Wesley J. Smith

Geriatric suicides used to be considered a tragedy. But these days, increasingly, they are celebrated — whether Compassion and Choices (formerly, the more honestly named Hemlock Society) teaching elderly people to starve themselves to death (VSED), joint lethal jabs of aged married couples in places like the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada, or suicides facilitated at Swiss death clinics. These clinics are proud of their toll. One Swiss clinic even “prioritizes people who are elderly but not seriously ill,” while others willingly engage in geriatric assisted suicide of depressed elders if they have other conditions. From the odious Exit International’s newsletter: “Conscious suicides are different from others,” says Jean-Jacques Bise, Co-President of Exit in French-speaking Switzerland. The figures from RTS suggest Read More ›

The New England Journal of Medicine continues to besmirch its once august reputation by pushing ideology rather than medical science when discussing our nation’s most contentious social issues. This is particularly true about so-called gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender confusion. Even as repeated medical studies undercut the ideological narrative that puberty blockers, hormones, and even surgeries are the best means of caring for dysphoric children — and as country after country severely restricted those interventions — (with the exception of an unsubstantive criticism of the Cass Review) articles in the NEJM on the question usually pretend that the pushback never happened.

Now, the editors have done it again, publishing an article by Scott Skinner-Thompson, an LGBT activist law professor from the University of Colorado, Boulder, criticizing the Supreme Court for allowing Tennessee to legally prevent such interventions in children. The pretense begins with the headline, “The Faulty Logic behind the Supreme Court’s Failure to Protect Trans Minors.” To the contrary, Tennessee and other jurisdictions that have enacted such laws have done so to protect trans minors from potentially irreversible harm, in the knowledge that most gender dysphoric minors overcome their confusion by the time they reach adulthood.

Then, Skinner-Thompson leans on clearly ideological opinions by medical associations, despite at least one of which (WPATH) having been substantively discredited:

On June 18, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming hormonal treatment for transgender minors against an Equal Protection Clause challenge in United States v. Skrmetti. Transgender adolescents who need these medical interventions but live in one of the many states that ban them may need to look elsewhere for care. Nearly every major relevant U.S. health care organization has concluded that the prescription of hormones and puberty blockers for treating gender dysphoria in transgender adolescents is often medically appropriate in that it can improve mental health and well-being, whereas untreated gender dysphoria can lead to depression, anxiety, and suicidality.

Israel is under continual attack and terroristic threat. But some Israeli West Bank settlers are engaging in violence of their own, against a Christian Palestinian village called Taybeh, the last wholly Christian town in the West Bank and, historically, the place to which Jesus withdrew (Ephraim) before his Passion according to the Gospel of Saint John. Three village priests — one Greek Orthodox, one Catholic, and one Melchite Greek Catholic — have issued a public letter begging for help: On Monday, July 7, 2025, settlers deliberately set fire near the town’s cemetery and the historic Church of Saint George (Al-Khadr), dating back to the 5th century — one of the oldest religious landmarks in Palestine. Were it not for the Read More ›

The “nature rights” movement has infused environmentalism with unscientific mysticism. In spite of — or perhaps because of — that, its influence continues to grow as geological features like rivers, glaciers, and a mountain have been declared in law to be living persons endowed with rights. Adding to that threat, elite institutions such as law societies, science and medical journals, and grandees at the U.N. are increasingly embracing the cause. In the latest example, Cambridge University’s new policy journal Public Humanities will devote an issue to promoting the rights of nature. From the call for papers: We urgently need to change the way we relate to nature. One of the ways to do so is to consider nature as a Read More ›

The New England Journal of Medicine is at it again. It just published a dire warning that deporting illegal aliens will hobble our healthcare system. First, the authors give a dubious example of the kind of calamity that will supposedly happen to our most vulnerable patients without illegal immigrant workers. From, “Who Will Care for America?“: As physicians, we have witnessed firsthand the harms that such policies pose to patients and health care workers alike. In one case we know of, an older patient with metastatic cancer fell at home and lay on the floor for days before being found by a family member; he died shortly after being admitted to a local hospital. Though it’s uncertain whether he would Read More ›

As we hear much moaning about budget cuts impacting urgent public-health programs, an article in the current The Lancet wants to waste money studying the “health consequences” of nuclear war. From, “Ending Nuclear Weapons Before They End Us” (citations omitted): In May, 2025, the World Health Assembly (WHA) will vote on re-establishing a mandate for WHO to address the health consequences of nuclear weapons and war. Health professionals and their associations should urge their governments to support such a mandate and support the new UN comprehensive study on the effects of nuclear war… All UN member states are encouraged to provide relevant information, scientific data and analyses; facilitate and host panel meetings, including regional meetings; and make budgetary or in-kind Read More ›

Scientists in China have previously successfully manufactured mice with two mothers and no father. Now, they have genetically manipulated sperm from two male mice to allow both to father pups. From the New Scientist story: For the first time, mice with two fathers have gone on to have offspring of their own — marking a significant step towards enabling two men to have children to whom they are both genetically related. However, there is still a long way to go before this could be attempted in people. Yanchang Wei at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China achieved the feat by putting two sperm cells together in an egg whose nucleus had been removed. The team then used a method called Read More ›

Wesley J. Smith recently participated in a Symposium hosted by the Human Life Review. He was asked to react to the following statement: In the decades between Roe v. Wade and Dobbs, most prolifers believed that Americans were more or less opposed to legalized abortion on demand because a) this was the case in 1973; b) it was imposed on us from above by “raw judicial power,” rather than legislated; and c) surveys repeatedly showed substantial percentages of Americans being disquieted by abortion, especially when you got beyond the hard cases and the earliest weeks of pregnancy. In the first year or so following Dobbs, prolifers got a reality check through legislative defeats even in some reddish and purple states. We can say (what is true) that massive Read More ›

Last month, I wrote about Adriana Smith, the pregnant young mother who tragically experienced blood clots in the brain and was declared dead by neurological criteria. Adriana’s body was maintained with mechanical support to allow her baby to be gestated. I thought that was the right decision. Here is how I analyzed the situation in my post: That column was quite controversial — something new for me (eye roll) — and I received many angry responses (as well as expressions of support). Most of my critics claimed that it was somehow undignified to force a dead woman to gestate a baby. I heard the trite Handmaid’s Tale trope more than once. Well, time has passed, and thankfully Adriana’s baby was Read More ›

The Southern Poverty Law Center was once a courageous and righteous organization that, among other real achievements, bankrupted the KKK and Aryan Nations in civil court. This, at a time when acting against such vile groups openly was truly dangerous.

Alas, those righteous days are long gone. Today, the SPLC is a radical progressive activist organization that (one might say) hates orthodox Christianity as much as it does racists by labeling conservative Christian organizations “hate groups” because they oppose radical gender ideology and abortion.

This practice is dangerous. After SPLC mislabeled the Christian-oriented Family Research Council a hate group for opposing LGBT policy agendas, a fanatic used the center’s “hate map” to target the organization in 2012, shooting up the FRC’s lobby and wounding a security guard.