Wesley J. Smith

Along the same lines as James J. Johanik’s letter in the Wall Street Journal that I reprinted the other day, the New York Times (!!!) published a letter written by my good friend Bradford Short that makes basically the same point: Based on the science, human life begins at conception. Short . . . . Continue Reading »

This is an interesting column from the Adelaide Sunday Mail. (I was in Adelaide in 2001; lovely town.)When an elderly Australian woman went to Switzerland to die by what has come to be called “suicide tourism, columnist Amanda Blair intended to write an adamantly pro-euthanasia column that . . . . Continue Reading »

This is a better story than most about the stem cell debate. Except, of course, that CNN and the quoted scientists state that stem cell therapies are years away—without mentioning that for many human conditions they are already in human trials. But those don’t count. They aren’t . . . . Continue Reading »

Apparently the Wall Street Journal editorialized that embryos are not yet human beings, that is, the are only potential human life. I didn’t see the editorial. But I did see this excellent letter to the editor, published in response. I don’t know who James J. Johanik of Chicago is, but . . . . Continue Reading »

Senator Sam Brownback (R KS) held hearings about assisted suicide at which I testified a few months ago. (Link to testimony, here.) He has now filed the Assisted Suicide Prevention Act, which would prohibit federally controlled substances from being used in assisted suicide. This bill is in keeping . . . . Continue Reading »

Is it any wonder that people are confused about stem cell research? Take this article published by Tiscali.Europe, apparently one of the continent’s premier providers of internet services, as one example of hopeless cluelessness. (I bring this up because millions of people may have accessed . . . . Continue Reading »

I have been asked to contribute some thoughts on the First Things blog. For those who don’t know FT, it is perhaps the country’s most prominent religious journal. It is headed by the imcomparable Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and edited by my good friend Joseph Bottum.My work is entirely . . . . Continue Reading »

Like Fr. Oakes , I am intrigued by the pope’s warnings against “the dictatorship of relativism”¯for relativism poses a far more profound problem than behavioral license. The value of human life itself is being relativized. Indeed, it strikes me that the most crucial question . . . . Continue Reading »

The Weekly Standard has now made my adult stem cell column available to non subscribers. Here is the . . . . Continue Reading »

The instrumentalization of human life continues to spread like a wild fire. Apparently, a San Antonio fertility clinic is now going to make embryos from donated egg and sperm, not to help the biological parents get pregnant but for sale to infertile couples. The Abraham Center of Life claims to have . . . . Continue Reading »