Ten years ago, we sat in child-sized chairs in a storage room/office at the elementary school across the street from where we lived in Pennsylvania and heard these words from a psychologist, “We believe your son has autism.” We had walked in that morning knowing something was different about James, and we walked out with …
Continue...He sat against the wall, looking at his phone, seeming to pay little to no attention to our discussion leader. His wife sat next to him with her arm looped through his, occasionally patting it lovingly. She was a regular attender to our class, but this was the first time I remembered seeing him. As …
Continue...As we observe the anniversary of the United States’ dramatic shutdown due to COVID-19, there are many things we could not have predicted at this time last year. 500,000+ deaths, long-term shutdowns, virtual schooling, and a prolonged lack of contact with loved ones were certainly not things I expected. But on March 11, 2020, when …
Continue...In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a creeping global disaster is taking hold of families that can’t be fixed with a vaccine. A tsunami of children are at risk of being institutionalized in orphanages due to crippling poverty and loss of life as a result of the pandemic. While churches may want to rush …
Continue...I settled into a chair not far from the podium in the courtroom with my client’s case file in hand. The judge was preparing to enter any minute, and upon his entering, we would hear, “All rise!” I scanned the growing crowd, and it was immediately clear that the number of cases on the morning …
Continue...In the opening lines of last week’s executive order addressing the country’s refugee program, President Biden wrote, “the long tradition of the United States as a leader in refugee resettlement provides a beacon of hope for persecuted people around the world.” Sadly, the rising tide of nationalism in our politics has dimmed that once bright …
Continue...Jon Kelly was a troubled teen growing up with a single mother in a rough Philadelphia neighborhood. Multiple schools couldn’t keep him out of trouble. He dropped out of school by ninth grade. “I was always high every day … always in fights, always getting shot at or shooting at somebody,” Jon says. “I for …
Continue...Almost 70 years ago, he asked his parents for 20 dollars so he could marry the girl he loved. He chuckles as he recalls only needing half of it for the wedding—they spent the other half on their wedding night for the fanciest dinner they ever had. When they were younger, they enjoyed traveling and …
Continue...Peter Singer, Princeton’s Ira W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values, is (in)famous for his arguments about personhood. For Singer, only beings that have sentience can appropriately be describe as persons. Sentience is the ability to experience conscious pleasure and pain. Conscious pain is that interior state of mind that …
Continue...I had the dubious distinction of graduating from high school in 1973, the year Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton where handed down by the Supreme Court, giving the U.S. the most permissive abortion policy in the Western world. I remember well the question everyone was asking at that time: “When does human life …
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