1. The Telegraph: Israeli doctor treating Syrians says snipers deliberately shoot children in the spine
2. NPR: As Bombs Fall, A Neurosurgeon Tells How He Keeps Calm In Syria
3. Mike Pompeo on the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square
4. Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley was the keynote speaker last night at the Susan B. Anthony List’s annual dinner. In it she talked about her husband’s time in foster care and their own struggles to conceive.
She said, in part:
Many of you know I am married to my incredible, super cool husband, Michael. He is a combat veteran and a Major in the South Carolina National Guard. He is truly a saint and being married to me you know he has to be exceedingly understanding.
But many don’t know that Michael and his four siblings spent several years in foster care. Foster care can be amazing, but it was not kind to Michael and his siblings. It was unkind.
Luckily, when Michael was five, he and his younger sister were adopted by a kind, loving couple who couldn’t have children of their own.
I often think about what would have happened if Michael hadn’t been so lucky…if his biological mother had chosen a different path…if his adoptive parents hadn’t been so compassionate…
In politics, people assume that if you’re Republican you’re pro-life, because that’s what the party tells you to be. I’m pro-life, because I get the chance to spend every day with my husband knowing that I am blessed.
Many of you also might not know that Michael and I struggled to have a family of our own. We are blessed to be the parents to two smart, thoughtful, occasionally challenging children, but that path was not an easy one for us.
Like so many other couples and families, we struggled for many years, riding a roller coaster of false hopes and painful disappointment. Throughout the slog of doctor visits and invasive tests, I had days that tested my faith and my resolve. But when I held our daughter in my arms for the first time, I felt what countless parents feel: that nothing could be more perfect and right in the world.
These experiences – the good and the bad – solidified for me what I had long known intellectually – that each and every life is a gift from God. That so many loving families want more than anything to raise and love a child. I can’t stomach the idea that we wouldn’t do everything in our power to protect and nurture those lives.
5. A segment from a recent PBS Frontline documentary on abortion has been making its way around social media. Viewers watch as a woman takes the initial pills that abortion clinics distribute in what they call a “medical abortion.” The woman explains to an interviewer that she hopes for a “sense of peace in terms of these two beings who I’ve chosen not to bring into the world.” She then seems moved to say goodbye to her unborn children. “Thank you for choosing me. And I’m honored to be given this gift of life.” She goes on to say: “I can’t do it right now.”
This PBS documentary airbrushes abortion to make it look like some healthy new age practice.
The women in blue is pregnant with twins and she is filmed here taking the abortion pill to kill them. You witness their killing😢
And her statement at the end is chilling. pic.twitter.com/NxL7w36hYI— Obianuju Ekeocha (@obianuju) June 3, 2019
It’s hard not to walk away praying for that woman, praying for our times, and praying for what more can be done — starting today, with each one of us — to help create a world where women stop feeling like they have to make the choice to end the human life within them and are instead overwhelmed with support for loving life and never rejecting it, never ending it.
6. Karen Chan, the academic dean of St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, Calif., died over the weekend in a car accident. She was 37 years old and pregnant and leaves behind her husband and three other children. I never met Chan but many people I know all over the country knew her well. One of the writings she leaves behind is an academic-journal article imploring pro-lifers to always talk in terms of mothers and children and relationality, not rights and persons. Give birth to a more loving and welcoming vocabulary, in other words. May God be good to her and may we live radiantly through the eyes of faith as all testimonies make clear she did.
7. Explainer: What’s going on with faith-based adoption agencies? And what will happen next?
8. “I had a miscarriage, but I don’t regret telling people I was pregnant before 12 weeks”
9. Reverend Eugene Rivers and Robert P. George: Immoral Conduct and Moral Witness