The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization marked the biggest victory for the pro-life movement in the past 50 years. The ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade was also a loss for the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. But to continue scoring pro-life victories, the movement needs to advocate for life at all stages.
Planned Parenthood’s support for defunding the police should make conservatives expand their vision of a comprehensive “womb-to-tomb” pro-life ethic. The maintenance of law and order should be seen as a pro-life issue because allowing lawlessness and disorder to spread costs lives.
The average American is appalled by open-air drug markets in San Francisco or teenagers causing chaos in downtown Chicago. But the arrests of more than 30 alleged gang members in South Jamaica, Queens, demonstrate how much violent crime affects the lives of people far from a city’s high-end retail corridors.
The gang takedown last month was the result of a lengthy investigation by the New York Police Department into a feud between two rival gangs: the Money World and Local Trap Stars. The conflict started with a slaying in April 2019. Six months later, the feud escalated after a 14-year-old boy named Amir Griffin was shot and killed in Baisley Park Houses, a public housing project in Queens.
Griffin died on a basketball court playing the game he loved. He attended Benjamin Cardozo — my old high school — and played for Ron Naclerio, the winningest basketball coach in NYC public school history. The coach expressed a reality that is familiar to many families in inner-city neighborhoods
