Support First Things by turning your adblocker off or by making a  donation. Thanks!

Letters

The only excuse I can imagine for David P. Goldman’s taking up the shopworn claim that T. S. Eliot was an anti-Semite (“T. S. Eliot and the Jews,” March) is that, having been repeated so many times before, it might as well be repeated again as one of the unexamined prejudices of our culture. . . . . Continue Reading »

The Biblical Case Against IVF

Vulnerable human beings in the earliest stages of life are especially at risk these days. Increasingly, on both sides of the Atlantic, we chemically induce abortions in the comfort of our own homes, so that the process of terminating an embryo’s life is socially invisible. The fertility-industrial . . . . Continue Reading »

Synthetic Children

It can be difficult to live with an artist. Poe’s classic short story “Oval Portrait” details the tragedy of a beautiful young woman married to a painter. She sits so obediently as he tries to capture her in a state of youthful perfection, she seems not to allow herself to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom. By the time the painter completes the painting, he looks at the body of his bride and realizes that she is dead. Continue Reading »

What Else to Expect When You’re Expecting

Last Christmas our parish hall displayed a Nativity painting by a local artist, showing a dark-haired woman in a wheelchair holding an infant, with a man in hospital scrubs standing solicitously behind them. The scene was instantly recognizable to anyone who has had a baby in this country in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Filter Tag Articles