At IFI, we seek to raise awareness of and address cultural and political trends here in Illinois and throughout the nation. An increasing number of these trends pose a threat to human dignity, endangering the lives of image-bearers of the living God from conception to natural death.

Recently, we received a response to this article about the push to legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in Illinois. The writer, a hospice nurse, disagreed strongly with our stance concerning the risks of legalization, accusing us of making “despicable” assertions and claiming to know for certain that we are wrong. Her reasoning featured some of the common arguments for PAS, which we’ll respond to below.

You might wonder why we would take the time to address this. In this brave new world of ever-changing technologies and at a time when appeals to empathy and compassion are commonly used to advance political aims, we must familiarize ourselves with the arguments that will be leveled against us.

Many Christians have been and are confused by this kind of reasoning.

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In her email, the writer challenged us to produce evidence for our assertions. She closed by saying that if we cannot prove them, we’re just like liberals who only argue from emotion. Make no mistake, this is an emotionally charged topic. Lives are at stake, so it should be. However, the claims made in the article are also rooted in fact.

Sadly, with the spread of euthanasia and PAS in the West, there is legitimate reason for concern.

The first two items on which the writer disagreed were that

a) No doctor has a crystal ball. An assisted suicide law could cause patients to take their lives based on inaccurate predictions about their life expectancies and

b) Legalizing assisted suicide would create a culture in which terminally ill persons believe that they have a “duty to die.”

Her response:

“You demonstrate an inability to appreciate the dignity and integrity of patients, family members, hospice doctors, nurses, aides, social services staff and chaplains!”

It can’t be ignored that after accusing us of emotionalism, the writer appeals to emotion here. Just because a patient and his or her care team have generally good intentions does not mean they cannot make mistakes. Medicine is not God, so it follows that doctors cannot possibly know for certain when a patient will die.

We cannot “prove” this claim since there is no way to know how long someone would have lived after they are dead, but there are countless stories of someone receiving a prognosis only to outlive it. In fact, many times, when a patient enters hospice care and their symptoms are managed, they live longer than their prognosis.

To end your life based on a doctor’s prediction of how long you have is to place your faith in an inherently flawed human, not the God who made you and knows the length of your days.

We must also remember that even the best of intentions, when rooted in a godless worldview, can and will lead to evil outcomes. It ought to cause us to pause any time a physician, who has taken an oath to “first do no harm,” finds his or her way to becoming a willing accomplice in a patient’s suicide.

The risk of patients feeling a “duty to die” is rooted in the larger context of our nation’s increasing slide into humanism, materialism, utilitarianism, and a pathological avoidance of suffering. There simply is no way to guard perfectly against coercion in the life of the patient.

As Family Research Council Director of the Center for Human Dignity Mary Szoch states about the Illinois legislation,

“According to the latest data from Oregon, fear of being a burden to friends and family is the fifth most common reason people choose assisted suicide. Coercion can be subtle. It can be the long sighs or the grumpy interactions that cause a person to feel like their existence is no longer wanted, or coercion can be overt — an heir to the estate who pressures or even forces the patient to take the suicide drugs. Since there is no requirement for an independent witness to be present at the time the drugs are taken, and there’s no requirement for a mental health evaluation, if SB 9 passes, either is possible.”

Particularly in the West, where many people experience the privilege of being able to avoid much if not all forms of inconvenience, let alone suffering, disability is viewed as the worst-case scenario. There can be no doubt that the men and women who face degenerative disease and terminal diagnoses get the message that many of their peers think they would be better off dead.

Add to this the risks to those suffering from depression and other mental illnesses, and you can see how easily someone could be “tipped” over into choosing an early death. Coercion, while often personal, can also be societal.

The third and final claim our writer took issue with was this: Assisted suicide would give insurers—whether state-run or private—a financial incentive to cover lethal drugs, but not costly life-saving treatments. No one should feel pressured into choosing assisted suicide for financial reasons, or because they fear becoming a burden upon others close to them.

Our reader’s response:

“I understand being cynical about insurance companies, and many of the decisions they make are unconscionable to me, but this idea is so far out, that it’s ridiculous.”

Sadly, there are documented cases of this very thing taking place, either at the hands of insurers or hospital systems:

• A healthy Canadian Paralympian who was offered “medically assisted death” instead of the wheelchair lift she was waiting to have installed in her home.

• A terminally ill mom from California who was denied treatment but offered a suicide drug instead.

• A physician who was seeking insurance coverage to treat two patients in states where PAS was legal, but was denied and offered assistance in ending their lives instead.

• A Canadian woman who was offered euthanasia or PAS multiple times throughout her breast cancer battle.

Toward the end of the email, the reader asked,

“Why do you think that you … know more about the topic than the community of hospice staff with the patient at the center, making the difficult choice for themselves?”

We can agree that end-of-life decisions are deeply personal, but that does not place them off-limits for ethical scrutiny. Medical training does not confer moral or ethical infallibility.

We can and must consider the implications of pro-death policies. While our friend may believe that legalizing PAS in Illinois will only yield positive outcomes, that is wishful thinking at best.

Proponents of PAS may think the policy only concerns patients who are seeking physician-assisted suicide, but the effects are much more far-reaching. If PAS is legalized in Illinois, it will not only impact those who face a terminal diagnosis and their family members, but also the medical professionals who will endure moral injury by participating, and other insurance policyholders who will, by extension, fund the deaths of fellow image-bearers.

As time passes, Illinoisans are at risk of becoming desensitized to the culture of death already on the march.

Physician-assisted suicide is not purely personal, nor is it benign, no matter how badly some might wish it to be.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to email both your state senator and state representative to ask them to vote NO. If it passes in the Illinois House, it will move quickly to the Illinois Senate for concurrence and then be sent to the governor.

LifeNews Note: Mae Arthur writes for the Illinois Family Institute, where this article appeared.

The post Responding to Assisted Suicide Supporters appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Born alive and stillbirth late term abortions for 2023/2024. Totals for late-term born alive/stillbirth abortions combined, are more than the total for the previous year by 125. Comparison of the last five years below.

That is 642 late-term born alive abortions in just five years.

That is 5,738 late-term stillbirth abortions in just five years.

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These numbers are most probably grossly underreported because CIHI only publishes numbers from nine provinces and the three territories. Noticeably absent is Quebec’s numbers. I’ve asked CIHI why this is the case, and am waiting for a response.

The study was based on all second trimester abortions (13,777) performed in the hospitals of Quebec between 1989 and 2021. In Quebec, the law does not stipulate a maximum time limit for performing an abortion. The researchers found that abortions performed during the second trimester of pregnancy due to fetal anomalies doubled between the period 1989 – 2000 and 2011-2021. At the same time, they observed a significant increase in live births following a second-trimester abortion: the rate of 4.1 live births per 100 abortions in 1989-2001 climbs to 20.8% for the 2011-2021 period.

This is particularly true for abortions between 20 and 24 weeks of amenorrhea (18-22 weeks of pregnancy): in this case, more than one fetus in five is alive at the time of expulsion (21.7%).’

The pro-abortions always like to say that these late-term abortions are always done because of fetal anomalies or the health of the mother. But in 48% of these cases, the Quebec abortions took place for “personal or unspecified reasons” on a healthy fetus:

‘The study showed that in 48% of second trimester abortions in Quebec, i.e. almost half the cases, there was no medical indication on the fetal side, nor any medical emergency on the maternal side. In these cases, the abortion took place for “personal or unspecified” reasons, on a healthy fetus.’

So many lies.

UPDATE: In the past when I reported on Canada’s late term live-birth abortions, Quebec’s numbers were always excluded from CIHI’s data. For the first time, I have now received Quebec’s numbers for 2023-2024.

I originally reported 123 abortions for 2023-2024 for Canada, and now we know that Quebec performed an additional 27 of these late term born-alive abortions for a new total of 150.

The post Canada Killed 150 Babies in Live Birth Abortions Last Year appeared first on LifeNews.com.

How much does an ultrasound impact the decision whether to abort? How much does it affect the societal attitude toward the destruction of unborn children?

The New York Post’s Rikki Schlott once wrote, “Today, ultrasounds are more advanced than ever. Gone is the era of the traditional, black and white, grainy 2D images. Now, through 3D, 4D, and HD ultrasounds — which were developed and entered commercial use in the 1990s — women are able to access clear, photo-quality images of fetuses and even video footage of the fetus’ movement. ”

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In particular I glommed on to the work GOP pollster Wes Anderson.  We learn from “How next-gen ultrasounds are changing the abortion debate” that he has “spent the last 16 months conducting more than a dozen intense focus groups with American voters about abortion.

“Indeed, this generation of young women grew up seeing ultrasounds taped to the refrigerators or posted on the Instagram pages of proud expecting mothers,” according to Schlott. “Now that they’re seeing 3D and 4D imaging, it’s no wonder the argument that a fetus is ‘just a clump of cells’ seems to be losing its credibility.”

Anderson says, “he’s noticed a discernible shift in the conversations about the issue, thanks to improvements in ultrasound technology.”

Anderson, whose worked as a pollster for decades, said, “The conversation has changed because of the advancement of medical imagery more than anything else.” He told Schlott, “It sounds overly simplified, but it’s not. Ultrasounds are actually the driver.”

What did the focus groups bring up again and again? “The ultrasounds — and the refinement of ultrasounds and 3D ultrasounds—and they just said, ‘Well, that’s a baby,’” Anderson explained.

“The science of imaging has moved to a point where your average voter now says, ‘I’m not going to argue over whether that’s a baby. I know it’s a baby. Now, let’s talk about how we balance all this out, and balance that with the rights of the mother.’”

And it’s the younger women in the focus groups–18-29– who were most intrigued by advancements in ultrasound technology.

The people who cite ultrasounds as a reason they question the ethics of abortion tend to be young women.

Danielle Pitzer is content producer for Focus on the Family. She told the Post “When a woman has an unexpected pregnancy, there can be a lot of fear… [but] an ultrasound cuts through the noise, the fear, the ‘what ifs’ and helps a woman see the life inside her.”  She added, “Ultrasounds make the pregnancy real.”

Needless to say, pro-abortion individuals and organizations fiercely oppose informed consent legislation, which often requires that abortion-minded women be given the opportunity to see their unborn child.

For example, the pro-abortion American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists calls them (at best) “ill-advised” while the fiercely opposed Guttmacher Institute describes ultrasounds as “a veiled attempt to personify the fetus and dissuade an individual from obtaining abortion.”

“Personifying the fetus?”

Does that mean treating unborn children with minimal respect?

Or giving women a chance to breathe before she goes through with a life-and-decision?

Or actually accepting the principle of informed consent?

I guess not.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.

The post Ultrasound Photos Confirm Unborn Babies are Human Beings appeared first on LifeNews.com.

At its annual meeting, the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates (HOD) overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to change AMA policy and in doing so re-affirmed its longstanding policy in opposition to assisted suicide. It also approved a Board of Trustees report which rejected attempts to change the longstanding and clear terminology “physician assisted suicide” in AMA policy.

Dating to 1994, the AMA Code of Medical Ethics states that “Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.” At its 2019 annual meeting, the House of Delegates overwhelmingly voted to uphold the Code of Medical Ethics as written. The 2025 Board of Trustees report states that “the profession of medicine should not support the legalization or practice of physician assisted suicide or see it as part of a physician’s role.”

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A proposed change in terminology to “medical aid in dying” was rejected. The Board of Trustees noted that, “Descriptors such as Medical Aid in Dying (MAID), physician aid-in-dying, and death with dignity could apply to palliative care practices and compassionate care near the end of life that do not include intending the death of patients… this degree of ambiguity is unacceptable for providing ethical guidance.” The House of Delegates, comprised of representatives from state medical associations, national medical specialty societies, AMA sections, and other professional interest medical associations, is the principal legislative and policy-making body of the AMA.

“In 2016, the AMA initiated a three-year study of physician-assisted suicide which culminated in the AMA House of Delegates re-affirming the AMA Code of Medical Ethics in 2019,” stated Dr. Jeff White, Patients’ Rights Action Fund board member and a former AMA House of Delegates member. “Nothing has changed in the ensuing years to warrant a change in AMA policy and terminology. We are extremely pleased with the results of the AMA House of Delegates vote and its recognition that physicians are trained to heal and must not perform euthanasia or participate in assisted suicide.”

The post American Medical Association Reaffirms Opposition to Assisted Suicide appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Lydia Saad handles much of Gallup’s coverage of the abortion issue and does so in a comprehensive way. This morning, she authored “Gender Gaps on Abortion Reach Historic Highs” which is well worth reading.

You would expect self-identified Democrats to support abortion—and the current survey bares that out. Likewise, you would anticipate Republicans to be more supportive of unborn children—also borne out by Gallup’s latest poll.

Currently, as of May 2025,

* 32% of women and 54% of men identify as pro-life. 61% of women and 41% of men consider themselves pro-choice. The difference—the gap—was 13-points in 2022  “and no more than 10-point differences in any reading before Dobbs,” according to Saad. “The gap has expanded since 2022 because pro-choice identity has dipped among men, from 48% to 41%, while it has held steady among women.”

In 2022, in the aftermath of the leak of the draft showing that Dobbs would overturn Roe, the “pro-choice”  was ahead of the pro-life by 16 points, but by this year the margin had been halved–down to 8 points

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*“Support for abortion rights expanded in 2022 among Democrats and, to a lesser extent, among independents, but it has since waned among Republicans.” National support “for abortion rights in Gallup’s latest poll, conducted May 1-18, is modestly higher” than it was before the 2022 Dobbs decision.

* Moral acceptability. “Similarly, there is now a record-high 17-point gap between women (57%) and men (40%) in their belief that abortion is morally acceptable and a record-high 15-point gap in women’s (56%) and men’s (41%) support for abortion being legal in all or most circumstances.”

We’ve written about this before but is very much worth repeating. Gallup asks whether, in the abstract, abortion is “morally wrong” or “morally acceptable.” If you ask whether having an abortion is morally wrong or morally acceptable, the number saying it is morally acceptable drops dramatically. Unfortunately, the question is not asked in this more probing way very often.

* “Looking at the more detailed results, 30% of Americans currently think abortion should be legal under any circumstances, 19% support it being legal under most circumstances, 35% say it should be legal in only a few circumstances, and 13% want it to be illegal in all circumstances.”  In other words, “Today, the two outlooks are about even, with 49% favoring legality in all or most circumstances and 48% preferring it be legal in only a few or no circumstances.”

Saad writes

• Republicans’ belief that abortion is morally acceptable showed little change immediately after Dobbs. This year, however, it has dipped six points from its 2024 level to 20% — toward the low end of the GOP range for this question.
• Similarly, the percentage of Republicans identifying as pro-choice has fallen to a record-low 16%, after showing little change in the first few years after Dobbs. A record-high 78% of Republicans now identify as pro-life.

Saad’s “Bottom Line”:

The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization appears to have had an immediate impact on U.S. public opinion about abortion after a draft opinion of the decision was leaked in May 2022. Women have shifted more than men on the issue, but this masks the fact that Democratic men have joined Democratic and independent women in becoming strongly more supportive of abortion rights since Dobbs. Essentially, the groups that were already the most supportive of abortion have become more so, while Republican women and men have maintained their broad opposition to abortion rights or become slightly less supportive.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.

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The following text is from the HOD Handbook as approved at the AMA meeting. The text can be found, starting on page 7 and is referred to as Report 18-A-25.

Physician assisted suicide occurs when “a physician facilitates a patient’s death by providing the necessary means and/or information to enable the patient to perform a life-ending act”. This act is sometimes referred to using other terminology such as medical aid in dying. Currently, there is no federal law governing physician assisted suicide; therefore, individual states are permitted to determine their own legal stance. At this time, 10 states and the District of Columbia permit this practice; however, most states have legislation banning this practice. Furthermore, two states have removed their residency requirement, effectively opening the practice of physician assisted suicide more broadly to patients throughout the US. 

Our AMA has a long-standing policy (H-270.965) opposing the legalization of physician assisted suicide. That said, our AMA is also opposed to the criminalization of physician medical judgement and the regulation of medical practice through criminal penalties (H-160.954, D-160.911, D27 275.944, H-5.980, D-5.999). Additionally, our AMA has policy preserving a physician’s right to exercise their autonomy (H-405.958, Code of Medical Ethics Opinion 1.1.7).

DISCUSSION 

The referred resolution addresses several issues encompassed within the broad context of physician-assisted suicide: terminology, opposition to the legalization and practice of physician assisted suicide, and opposition to the criminalization of physician participation in assisted suicide. This report addresses these topics in the context of our AMA’s current HOD policies and Code of Medical Ethics guidance. In addition, the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs has produced two informational reports to further discuss the ethical complexity of these topics as they relate to physician assisted suicide and the practice of medicine. 

Terminology 

The terminology used in the AMA Code of Medical Ethics and HOD policy to describe this practice offers a clear delineation of intent and action. The use of other terminology to describe this practice has the potential to confuse patients and unduly influence decision making [5]. Descriptors such as Medical Aid in Dying (MAID), physician aid-in-dying, and death with dignity could apply to palliative care practices and compassionate care near the end of life that do not include intending the death of patients. In CEJA Report 2-A-19, “Physician Assisted Suicide,” the Council determined that PAS was the terminology which described the practice best. The report supported this supposition with the following analysis which remains valid:

Opposition to the legalization and practice of physician assisted suicide 

AMA policy opposes the legalization and practice of physician assisted suicide stating that it is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as a healer”. In developing CEJA Report 2 (A-19) which informed our AMA’s current ethics standards on physician assisted suicide, the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs analysis and deliberations were informed by available data and research. However, its decision was not an empirically dictated one, but rather, it was driven by the core values of medicine preserved within the Code of Medical Ethics. 

Although legislative developments since 2019 have occurred, recent empirical data reviewing physician assisted suicide practices in US and international jurisdictions where PAS and/or euthanasia are legal are subject to varied interpretations. As a matter of ethical reasoning, the data does not settle the ethical issue. Additionally, the relevant core ethical values at stake have not changed since the adoption of CEJA Report 2 (A-19). As such, the AMA’s position on physician assisted suicide should remain unchanged. 

Of note, the AMA’s position on physician assisted suicide is not a position of neutrality and establishes that the profession of medicine should not support the legalization or practice of physician assisted suicide or see it as part of a physician’s role.

Previous articles on the AMA assisted suicide position:

• American Medical Association (2023) maintains its opposition to assisted suicide (Link).
• Psychiatrists must prevent euthanasia, not provide it (Link).
• American Medical Association (2019) opposes assisted suicide (Link).
• American Medical Association (2019) overwhelmingly upholds its opposition to assisted suicide (Link).
• American Medical Association (AMA) (2018) Ethics Committee maintains opposition to assisted suicide (Link).

Wesley Smith conducted an interview with Alex Schadenberg and Roger Foley for his podcast titled: The Cruelty of Canada's Euthanasia Regime. (Link to the podcast).

Euthanasia is bad medicine and even worse public policy. Once a society accepts the principle that killing is a splendid answer to suffering, the kinds and extent of suffering that come to be seen as appropriate reasons to cause death expands continually.

Often, this suicide agenda — let’s call it — advances so slowly that, over time, people become acclimated to policies that were once unthinkable. But that has not been the case in Canada, where the government and much of the population enthusiastically embraced what the law euphemistically calls medical assistance in dying, or MAID. As a result, the “slippery slope” can be seen slip sliding away in real time to the unfortunate point that euthanasia is now the fifth leading cause of death in Canada. Indeed, in just a few short years, euthanasia has become so normalized that more than 15,000 people are killed by medical professionals in that country each year.

Related Resources Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

• Alex Schadenberg’s Blog
• New Documentary The Euthanasia Deception Exposes the Shocking Truth of Assisted Suicide | Press Release
• Exposing Vulnerable People to Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide by Alex Schadenberg | Amazon
• Roger Foley: A Passion to Live | Alex Schadenberg’s Blog

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Matthew 6:34

“Tolstoy is absolutely correct is classing faith among the forces by which men live. The total absence of it, anhedonia, means collapse.”

William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)*

When Henry David Thoreau wrote that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” he did not mean to imply that the remainder are not desperate.**  He meant to imply (or at least should have meant to imply) that the remainder are not quiet.  The remainder are either loud with lamentations or loud with fatuous gaiety.  As Thoreau puts it, “a stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.”

To despair is to abandon hope and Dante tells us that the Damned are commanded to “abandon all hope” when they pass through the gate of Hell.***  Dante’s justly famous description of the words above Hell’s gate is wrong, however, to suggest that every damned soul arrives at Hell’s gate with some shreds of hope in hand.  It is more often the case,  I believe (and Aquinas taught), that a soul is damned and thrust through Hell’s gate when it abandons, or loses, or mislays, or jettisons all hope.

Living or dead, a man who despairs of salvation is in Hell.Thoreau’s lives of quiet desperation are lives without hope of transcendent joy.  They are the mean and meagre lives of men whose highest hope is to end each day with a full belly in a warm bed, and to end all their days tranquilized, anesthetized, and decently eulogized—unconsciousness, in any case, of physical pain, social shame, or much of anything else.  This is the life of what Nietzsche called “the last man,” the man who “will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man,” the man of whom it may be said that “the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz.”

* * * * *

We have been warned not to lead little lives of quiet desperation; but there is no gainsaying that human life is very often a desperate affair.  We are told to cherish a hope of transcendent joy, of Heaven even.  We are told to with whizzing strings launch the arrows of our longing beyond man.

But such words merely mock us because we are, most of us, already in Hell.

We may take this as a second meaning of Jesus’ words, “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”  Their first meaning is, of course, that men and women have their hands full dealing with the feculence that is handed them today, so there is no need to augment this actual feculence with anticipations of the feculence that will be handed them tomorrow.

Their second meaning is that the evil—the feculence—of today is sufficient to kill all hope for anything but another delivery of evil feculence tomorrow.

In the absence of stout supernatural assistance, the evils of today suffice to make any man abandon all hope and join the Damned as a citizen of Dante’s “dolorous city” of Hell. The evils of today suffice to unstring the bow with which he should shoot the arrow of his longing; suffice to reduce him to grumbling over petty peeves, smirking over pallid pleasures,  becoming a little last man.

* * * * *

Loss of hope is loss of what William James calls “the faith-state,” the faith-state being the hope that tomorrow has possibilities that the evils of today would otherwise be sufficient to deny.  James describes it as a “mystical vague enthusiasm, half spiritual, half vital, a courage, and a feeling that great and wondrous things are in the air.”  It is the state in which no amount of feculent evil is sufficient to kill the hope that tomorrow  may bring something other than another delivery of feculent evil.

I have perhaps too often scoffed at “happy-clappy” religion that is a tonic against the sin of despair, but an accelerant to the sin of presumption.  You know the merry chant.

Eat, Love and Praise the Lord.
For Tomorrow to Heaven We Go.

But it must be said, as William James says in my second epigraph, that an utter absence of happy-clappy religion “means collapse.”  It means the abandonment of all hope.  It means Hell.

James uses the then new word “anhedonia” to describe the state in which the “faith-state” has dissipated, hope has been abandoned, Hell’s gate has been passed through.  The word anhedonia was coined by a French psychologist named Ribót at the turn of the nineteenth century as a companion to analgesia and denotes a numb insensibility to pleasure and the absence of “the slightest impulse of joy.”  And what Ribót discovered is that anhedonia makes you listless and weak, whereas pleasure and joy makes you strong.

“The manifestation of joy may be summed up in a single word—dynamogeny.  Joy produces energy.”††

Dynamogeny means productive of energy or strength and is the antonym of enfeeblement, physical depression, lethargy.  What Ribót means, as I said, is that the flood of agreeable sensations we call joy makes a man strong, unlike the enfeebling waters of the dismal river of Lethe (which a man drinks, perhaps copiously, before shuffling, despondent, through the gate of Hell).  And when dynamogeny produces energy and strength, this energy and strength must be expressed in activity, in movement—in the singing, the dancing, the clapping of hands that are the outward manifestations of joy.

The evils of today are sufficient to induce the anhedonia Thoreau calls quiet desperation, the state of hopeless dolor that Dante says possesses the listless and shuffling husks who pass through the gate of Hell.  This is why we require a religion that induces the dynamogenic faith-state and enlivens us with joy—that energizes us with strength to slog laughing through the feculent morass of this world.  We require, in short, a vital—that means vitalizing—religion, because a life without joy will sooner or later suck the life out of you and thrust you into Hell.

Hence our need for a stout supernatural supply of more life, as promised, for instance, in John 6:33.

“For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.”

This is what William James, quoting the psychologist James Luba, means when he says that the object of religion is “more life” (meaning less anhedonia, less desperation, more joy).

“Not God but life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is in last analysis the end of religion.”†††

Or as James puts the matter in his own words, when faith enthuses a man with a supernatural supply of joy and “more life,” he will not abandon all hope, pass through the gate of Hell, and live a life of quiet desperation.  James indeed makes this power to vitalize the test of all religion.

“This readiness for great things, and the sense that the world by its importance, wonderfulness, etc., is apt for their production [rather than apt for nothing but the production of feculent evil], would seem to be the undifferentiated germ of all the higher faiths.”∞

And this seems to me a test that any religion worthy of the name must be able to pass.

*) William James, Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Longmans, Green, 1902), p. 505.
**) Henry David Thoreau, Walden, chap. 1.
***) Dante, Inferno, Canto III
†) Nietzsche, This Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, trans. Thomas Common (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1911), p. 12.
††) Théodule Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions (London: W. Scott, 1897), p. 53.
†††) James H. Leuba, “The Content of Religious Consciousness,” The Monist 11.4 (July 1901), pp. 536-573, quote p. 572
∞) James, Religious Experience, p. 506.

Yesterday in Brussels, Belgian police arrested Lois McLatchie Miller, a Senior Legal Communications Officer with ADF International, and Billboard Chris, a Canadian child protection advocate, for peacefully holding a sign that read: “Children are never born in the wrong body.”

An angry mob surrounded them, yet it was the peaceful pair—not the agitators—who police arrested.

They were transported to separate police stations, strip-searched, and detained for several hours. Ultimately, no charges were filed. But even after admitting no crime had been committed, police announced that the signs they had carried – signs peacefully expressing a viewpoint -would be destroyed.

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Let that sink in: No charges. No conviction. But property confiscated and destroyed by the government – all for the “crime” of expressing an inconvenient truth in public.

This happened in Brussels – the very heart of the European Union, not Beijing. In Europe, not North Korea. And it should alarm every American – especially Christians and pro-life advocates.

This is just the latest episode in a disturbing trend sweeping Western Europe. Peaceful, moral, fact-based speech is being punished under the guise of public order or tolerance.

In the United Kingdom, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested – twice – for silently praying outside an abortion facility. Dr. Dermot Kearney faced suspension and investigation for helping women who regretted taking the first abortion pill by offering abortion pill reversal treatment -even though the women he helped thanked him for it. Only after a lengthy legal battle was he fully vindicated.

In Germany and Spain, individuals have been fined for offering support to women facing unexpected pregnancies. And now, in Belgium’s capital, citizens are being arrested, searched, and stripped of their rights – and property – for simply affirming biological reality and the dignity of children.

This is not hypothetical. This is happening now.

In America, our First Amendment protects freedom of speech, religion, and assembly – not as privileges, but as rights given by God and protected by government. The Founders recognized that when government becomes the gatekeeper of truth, freedom dies.

But let’s be honest: the same ideological forces at work in Europe are alive and well here.

Pro-life sidewalk counselors in the U.S. have been arrested under the federal FACE Act for peacefully advocating for women and their unborn children. Others have faced online censorship, vandalism, and government pressure simply for speaking Biblical truth or holding traditional moral views.

But we are not helpless – and we are not without precedent.

For decades, Heartbeat International and the pregnancy help movement have modeled what it means to love boldly, speak truthfully, and serve compassionately. We’ve done so in the face of opposition, misunderstanding, and unjust scrutiny. And still, we’ve grown stronger. Our light has pierced through the darkness of cultural confusion. We’ve shown the world that you can be both unapologetically pro-life and relentlessly compassionate.

Now, with a more religious-liberty-friendly administration in place, we have a renewed opportunity—not just to defend our freedoms, but to affirm them confidently and expand their reach.

Let’s not wait for a crackdown to wake up. Let’s act while the door is open.

Now is the time to be bold. Speak truth in the public square. Pray without apology. Live your faith out loud. Support organizations that uphold life, liberty, and the dignity of every person. And elect leaders who recognize that freedom of speech is not a loophole – it is the bedrock of a free and virtuous society.

And yes, hold our leaders accountable. Even in America, we must remain vigilant. If peaceful signs can be confiscated in Brussels, they can be banned in Boston. If truth can be criminalized there, it can be marginalized here.

Let the arrest and violation of Lois McLatchie Miller and Billboard Chris’s freedom of speech serve as both a warning and a wake-up call. Freedom is fragile. Truth is under fire. But with courage and conviction, we can reclaim the ground where our freedoms are at stake.

LifeNews Note: Andrea Trudden serves as the Vice President of Communications & Marketing at Heartbeat International, overseeing the public presence of the organization and its network of more than 3,600 pregnancy help organizations worldwide. This column originally appeared at Pregnancy Help News.

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