortions fail – somewhat higher than the rate currently quoted by the abortion industry of around 3-4%.

The EPPC study found that “According to the insurance data, 5.26 percent of women undergo a second abortion attempt within 45 days of the first, indicating that the first mifepristone abortion attempt failed.” Not only that, it was also reported that 1.58 percent of mothers were given a second dose of misoprostol but not a second dose of mifepristone, suggesting that the baby was killed by the first drug but not completely expelled from the mother’s body.

The extra dose of misoprostol therefore increases the likelihood of adverse reactions specific to that drug, including effects such as shivering, chills, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, hyperthermia, nausea, vomiting, flatulence, constipation, dyspepsia, headache, breakthrough bleeding, menstrual irregularities, syncope (fainting), lethargy, weakness, and vertigo. 

By including the number of repeat abortions in their data, the EPPC concluded that a massive “13.51 percent of women—roughly one in seven—experience at least one serious adverse event or repeated abortion attempt within 45 days of first attempting a mifepristone abortion.“

Chemical abortions effectiveness statistics

SOURCE: Ethics and Public Policy Centre

Incomplete data

A second recent study, this time from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, looked at over 28,000 emergency room visits that followed a chemical abortion. The ER visits took place within 30 days of the abortion and it was found that during the 5-year study period, 84% of the admissions were wrongly classified as being ‘miscarriages’ rather than ‘adverse abortion events.’ Additionally, around half of the miscoded cases were high-level medical emergencies.

These findings underscore the fact that the true number of adverse reactions to the abortion pill are not known. The vice president and director of data analytics at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, Dr. James Studnicki, commented on the findings:

“When abortion-related emergencies are disguised as miscarriages, it impairs a doctor’s ability to make informed, evidence-based decisions. That isn’t just a documentation error—it’s a public health crisis. The abortion industry’s push for concealment is unethical and dangerous. Women deserve honest guidance and proper medical care, not advice that jeopardizes their health.”

Conclusion

The recent death of the inventor of mifepristone, Étienne-Émile Baulieu, has helped keep the topic of chemical abortions in the news. After Baulieu’s passing, his widow commented, “His research was guided by his commitment to progress through science, his dedication to women’s freedom and his desire to enable everyone to live better and longer lives.”

Obviously missing from this glowing tribute is concern for the millions of babies who have been put to death via Baulieu’s chemical abortions. As we are learning, chemical abortions are also harming far more women than previously thought – all in the name of “freedom.”

by Kathy Clubb

  1. Due to limited data collection, most Australian abortion statistics are estimates. ↩︎

Men have gone

Where all the men have gone – and how to bring them back

Published on by EF Team2 Comments

A concerted effort is needed to undo the harms wrought by feminism on men, particularly the damage caused by the promotion of the concept of ‘toxic masculinity.’

In a recent “New York Times” article titled, “Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back,” Rachel Drucker laments what she calls “a collective shift” in men, a “slow vanishing of presence.” So many single men, she writes, aren’t “sitting across from someone on a Saturday night, trying to connect.” Instead, they “have retreated from intimacy, hiding behind firewalls, filters and curated personas, dabbling and scrolling.” She adds, “We miss you.”

Drucker – a single, 54-year-old Chicagoan – hints that pornography is at least partly to blame. She mentions that she herself spent years working as the custodian of records for Playboy and its affiliated hardcore properties, working closely with marketing teams to understand “what cues tempt the average 18-to-36-year-old cis heterosexual man. What drew him in. What kept him coming back.” She learned that it wasn’t intimacy or mutuality, but “access to simulation.”

Now many men, she believes, have “quietly withdrawn from intimacy and vulnerability” into “indifference.” The sexes have moved, she observes, into an era when traditional courting has devolved into “directionless orbiting,” “men circling intimacy but never entering it… ‘seeing where it goes’ without ever going anywhere.” She even mourns the “unscripted contact” of one-night stands.

“You can still come back,” she pleads with men. “We’re still here, those of us who are willing to cocreate something true… And we haven’t stopped hoping.”

The male retreat from the courting dance of days past is a tragedy but so is Drucker’s obliviousness to the reasons for it. Yes, pornography is a huge factor; the ubiquitous availability of the most explicit imagery imaginable (and even unimaginable) to anyone with an internet connection is a terrible scourge in our society – and not only for males, but for girls as well, in a variety of ways.

But the broader explanation for the intimacy wasteland Drucker describes is more than a half century of radical feminism and its ruthless war on masculinity, femininity, and the nuclear family. She is finally noticing, but apparently not understanding, the blasted landscape left by the Sexual Revolution’s tornado of destruction since the 1960s and ‘70s that pushed aside old-fashioned courtship and sex roles in its self-indulgent wake.

If men have retreated from those traditional roles and social practices, it is because the culture has been weaponized against men – disrespecting, devaluing, and even demonizing generations of them as “toxic.” Feminist thought leaders, with the complicity of many opportunistic male feminists, railed against the chimeras of “patriarchy” and “rape culture.”  They demanded that men deconstruct their masculine nature to be more like, well, stereotypical women: vulnerable, emotional, and deferential to the opposite sex. They marginalized men as literally unnecessary, celebrating females as capable, courageous, girlbosses who can and should do everything men can do. Anything less is seen as diminishing female capabilities and value. Meanwhile men are failing by almost every social metric, from education to the workplace.

Another factor is that the notorious and often cruel bias of family law against husbands and fathers has driven many men to see marriage as grossly inequitable and undesirable. Boys and young men have watched their fathers destroyed in family court, reduced to the indentured slavery of permanent alimony. They are now rethinking what they see as a no-win conventional lifestyle of marriage and family. Why volunteer to doom yourself, they ask themselves, to a system designed to bleed men dry of their money, health, and ambitions?

In recent years a backlash has begun swinging hard against the ravages of feminism, unfortunately driving millions of young men into the embrace of such online influencers as former kickboxer Andrew Tate. Tate flaunts a cartoonish vision of masculinity centered on flashy materialism and the violent domination and sexual exploitation of women. This backlash also includes an entire subculture called MGTOWs – Men Going Their Own Way – by swearing off long-term relationships with women, whom they see as nothing more than greedy vampires who drain one husband, then trade up to a wealthier one.

In sum, feminism promised to liberate women from what Karl Marx called the “slavery” of motherhood and marriage by pushing them into competition with men, and the Sexual Revolution granted them the freedom to indulge their sexual appetites as promiscuously as any man. The consequence has been a family-destroying disordering of society at home, in the workplace, and between the sexes. So now, women like Drucker, who worked in the porn industry and who confesses to many relationships including one-night stands, are left wondering why so many men have chosen to disengage, to guard themselves emotionally, financially, and physically behind a variety of walls.

If women want men to return so that both can get off the sterile treadmill of dating apps and one-night stands, resuming the imperfect but genuine human dynamic of romance, it will happen only if the failed social experiments of the past are rolled back. This will require a concerted, grass-roots, long march through the institutions of the culture – from education to the news media to the entertainment industry – to undo the ruinous narratives that have brought us to this point.

We must stop smearing traditional masculinity as toxic and oppressive, and quit devaluing traditional femininity as demeaning and imprisoning. We must cease pitting the sexes against each other and reclaim a culture that honors and celebrates their complementary nature. The decades-long push to eradicate any differences between masculinity and femininity, to blur even their very definitions, has wrought nothing but misery, confusion, and resentment, and must be abandoned.

Sometimes societal progress can be made only by acknowledging we have taken a clearly destructive path, retracing our steps to where we first lost our way. It’s the only hope for men and women to – as Drucker put it with such yearning – cocreate something true.

By Mark Tapson

The above article first appeared in Intellectual Takeout (Bloomington, Minnesota), and is reproduced by permission.