About the Author

Brian Clowes, PhD

Dr. Brian Clowes has been HLI’s director of research since 1995 and is one of the most accomplished and respected intellectuals in the international pro-life movement. Best known as author of the most exhaustive pro-life informational resource volume The Facts of Life, and for his Pro-Life Basic Training Course, Brian is the author of nine books and over 500 scholarly and popular articles, and has traveled to 70 countries on six continents as a pro-life speaker, educator and trainer.

What is the Principle of ‘Double Effect’?

By Brian Clowes, PhD / January 10, 2024 /

The very rare cases when a pregnancy poses a genuine and immediate threat to the mother’s life are a source of great confusion, especially among Catholics. It is absolutely true that the Catholic Church bans direct abortion in all cases. However, the mother’s life may be saved by surgery that does not directly attack the…

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Navigating End-of-Life Care: Can There Be Catholic Living Wills?

By Brian Clowes, PhD and Marisa Cantu / January 10, 2024 /
patient signing last will and testament with lawyer

“Evil committed for a good cause remains evil.” “Even when it succeeds?” “Above all when it succeeds.” ~Victor Hugo, History of a Crime (1877)1 An advance medical directive (AMD) is a legal document that allows a person to specify the medical treatment he wants and does not want in case he becomes incapable of making his…

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In Vitro Fertilization Ethics

By Brian Clowes, PhD and Marisa Cantu / January 4, 2024 /
ivf

The Centers for Disease Control (CDCs) define the general class of “assisted reproductive technologies” (ARTs) as those procedures where eggs or embryos are handled. This involves surgically removing eggs from a woman’s body, combining them with sperm in the laboratory, and then returning them to the woman (or another woman). The CDCs do not keep…

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Exposing the Global Population Control Agenda

By Brian Clowes, PhD and Marisa Cantu / January 3, 2024 /
countries targeted by nssm-200, the kissinger report

The United States National Security Council is the highest decision-making body regarding foreign policy in the United States. On December 10, 1974, it completed a top-secret document entitled National Security Study Memorandum or NSSM-200, also called The Kissinger Report, since Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State at the time it was written. The subject of NSSM-200 is “Implications of…

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The Dangers of Transhumanism, the “World’s Most Dangerous Idea”

By Brian Clowes, PhD and Marisa Cantu / December 21, 2023 /
genetic engineering editing dna

What Is Transhumanism? Mortality is the human condition. It is natural for humans to wish to delay or somehow escape death, or at least to forget or ignore their mortality. The ancient tales of the “fountain of youth” or other objects that promise eternal youth or immortality are well-remembered. In the modern day, an escape…

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The Bible and Homosexuality: Does God Hate Gay People?

By Brian Clowes, PhD and Marisa Cantu / December 5, 2023 /
open german bible scriptures

The explicit root-and-branch rejection of morality by gays has been real, pervasive, and baleful in its effect on both the quality of life that we create for ourselves within the [gay] community, and our P.R. [public relations] with straights…. There’s a simpler, darker reason why many gays choose to live without morality: As ideologies go,…

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Birth Control: Is the Pill an Abortifacient?

By Brian Clowes, PhD and Marisa Cantu / October 24, 2023 /

What exactly is “abortifacient” birth control, and is “the Pill” an abortifacient? Contraceptives are methods of birth control that place a physical barrier between sperm and egg, such as condoms and diaphragms. By contrast, abortifacients are hormonal-based methods of birth control that often cause early abortions. In 2019, an estimated 27% of women were using…

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How Does Abortion Affect the United States?

By Brian Clowes, PhD and Marisa Cantu / September 25, 2023 /

The first states legalized abortion in 1967. Since then, there have been about 63 million abortions performed in this country. One-sixth of our nation’s entire population has disappeared into the maws of the latter-day extermination camps that the corrupt media calls “reproductive care centers.” How does abortion affect society? We have killed a vast number…

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Shouldn’t We Allow “Freedom of Choice” for Abortion?

By Brian Clowes, PhD and Marisa Cantu / September 7, 2023 /
newborn black and white

“Freedom of Choice!” Undoubtedly an ideal slogan. Freedom is the basis upon which our nation was founded and remains our fundamental guiding principle. Who but an ignorant bigot could possibly be against freedom, “choice,” and personal independence? When we hear “freedom of choice,” we imagine the stark opposite. We imagine a nation where one’s life…

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Do Aborted Babies Go To Heaven?

By Brian Clowes, PhD and Marisa Cantu / July 13, 2023 /
Children hugging and listening to Jesus. Back view. Generative AI illustration

Most women understandably feel some degree of guilt about having an abortion. After all, abortion is a grossly unnatural act, and people who believe in God (as most aborting women do to varying degrees) have difficulty justifying the deliberate killing of a child that they know was willed into existence by Him. All of us…

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