Lopez: A tale of two medals

WASHINGTON — There was tremendous, albeit unintentional, cultural clarity in two late-term actions Joe Biden took before the end of his presidency. Call it the tale of two medals.

Right before Thanksgiving, Biden awarded the presidential medal of freedom to Cecile Richards. The medal is our country's highest civilian honor. Richards was the former president of Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading abortion business.

Richards died just shortly after President Donald Trump was sworn in to his second term. Her commitment to expanding abortion came from her personal experience with it. She had three children and didn't think she and her husband could handle a fourth.

On Jan. 11 of this year, Biden conferred the medal of freedom on Pope Francis. Biden was going to do it in person in a final overseas trip, but thought better of a Roman holiday on account of the devastating California fires.

Perhaps Biden had missed that on the first day of 2025, Pope Francis talked about helping women by protecting them and their unborn babies from abortion. At Mass on New Year's Day, he encouraged us to learn "to discover God's greatness in the little things of life. May we learn to care for every child born of a woman, above all by protecting, like Mary, the precious gift of life: life in the womb, the lives of children, the lives of the suffering, the poor, the elderly, the lonely and the dying." He underscored the need to recommit "to respect ... the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, so that each person may cherish his or her own life and all may look with hope to the future."

This was far from the pope's first emphasis on the evil of abortion and the harm it does to women, babies, families and society. He's referred to abortion as "homicide."

In Washington, D.C., moving on from the inaugural chaos, 300 students from the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, arrived for the annual March for Life, marking the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in all three trimesters of pregnancy. The six buses that rolled into the nation's capital from the Catholic school were meant to once again drive home the message of these people committed to peace in the womb and the hearts of women.

Roe may be gone, but abortion still is a fact in the United States. Father Dominic Bouck, the chaplain at the school, fresh off the bus ride on January 23, told me that lighting a fire under not just the students, but the nation, was a fruit of prayer. (Full disclosure: I serve on the board of Regents at U Mary.)

There's a terminal confusion in a nation where the same president — who happens to be a professing Catholic — honors both Richards and Francis without noticing the contrast, acknowledging the muddled morality behind the duo distinctions. With even the Republicans dropping a commitment to the end of abortion from their platform, we need young people with relatively simple, loving messages that urge us all to up our game and step up to the plate in renewed and creative ways. Love them both – mother and child. It's a message even Richards may have supported, if we are all really in it for women and the flourishing of human life.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan's pro-life commission in New York, and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.