By Kathryn Jean Lopez – September 19, 2025 6:30 AM – National Review

A remarkable debate about life itself is playing out in the U.K.

Historian Andrew Roberts has declared that it’s monstrous to not legalize assisted suicide in England. J. K. Rowling, on the other hand, has said that she has changed her mind on the matter and now opposes assisted suicide.

“I used to believe in assisted dying,” she wrote. “I no longer do, largely because I’m married to a doctor who opened my eyes to the possibilities of coercion of sick or vulnerable people.”

On the other hand, during a day of debate over a bill passed by the House of Commons to make assisted suicide legal, Andrew Roberts, a member of the House of Lords, told the body that doctors’ killing patients is nothing more alarming than someone taking penicillin. He says:

My Lords, the measure before us represents the possibility of the greatest alleviation of pain and suffering in this country since Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin 97 years ago. It is no criticism of our excellent hospice movement to point out that no amount of resources given to palliative care can alter the ultimate result, or abolish the fearful pain and indignity that terminally ill people have to go through unless they take so many painkillers that they become prey to weird delusions, essentially becoming different people from those whom their loved ones know.

Families gathered around death beds are presently denied the right to help to end their loved ones’ suffering because of the so-called sanctity of life, even when that life has lost any possible meaning. Hamlet wishes in his first soliloquy

“that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter!”

However, the commandment “thou shalt not kill” can be suspended in exceptional circumstances, such as in wartime, and so it should be in the case of the horrendous pain of an irreversible, slow death. Wanting to avoid such excruciating pain is not selfish but a human right.

This isn’t Shakespeare. This is real life with eternal consequences. God is merciful and works things out according to His ways, but He gives us parameters for a reason. Because He is good, and He knows we cannot always see good — especially the good He works in all things. Roberts too easily dismisses palliative care. You don’t have to be a doctor or a nurse or a minister to know that healing things can happen in a person’s final days. Reconciliation. There is often peace. Light can be shone on pain, and doors can open to conversations and love that would never happen or be expressed if it were not for the altar of the hospice bed and the person surrendering to living until the end.

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Andrew Roberts is wrong. J. K. Rowling is right. In the spirit of Charlie Kirk, in his memory, who wouldn’t want to see a debate between the two?

Rowling really has become such a courageous voice for reason and humanity. God bless her. God bless Andrew Roberts, too. But may he see the light. He’s too smart to give up on life so easily. We can do better than assisted suicide. Every human life deserves better than assisted suicide.

He is, of course, correct about just war. But when did we decide to go to war on our lives? We should help one another see that it is worth living, even when we are not Winston Churchill at his most productive best.

Theresa May for the Win

Winning and losing sounds wrong in a serious, complicated, critical moral and legal debate over assisted suicide. And yet, may the former prime minister in the United Kingdom prevail.

During the recent debate in the House of Lords, she put it succinctly:

This is not an assisted-dying bill. It is an assisted-suicide bill.

As a society, we believe that suicide is wrong. The government has a national suicide-prevention strategy.

We bemoan the number of young people who are lured into committing suicide by social media and what they read on theinternet.

This week is World Suicide Awareness Week.

Suicide is wrong. But this bill effectively says suicide is okay.

What message does that give to our society?

Suicide is not okay. Suicide is wrong. This bill is wrong. And in my opinion, it should not pass.

This is the same perverted reality we face in New York as we continue to await Kathy Hochul’s decision on the assisted-suicide bill the statehouse has approved. Mental-health awareness and suicide prevention are all the rage. Legal assisted suicide will only increase suicide. That’s the clear record where it’s legal. It also makes perfect sense. Are we for it or against it? Civilization has a life-or-death choice to make.

Love One Another for Life

One of my favorite videos of Charlie Kirk I’ve watched in recent days is of an exchange he had with a woman about abortion. She is clearly suffering and coming to him with transparent vulnerability. And Charlie is all compassion and encouragement — pure love. This is the way to approach human beings — especially on the most contentious issues of our lifetimes. Watch here.

Texas Moves to Protect Women. Abortion Groups Are Ever-Defiant for Death

Lone Star State Governor Greg Abbott has signed the “Woman & Child Protection Act” into law, making the manufacturing or trafficking of abortion pills in or into the state subject to lawsuits up to $100,000 in damages to women and families.

Abortion-pill pushers don’t care. From the Associated Press:

Angel Foster, who runs Massachusetts-based The MAP, which prescribes the regimen of pills to women in every state, said her organization will keep sending pills to women in Texas, as it has about 10,000 times in the past two years.

“We really don’t change things unless we’re legally required to,” she said.

Rebecca Nall, the founder of I Need an A, which runs a website with abortion access information, suggested other providers also won’t change.

“We’re confident people in Texas (and every state) will still be able to get abortion pills by mail,” she said in an email.

No Laughing Matter

ABC should not have been bullied by the government into canceling Jimmy Kimmel. Period. Let the record also show, he was not funny — maybe especially when he was arguing for abortion.

For example, after Dobbs, a choir sang: “More unwanted children, the Supreme Court is to blame. We hope they always have a screaming baby on their plane.”

Never mind the wanted children who were able to be born in states where their mothers weren’t facing the same kind of pressure to end the lives of their unborn babies that they would’ve faced during the Roe regime. Choice has always been a lie in our culture when it comes to abortion.

God and Man and Life at Yale

Lila Rose from Live Action debated the former head of Catholics for Choice, Frances Kissling, at the Yale Political Union this week. The pro-life side won.

The Yale Daily News doesn’t seem overjoyed about that fact.

You can watch the video of the debate here.

Obviously, security was heightened for the event after Charlie Kirk’s assassination last week.

Other Things

We still don’t know who leaked the Dobbs decision that ended Roe v. Wade. A Supreme Court decision was leaked to the press, presumably to intimidate Supreme Court justices into changing their minds. This takes on added significance after Charlie Kirk’s murder, knowing the threats the justices have faced. Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt pressed FBI Director Kash Patel on the leak this week. He assured her that the FBI hasn’t closed the book on investigating how it happened.

Anticipating details from the White House on what it’s going to do about its reckless, unscientific promise to make IVF great and free and universal, the media continues to demonize healthy, pro-woman, natural alternatives that are often simple hormone interventions.

A beloved Canadian author of children’s books, fearing his dementia diagnosis, wants to end his life.

Amanda Achtman writes:

When I was growing up in the 1990s, there was a children’s book that my mother read to me so many times that I can still hear the sing-song cadence with which she read the refrain. That book is Love You Forever by the American-born Canadian author Robert Munsch. One of the most-loved children’s authors of all time, his books have sold an astounding 87 million copies.

Love You Forever begins with a mother rocking her newborn as she sings: “I’ll love you forever / I’ll like you for always / As long as I’m living / my baby you’ll be.”

As the child grows, he causes his mother all manner of frustrations. But no matter what he does or how big he gets, she always goes into his room at night, picks him up, and rocks him, singing the same lullaby. Eventually, the mother grows old and sick and calls her son to visit her. She is so sick that she is unable to sing the lullaby that has been the lifelong expression of her love. And so her son sings it to her tenderly, revising the last lines to say, “As long as I’m living my Mommy you’ll be.”

It is a touching story of the natural circle of life and of the unconditional love for which we are made. This is one reason why many Canadians are shocked that the book’s author, of all people, is saying he wants a doctor to end his life by euthanasia. . . .

No matter what he suffers now, Robert Munsch will never be more vulnerable, more discreet, more unspoken than his stillborn children who inspired his bestselling book of all. In the universality of Robert Munsch’s fears about dementia, we see the need to propose something other than death. It is time for someone else to continue the story with him still in it.

Around National Review

• Planned Parenthood Is Teaching Teens How to Get Around Gender-Transition Safeguards

• Charlie Kirk Respected You

• Defunding Planned Parenthood Won’t Hurt Women’s Health Care, New Study Finds

• ‘Access’ Trumps Safety in New Abortion Shield Laws

On the Road, on the Calendar

• I’ll be in Chicago for the Aid for Women annual dinner next week and the GIVEN Forum event with Peggy Noonan next week.

• Let me know if you’ll be at the Christian Alliance for Orphans summit in Houston October 1–3.

• There are state marches for life coming up in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, North Dakota, and Michigan this fall.

• I’ll be at the “Leading with Love” conference sponsored by Human Life Review and the Center for Law and the Human Person at the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, on October 8.

• Register to join a Wisconsin Right to Life webinar on Down syndrome and disability-selective abortion on Wednesday, November 12, 12 to 1 p.m. CT.

• Don’t forget the upcoming deadline to be a speaker at the National Council for Adoption conference in June.

And let me know if you’d like me to come to your campus or speak to your local, state, or national group about life after Dobbs, Bill Buckley’s enduring legacy on life, what to do after Charlie Kirk’s murder to protect all life, and gratitude, even now, to name a few themes: klopez@nationalreview.com.

Until we meet again . . .

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this newsletter incorrectly said Jimmy Kimmel’s show was on CBS, not ABC. We regret the error.