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The New Religion expressed architecturally…

Welcome to ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’:
Liverpool Cathedral in All its Glory

image: Shutterstock (trabantos)

As we take a break from building our new topical page on ‘Pope Leo XIV’, it’s time for another post showcasing a horrendously ugly Novus Ordo church.

Today’s specimen is the metropolitan cathedral of Liverpool, England. Its official name is Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, although among locals it is also known, more accurately, as “Paddy’s Wigwam”.

On the official cathedral web site we read: “The Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King is a dramatic icon of faith, architecture, and human endeavour.… READ MORE

The US president’s critic has been accused of making a coded endorsement of violence

The US Secret Service is investigating former FBI director James Comey for making a threat against President Donald Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has said. Comey, a longtime critic of Trump, has denied that his cryptic, now-deleted Instagram post was a call for an assassination.

On Thursday, Comey posted an image of seashells that formed the number “8647.” He captioned the image with “cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

Trump administration officials and Republican politicians quickly interpreted the image as a threat to the 47th president. Several media outlets cited the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which defines that “86” is a slang term for “to throw out,” “to get rid of,” or “to kill.” According to Newsweek, the number is a mafia term for taking someone “eight miles out of town” and putting them “six feet under.”

“Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of Trump,” Noem wrote on X. She added that the Department of Homeland Security and Secret Service are “investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.” Fox News Digital cited a source in the Secret Service as saying they will send agents to investigate and interview the ex-FBI chief.

Just James Comey causally calling for my dad to be murdered.

This is who the Dem-Media worships. Demented!!!! pic.twitter.com/4LUK6crHAT

FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau will “provide all necessary support” to the Secret Service in investigating what he said was Comey’s post “directed at President Trump.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich argued that Comey’s post “can clearly be interpreted as ‘a hit’ on the sitting President of the United States.” Donald Trump Jr. claimed that Comey was “casually calling for my dad to be murdered.”

Comey has since taken down the image. “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,” he wrote on Instagram. “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

Trump fired Comey during his first term in office. He accused the former FBI head of spreading lies about him as part of what he called a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts during his 2024 reelection campaign. In July, a gunman opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing Trump’s ear with a bullet and killing a spectator. In September, a second would-be assassin was discovered camping outside Trump’s golf course in Florida.

Multiple countries have launched investigations into the US-led alliance’s procurement system

Police have conducted arrests and searches in several countries as part of a corruption investigation into current and former employees of the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA).

The raids, coordinated by Eurojust – the EU’s criminal justice agency – took place in Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and the US. The alliance told Luxembourg Times on Wednesday that NSPA’s main headquarters in the Grand Duchy had initiated the probe.

“NATO – including the NSPA – is working closely with law enforcement to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice,” spokeswoman Allison Hart said. “We are actively strengthening our ability to mitigate risks and root out misconduct,” she added.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters in Ankara on Thursday that the military bloc was working with the authorities. “We want to get to the root of this,” Rutte said.

The public prosecutor’s office in Luxembourg said that documents had been seized pertaining to suspicions that NSPA staffers had “used their positions to enrich themselves.”

Two people were arrested in Belgium and three in the Netherlands, officials said. Belgian prosecutors stated that the investigation centers around “possible irregularities in awarding contracts to defense contractors for the purchase of military equipment for NATO such as ammunition and drones.” The probe is also investigating the possible sharing of confidential information by NSPA employees with defense companies and money laundering.

Authorities in the Netherlands have said they arrested a former official with the Dutch Defense Ministry at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol on Monday. The former civil servant is suspected of taking bribes in 2023 related to the awarding of defense contracts.

The investigation takes place as NATO members are looking for ways to boost their own defense and produce more weapons to be delivered to Ukraine. In March, the European Commission unveiled a plan to raise €800 billion ($896 billion) to “rearm” the EU.

Writing last month about Whittaker Chambers’s Witness made me think of Ronald Reagan, who awarded the Medal of Freedom to him posthumously in 1984 (see here at the 6:38 mark for that moment in history). Reagan did not share Chambers’s pessimism about the outcome of the Cold War—to the country’s great benefit, Reagan seemed congenitally incapable of pessimism—but he had read Witness and agreed with the author about what was at stake in the struggle against Communism. 

Another mid-century author who influenced Reagan was Friedrich A. Hayek, who was invited to the Oval Office in 1983 (see here at the 6:07 mark). Alas, Hayek got no medal that day, just a pair of cufflinks. (It was left to George H. W. Bush to give Hayek the Medal of Freedom, in 1991.) But Reagan had plainly read some of Hayek’s work, and the book that was most likely to have been in the president’s hands was The Road to Serfdom. Like Witness, Hayek’s most famous book has been on my shelves for years, and I have only recently read it for the first time. 

I had read some of Hayek’s other writings before, including parts of his later works The Constitution of Liberty and Law, Legislation, and Liberty. And I did not need persuading about the virtues of free markets or about the inefficiencies at best, and evils at worst, of socialist depredations on economic freedom. But I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind I suspected that an economist would be drily technical on the subject, and would not write very well. The Road to Serfdom was, therefore, a delightful surprise. Though English was not the first language of the Austrian economist, and Hayek would say in a foreword to a later edition that the book was “not intended for popular consumption,” Road to Serfdom is fluidly written, with a clarity of expression and a passionate moral teaching that together account for both its astounding success in 1944 and its staying power over the last eight decades.  

Hayek calls himself a liberal, by which he means a classical liberal, a partisan of liberty. (The famous “postscript” to The Constitution of Liberty is titled “Why I Am Not a Conservative.”) He succinctly states liberalism’s “fundamental principle that in the ordering of our affairs we should make as much use as possible of the spontaneous forces of society, and resort as little as possible to coercion.” In other places, instead of “liberalism,” he refers to the “philosophy of individualism.” Hayek always has his eye on the impact of political power on the life of the individual, whatever his station in life. What each of us chooses to value, to strive for, to plan, to develop as our own place in the world—or to forgo, to sacrifice, to deny ourselves in pursuit of something else: this is the freedom that matters to Hayek.  

The payoff of that freedom is huge—in scientific progress, in economic growth and prosperity, in the conquest of sufferings and privations, as well as in the private satisfactions of each person’s work. But it is the political preconditions of that freedom that concern Hayek, for in the midst of the Second World War he sees worrying signs that they are breaking down in the West. Those preconditions are the rule of law, the protection of private property, and the preservation of a competitive marketplace in which risks and prices, successes and failures reflect the choices made by countless individual producers and consumers on the ground, not the choices made by “experts” attempting to plan the economy from above. 

Hayek’s bête noire is planning—more precisely, he denounces “planning against competition,” the effort by governments to direct, control, or supplant competition by individual economic actors. Planning for competition is a form of positive political action, in Hayek’s view; that governments foster sound money and economic transparency, maintain good roads and harbors, enforce legitimate contracts, protect the natural environment, and do a hundred other things that lubricate a liberal economy, is all to the good. Anticipating caricatures of his view, he rejects any “dogmatic laissez faire attitude” that would cripple the government’s ability to undertake such positive policies. Hayek accepts laws “to limit working hours,” with the caveat that “the advantages gained” should be “greater than the social costs which they impose.” Ditto for “an extensive system of social services,” or even the idea that “a uniform minimum be secured to everybody”; “the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.” No lurid portrait of predatory capitalism can be produced by any fair-minded reader of Hayek’s book. 

But this same solicitude that he extends to the unfortunate and the vulnerable is what underlies Hayek’s implacable opposition to the “expert” planning that would presume to fix prices, to set production quotas, to prop up failing enterprises, to protect favored industries from competition, to guarantee jobs, and to equalize incomes. The fundamental error in such planning is the failure to understand how little information the planner can master, out of all the constantly churning data of a modern market economy. No person, no merely human mind, can take it all in and direct every variable. The market’s great virtue is that it is impersonal, that as a system it has no more intentionality than the weather. It gives us rain in one season, sunshine in the next. Each human being pursuing his own aims is a discrete input in a blizzard of information, and each of those human beings is better off in the long run if no one attempts the superhuman feat of mastering the climate. For such attempted mastery is doomed to fail. 

Hayek understands the temptation to try such planning, and he notes that in the nineteenth century the argument first emerged that, because of increasing market complexity, expert control was more necessary than ever. But this has things backward, he argues: such complexity makes it more impossible than ever, thanks to the increasing quantity of information the expert would have to comprehend. All that the expert’s planning against competition can do is cripple and impoverish an otherwise self-correcting and growing market. And, in a line that our current policymakers should memorize, Hayek writes: “The one thing modern democracy will not bear without cracking is the necessity of a substantial lowering of the standards of living in peacetime or even prolonged stationariness of its economic conditions.” 

As that sentence suggests, The Road to Serfdom is a work of political economy, with an emphasis on the politics. The impulse to direct and control the market leads inexorably to the growth and concentration of political power, and this in turn to the arbitrary exercise of such power, when rulers discover that a scrupulously rules-based order hampers their discretion too much. Corruption inevitably follows, with rulers playing favorites and feathering their own nests, and finally nothing will satisfy the partisans of planning but that a dictator command the economy. “And whoever controls all economic activity controls the means for all our ends and must therefore decide which are to be satisfied and which not.” Thus does a demand for planned control of the market eventuate in a tyranny over every facet of life.  

Hayek does not shrink from calling the end of this road a “totalitarian” society, in which propaganda and lies supplant the free pursuit of truth, and the rule of unconstrained and arbitrary force replaces the rule of law: “while the last resort of a competitive economy is the bailiff, the ultimate sanction of a planned economy is the hangman.” In such a system, he writes, “there will be special opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous.”  

Hayek’s forceful argument—that every species of socialism, if not arrested or checked somehow, will lead to the same totalitarianism that readers in 1944 could see in Hitler’s Third Reich or Stalin’s Soviet Union—caused considerable outrage on the Left. The Second World War was not yet won, and the Soviet Union was still the ally of the West. And even those on the Left who could see Stalin’s Russia clearly, like George Orwell, resisted Hayek’s paean to market liberalism. The most virulent response to Hayek came from the Fabian socialist political scientist Herman Finer, who published a whole book the following year responding to him, titled The Road to Reaction—an unhinged screed in which one can almost see the author’s spittle sprayed over every page. 

It is a blessing to the memory of Professor Finer that his book is out of print. Hayek’s has never been, and its success in 1944 and 1945 far exceeded the author’s expectations. It was respectfully (in some cases enthusiastically) reviewed in both academic and popular venues by such luminaries as Aaron Director, Joseph Schumpeter, Michael Polanyi, and Henry Hazlitt. Following its UK publication by Routledge, The Road to Serfdom was published in the US by the University of Chicago Press, but more importantly, it was condensed in the April 1945 Reader’s Digest, and placed (uniquely in the Digest’s history) at the front of the magazine. This caused such a sensation that when Hayek came to lecture in the United States later that spring, he found himself speaking before immense crowds. He was suddenly a rock star avant la lettre. 

Coming to The Road to Serfdom for the first time, what I find most interesting about it is Hayek’s humility about what his own profession can know and predict, let alone aspire to control. There is an implicit philosophy of science at work in this book, informing Hayek’s conviction that only harm can come to the economy from efforts to plan and direct its operation, because the complexity of human affairs defies all attempts at beneficent mastery. One can find this philosophy of science more explicitly spelled out in his 1952 book The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason (now available under a modified form of its original subtitle). Here Hayek explains what a mistake it is for economists, or social scientists generally, to believe they do the same kind of work that natural scientists do. The latter “necessarily begin with the complex phenomena of nature and work backward to infer the elements from which they are composed.” But the social scientist, Hayek observes, “must start from what men think and mean to do”—that is, from subjective elements of human thought, opinion, belief, and will—and then attempt to grasp or conceptualize a complex picture made up of them.  

The natural and social sciences, one might say, run in opposite directions to and from parts and wholes. And in human affairs, “the wholes as such are never given to our observation but are without exception constructions of our mind.” And so “the economy” is nothing like “the earth.” The latter exists; we can till it, we can extract oil from it, and we can be buried in it. The former is not an objectively existing thing, but a construct, an agglomeration of data—some useful, some pointless (think of “trade deficits”). Hayek’s thoughts on thought itself ground his classic warning against the dangers of the temptation to control the freedom of others as they make their own way in that complex world of human action and interaction that surpasses our ability to understand. 

The US president had previously suggested he might attend peace negotiations in Istanbul

US President Donald Trump has said that only a personal meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will lead to progress in resolving the Ukraine conflict.

Delegations from Moscow and Kiev were expected to meet in Istanbul on May 15, following Putin’s proposal last week to resume direct dialogue aimed at a lasting settlement. The Kremlin team waited for Kiev’s representatives to arrive beginning on Thursday morning. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky announced later in the day that he was sending a delegation led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. The talks have reportedly been pushed back to Friday.

Trump, who earlier urged Kiev to accept Putin’s proposal “immediately,” told reporters on Thursday, “Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together.”

Speaking aboard Air Force One en route to the UAE, Trump suggested Putin had not planned to travel to Türkiye because Trump himself had not publicly committed to attending.

“He wasn’t going if I wasn’t there,” Trump said. “But we’re going to have to get this off, because too many people are dying.”

Earlier this week, the US president floated the idea of joining the Istanbul talks but later downplayed the possibility, citing a full schedule.

On Thursday morning, he told journalists, “If something happened, I’d go on Friday if it was appropriate.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there were no preparations underway for a meeting between the Russian and US leaders in the near future. The Kremlin has announced that Putin has no plans to travel to Türkiye.

Police have confirmed no injuries occurred during the three separate incidents in north London

A Ukrainian national has been charged with multiple counts of arson following a series of fires, including one at a property owned by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the Metropolitan Police have confirmed.

In a statement issued on Thursday, police said Roman Lavrynovych, 21, of Sydenham in south London, faces three counts of arson with intent to endanger life. The charges relate to a string of incidents between May 8 and May 12, including a vehicle fire, a blaze at the entrance of a property, and a third fire at a residential address.

The first fire took place on May 8, when a Toyota Rav4 was set alight in Kentish Town. The car had previously belonged to Starmer but had been sold to a neighbor, according to the Telegraph newspaper.

On May 11, another fire broke out at the entrance of a flat in Islington that Starmer reportedly owned in the 1990s. In the early hours of May 12, a third fire was reported at the Prime Minister’s current family home in Tufnell Park, which is now rented out to his sister-in-law, according to the media. 

While the entrance and front door were damaged, no injuries were reported in any of the incidents.

The Metropolitan Police said its Counter Terrorism Command is leading the investigation “due to the property having previous connections with a high-profile public figure.”

Lavrynovych was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday and has remained in custody since. He is scheduled to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday.

Starmer himself has described the attacks as an “attack on all of us, on our democracy and the values that we stand for.” 

According to the Telegraph, investigators are exploring a number of potential motives, including whether a hostile state might have been involved, although no evidence of such a link has been confirmed.

Meanwhile, Lavrynovych’s neighbors in Sydenham have described him as quiet and unremarkable. “He was a normal guy – like us,” one person told reporters. Another, who had lived in the flat above him for seven years, said he was “a normal boy,” noting that he didn’t speak English too well.

The Treasury Department has issued a new license easing restrictions on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium

The US government has allowed American and international companies to resume oil-related work involving a major Russia-linked project to deliver Caspian oil to the global market. The license, lifting restrictions on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) and the Kazakh company Tengizchevroil (TCO), was issued by the Treasury Department on Thursday.

The CPC includes major US oil companies such as Chevron and ExxonMobil among its stakeholders and primarily facilitates the export of Kazakh oil through Russian territory and its shipment internationally.

The new General License No. 124 permits all transactions that were blocked under a January 10 decision which prohibited certain petroleum services involving Russia-related energy infrastructure.

CPC operates a major pipeline that transports oil from western Kazakhstan to the Black Sea coast of Russia, from where it is shipped globally by tanker. The 1,511-kilometer pipeline is one of the most important export routes for Kazakh oil, handling over 80% of the country’s crude exports.

The pipeline is jointly owned by multiple companies and governments. Russia holds a 24% stake through the state-owned operator Transneft. Other major shareholders include Chevron, ExxonMobil, Russia’s Lukoil and Kazakhstan’s national oil company KazMunayGas. Several smaller international firms also own shares.

Tengizchevroil is a joint venture that runs the massive Tengiz oil field in Kazakhstan. It was formed in 1993 and is owned by Chevron (50%), ExxonMobil (25%), KazMunayGas (20%), and Lukoil (5%).

The earlier sanctions were imposed under Executive Order 14071, which targets services related to Russian energy projects. However, US authorities have made exceptions for projects that are considered critical to global energy markets or involve non-Russian stakeholders.

General License No. 121, issued in January, had already temporarily allowed some services for CPC and TCO. That license remains valid until June 28, 2025, but the new license appears to clarify and reaffirm that companies may continue their involvement in these projects without penalty until then.

According to the Treasury, the license covers activities like drilling, refining, transportation, and marketing of oil – provided they are connected to CPC or Tengizchevroil.

READ MORE: Ukrainian drones attack US-linked energy infrastructure

Earlier this year, CPC was forced to temporarily halt operations following two attacks by Ukrainian drones that damaged oil transfer stations linked to the pipeline network on Russian territory. The attacks came after Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump approved a partial ceasefire, under which both Moscow and Kiev committed to refraining from strikes on energy infrastructure.

The phone rang. The caller’s voice quivered with emotions so intense that she spoke haltingly, “If I don’t get… an abortion…I’m going to kill myself.” Before I could respond, she revealed her full anguish. “After my abortion, I won’t be able to live with it…I plan to kill myself.”

After 35 years of work as a trainer and practitioner in crisis intervention around the world, this young woman’s call still stands out. She crystallized in just a few words the acute panic and distorted thinking that is common in a pregnancy-related crisis. Based on abortion rates worldwide, it is probable that more people around the world experience crisis from an unexpected pregnancy than any other form of crisis. As we pause to honor the high calling of motherhood, we do well to consider how to love our pregnant neighbor.

To my caller, being pregnant felt like death — the end of her life. True, her pregnancy was not a fatal disease. But it did present a threat to her life as she had projected it. Getting an abortion was, in her mind, a life-saving necessity. This, too, is false, but it feels true.

At the same time, she anticipated that abortion, while resolving one crisis, would create another. Her contemplation of suicide subsequent to her abortion revealed a self-awareness that there was another stakeholder involved — her unborn child. Harming any child was wholly contrary to her self-image as a caring person. She anticipated not being able to live with the subsequent guilt and grief.

Douglas Puryear, in “Helping People in Crisis,” writes that a state of crisis is characterized by symptoms of stress, an attitude of panic, a time of lowered problem-solving efficiency, and a rush to find relief. In a pregnancy-related crisis, panic is always the dominant marker.

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She feels pressure, too. For many, pregnancy represents a failure of one’s moral or religious values. They have not found the strength required to live according to their moral code. The guilt is acute. Pregnancy converts this private pain into public shame. For the non-religious, sexual behavior is often reduced to mere recreation. But the human spirit resists such reduction. Sex changes things. It sets up new expectations. Sex resulting in pregnancy places those expectations under extreme pressure. More often than not, women instinctively want their partner to support them. Abortion is something they resort to more than choose.

Frederica Mathewes-Green surveyed reasons women give for having an abortion. The highest percentage (38.2%) reported that they resorted to abortion in response to the external pressure from a husband or a boyfriend. Researcher, David Reardon, provides one woman’s telling account:

My family would not support my decision to keep the baby. My boyfriend said he would give me no emotional or financial help whatsoever. All the people that mattered told me to abort. When I said I didn’t want to, they started listing reasons why I should. That it would have detrimental effects on my career, and my health, and that I would have no social life and no future with men…I’m so angry at myself for giving in to the pressure of others.

To love your pregnant neighbor, understand that you are talking to someone who is frightened and under pressure, who wants her baby and doesn’t want it, who feels alone and is looking for deliverance. In that moment, the abortionist appears as the Savior who parrots the words of Christ, “Come unto me…” What, then, should you do and say?

Lead with love: Love is its own teacher; it prompts you to listen and sympathize. “I’m sorry to see you in distress. Help me understand why having a baby seems impossible?” Love encourages and breathes hope. “Having a baby is not the end of your life. It’s just an unexpected turn. Let me help you find God’s provision for you and your baby.” This immediately lowers fear and raises hope. Universally, this is how women turn from abortion to a life-affirming solution.

Tell the truth: Find your courage and tell the truth. There is only one reason that abortion is morally wrong — only one! It is morally wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. If the unborn is not human, there is nothing wrong with abortion. If it is human, then no circumstances justify it any more than they would justify killing a two-year-old. Help her answer the question, What is the unborn? Use a fetal model, get her an ultrasound at your local pregnancy help clinic, and look up “unborn baby” on your phone. In most cases, you are merely amplifying what her own heart is telling her.

Be her Good Samaritan: You don’t need to stop all abortions; just the one in front of you. The Samaritan was direct and personal. He did one practical thing and then another, including giving his time and money. Go and do likewise.

You are cross-bearing for the childbearing. You are making her problems your problems, just as Christ, through the cross, made our problems his own. After helping communities of churches establish pregnancy help services in hard places like China, Cuba, Uganda and more, I can confidently assert that loving your pregnant neighbor this way is God’s way of turning the despairing woman “into the joyous mother of children” (Ps 113:9).

LifeNews Note: John Ensor, an ordained Evangelical pastor, has been a leader in the pro-life movement for over 30 years as a speaker, author, mentor and co-laborer. John serves as the President of PassionLife, where he concentrates on helping missionaries and indigenous Christian leaders serving in countries plagued by abortion to equip the church in bioethics and pregnancy crisis intervention services. He has been recognized in the “Legacy of Life” book as one of the fifty greatest pro-life leaders of the last 50 years. John is the co-host of the “PassionLife Podcast,” with PassionLife Executive Director, Mark Nicholson. Together they discuss ministry updates and provide commentary on global current events.

The post A Scared Woman Called and Said: “If I Don’t Get an Abortion, I’m Going to Kill Myself” appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Alaska’s indigenous women and their unborn babies are increasingly vulnerable to abortion, according to the latest comprehensive data from the state.

For decades, the abortion industry and its allies have worked to make the killing of pre-born babies more palatable among Alaska Native communities. Well-funded leftist groups like Planned Parenthood, Native Movement and others now employ activist tactics and community organizing to increase abortion accessibility and change cultural perceptions, especially among the youth.

Last year, a total of 1,224 unborn babies were killed in Alaska through abortion, up slightly from 1,222 the year before. While the annual total has remained relatively steady at about 1,233 per year over the past six years, a significant increase was recorded among Alaska Native and American Indian women – surging from 247 abortions in 2020 to 356 in 2024.

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In 2020, abortions on Native women accounted for 20% the statewide total. Last year, that number rose to 29%, despite the fact that indigenous women only represent about 16% of the female population in Alaska.

During that same five-year stretch, abortions have decreased among white women – going from 596 in 2020 to 511 in 2024. All other racial groups have remained fairly steady.

With regard to ethnicity, however, the percentage of abortions performed on Hispanic women has more than tripled in just one year, going from 39 (3%) in 2023 to 123 (10%) last year.

PUBLICLY FUNDED ABORTIONS

The State of Alaska footed the bill for 43% of all abortions last year through the publicly-funded Medicaid program, known as DenaliCare. That means 528 unborn babies were destroyed with public dollars.

These state-financed abortions were driven mostly by unmarried women and indigenous populations. Alaska Native and American Indian women comprised 42% of all state-funded abortions – far higher than any other racial group.

TEEN ABORTIONS INCREASE

Abortions are also becoming more prevalent among teens – 15-19 years old. In 2020, this group accounted for 128 abortions – about 11% of the statewide total. In 2024, that number rose to 160 abortions, or 14% of all abortions. Six abortions were performed on girls younger than 15 years in 2024.

Most abortions, however, continue to be performed on women in their 20s, who underwent 678 abortions in 2024, amounting to 55% of the statewide total.

CHEMICAL ABORTION TAKING OVER

In a state with only two functioning Planned Parenthood abortion clinics remaining, chemical abortion pills – Mifepristone – are continuing to become more prominent. Pro-abortions groups see them as a way for women to terminate their pre-born babies while avoiding plane trips and hotel stays in Anchorage or Fairbanks. They also don’t need to darken the doors of an abortion center.

Thanks to telemedicine laws, women in remote areas of Alaska can now simply order these pills through the mail and take them at home without ever seeing a doctor in person.

Last year, nearly 6 in 10 abortions (59%) were done using the dangerous drug, Mifepristone, up from the previous all-time high of 56% in 2023.

This drug works by blocking the hormone progesterone. This causes the nourishing lining of the mother’s uterus to break down, making it easier for her pre-born baby to be expelled. Mifepristone is typically followed by a second drug, misoprostol, which causes contractions that expel the dead baby.

According to Americans United For Life (AUL), which tracks the dangers of Mifepristone, there are numerous complications associate with the drug, such as incomplete abortion wherein the pill does not fully terminate the pregnancy, leading to the need for additional medical intervention.

Mifepristone can also lead to infections and heavy bleeding that can be life-threatening, especially for women who live off the road system, and do not have easy access to medical treatment.

Despite the known dangers, AUL notes that in-person medical visits for a pregnant woman are not necessary for her to terminate her child using chemical abortion pills, which is one of the reasons why 1 in 25 women who take the abortion pill end up in the emergency room with complications.

The rise of chemical abortions coincides with more babies being killed at younger ages. In 2024, 468 pre-born Alaska babies were destroyed at six weeks gestation or younger. That represented 38% of all Alaska abortions, a new high.

The older surgical abortion method of Dilation and Curettage continued to decline in Alaska with just 245 (20%) women undergoing this procedure. This method is generally used in the first trimester and requires dilation of the cervix so that the unborn child can be scraped from the womb by an abortionist and then removed by suction. In 2024, 245 Alaska abortions were done this way, amounting to one in every five. Over the past five years this method has become less prevalent as the rise of chemical abortion continues to change the industry.

Dilation and Evacuation (D&E) is another surgical procedure that is generally used after the first trimester. This was used in 19% (231) of all Alaska abortions last year. It requires the temporary widening of the cervix as the pre-born baby and placenta are removed with a combination of surgical instruments, suction, or forceps by an abortionist.

PLUMMETING FERTILITY

Included in the 2024 abortion report is the fact that between 2018 and 2024, Alaska’s fertility rate has fallen from 69.5 to 61.9 births per 1,000 women. Fertility rates are based only on the number of live births. Abortion, miscarriage, fetal death and simply not becoming pregnant, all have an impact on the state’s plunging fertility rate, which is no longer at replacement levels.

Annual abortion reports are mandated by Alaska law, requiring hospitals, clinics and individual abortionists to submit information. The final report cannot contain the name of the patient, abortionist, facility or geographical area where the abortion occurred, and all forms are destroyed after the annual report is finalized.

To read this year’s report, click here.

LifeNews.com Note: Joel Davidson is Editor-in-Chief of the Alaska Watchman, which this article originally appeared.

The post Planned Parenthood Pushes Abortions on Native Americans in Alaska, Kills More Babies appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Kiev’s Western backers have claimed Moscow’s delegation to peace talks in Türkiye is not high-level enough

Kiev’s Western backers have blasted Moscow’s choice of negotiators ahead of the planned peace talks in Türkiye, with some of them calling it an affront to Ukraine. Moscow’s team, led by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, includes two deputy ministers and an intelligence chief.

It is “like a slap in the face,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told journalists, commenting on the situation.

The Baltic nation’s top diplomat described the Russian delegation as low-level as he talked to journalists on the sidelines of a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in the Turkish city of Antalya.

A similar opinion was shared by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who dismissed the Russian team as “low-level individuals.” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “clearly has no desire to enter these peace negotiations” since he has not come to Türkiye in person.

Medinsky headed Moscow’s delegation during negotiations with Kiev in 2022. Apart from him, the current Russian team also includes Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin and the head of Russia’s military intelligence, Igor Kostyukov. The negotiators are accompanied by a group of experts which includes senior military and civil officials, as well as diplomats.

Speaking to journalists in Istanbul, Medinsky said that the delegation includes “senior officials from all the relevant government agencies.” He also stated that Moscow is ready to renew its dialogue with Kiev and to discuss “potential compromises.” 

The two sides are now expected to meet in Istanbul after Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested resuming the direct negotiations disrupted in 2022 to find a lasting solution to the Ukraine conflict.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky initially ruled out any talks with Moscow unless a 30-day ceasefire is agreed upon first. He then changed his stance after US President Donald Trump expressed his support for Putin’s initiative.

Zelensky, who has arrived in Türkiye’s capital Astana, insisted that he would only speak to the Russian president directly but eventually decided to send a team led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to meet the Russian negotiators.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ridiculed Zelensky’s demands by calling him a “pathetic person,” who was acting “foolishly.” His words came after the Ukrainian leader initially branded the Russian delegation a “prop.”