THE DISSIDENT DAD DAILY – Nov. 24th - Vol.7
Whose Life Actually Matters?
👇NEW SECTION: “The Daily Table” - At the bottom of each newsletter you’ll now find The Daily Table; a short Scripture, thought, and question you can use at dinner to lead your kids toward God, Jesus Christ, and His Church. I hope you find it useful.
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1. North Dakota’s Abortion Ban Snaps Back Into Place
North Dakota just flipped the switch back to “no abortions.”
The state Supreme Court refused to uphold a lower judge’s ruling that had struck down North Dakota’s near-total abortion ban. So the old law roars back to life. It’s now a felony to perform an abortion there, with up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for doctors. Patients themselves are shielded from prosecution, but anyone who kills the child is not.
So you now have entire swaths of this country where killing a baby is legal and subsidized, and other parts where it is a serious crime. Same country on paper. Two completely different moral universes.
2. Pro-Lifers Move From Defense To Siege Warfare On Planned Parenthood
At the federal level, the fight is shifting from “please don’t fund them so much” to “rip them out by the roots.”
After Republicans managed to temporarily cut off Medicaid funding to abortion providers that billed over $800,000 to Medicaid in 2023, at least twenty Planned Parenthood clinics have closed or slashed services. Now, anti-abortion groups and GOP lawmakers are openly talking about permanent defunding. They want Planned Parenthood cut off from Medicaid, Title X goodies, and even the 340B drug discount program that makes their pharmacy operation so profitable.
Planned Parenthood’s comms people are screaming that this will hurt “health care.” That’s what you always say when someone takes away your ability to bill the taxpayer for abortions.
3. Pregnancy Centers Quietly Serve A Million Moms While The State Threatens Them
Here’s the flip side of the “access” narrative.
Ahead of a Supreme Court case where New Jersey’s attorney general is trying to drag pregnancy resource centers through subpoenas and paperwork hell, a new Charlotte Lozier Institute study shows these centers are absolutely swamped… in a good way. In 2024, for the first time, over 1 million new clients came through their doors. There are now almost 2,800 centers and mobile units spread across all 50 states. They provided an estimated $452 million in goods and services in 2024, most of it free: diapers, baby clothes, cribs, car seats, formula, actual human beings hugging you when your life just blew up.
Sixty percent of women with a past abortion say they’d have preferred to give birth if they had more emotional or financial support. That’s the stat that should haunt this regime. The “care” it sells is built on women being isolated and broke.
4. Kansas Conservatives Say A Real Pro-Life Ethic Means Ending The Death Penalty
In Kansas, a Republican lawmaker is saying the quiet pro-life thing out loud.
At a forum in Overland Park, GOP Rep. Bill Sutton explained why his Catholic faith and conservative skepticism of the state have turned him into a death penalty abolitionist. He’s backed every bill to replace capital punishment with life without parole. His argument is simple: if life is sacred, that includes the guilty, the ugly, the sick, and the guys who did “tremendously heinous things.” And practically speaking, the death penalty is a financial black hole with a horrifying risk of killing the wrong person.
“You don’t have to be a bleeding heart to hate the death penalty,” he said. “It’s inconsistent with my beliefs.” That’s the kind of pro-life talk that makes both parties nervous, because it isn’t easily weaponized for one election mailer and then forgotten.
5. Apple Turns Your Passport Into A QR Code
Apple just announced you can now stick your U.S. passport into Apple Wallet and glide through TSA at more than 250 airports using a “Digital ID.” You hold your phone up, tap some buttons, Face ID scans your face, and the government (and whoever else plugs into this system later) gets exactly the data you agree to show them.
Right now it’s “for convenience.” Domestically. Only at select TSA lanes. Not for border crossings. The usual soothing language. But the same article notes Apple expects this to grow into hotels, stores, and online services that need age or ID checks. So basically every adult interaction with the official world.
If you wanted a soft on-ramp to a world where your ability to move, buy, and exist is tied to a digital credential on a private company’s device, this is exactly what it would look like.
6. Michigan Legislature Declares “Christ The King Sunday”
This one didn’t make national headlines, but I think it matters.
In Michigan, lawmakers adopted a resolution declaring November 23, 2025 as “Christ the King Sunday” in the state. The text frames it around the liturgical feast that crowns the Church year: Christ the King of the Universe. In a country where public institutions bend over backwards to avoid saying the name of Jesus in any context except mockery, you suddenly have a state legislature explicitly recognizing Christ’s kingship in law, even if it’s just a symbolic resolution.
Small thing, on paper. Spiritually, it’s a shot across the bow of the civil religion that treats the State and the Market as the only real gods.
It’s honestly so good, that I had to copy and paste the resolution right here for you to read:
Reps. Schriver, Cavitt, DeSana, Maddock, Markkanen, Johnsen, Wozniak, Fox, Woolford, Rigas and Kelly offered the following resolution:
A resolution to declare November 23, 2025, as Christ the King Sunday in the state of Michigan.
Whereas, Many Christian communities throughout the state of Michigan and the world recognize the last Sunday of each liturgical year as the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, or as Christ the King Sunday; and
Whereas, This is a day when those throughout the world take pause to honor and acknowledge Christ?s Kingship within every aspect of life; and
Whereas, In Daniel 7:14, it is said that ?[Christ] received dominion, splendor, and kingship; all nations, peoples and tongues will serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, his kingship, one that shall not be destroyed?; and
Whereas, It is also said throughout scripture that Christ is the ruler of kings on earth, that ?On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, King of kings and Lord of lords?; and
Whereas, This feast day began in 1925, during a time where the world was shrouded in secularism and atheism and when regimes across the world were persecuting Christians for showing their love and fidelity to Christ. Pope Pius XI instituted this day to show that Christ the King was the answer to our challenges and that he would reign forever; and
Whereas, The preamble of the Michigan Constitution states ?We, the people of the state of Michigan, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of freedom?, which acknowledges the importance of divine guidance in civic life, and expresses our gratitude to Almighty God as the source of liberty and order; now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives, That the members of this legislative body declare November 23, 2025, as Christ the King Sunday in the state of Michigan. We encourage Michiganders to join in reflection, service, and acts of kindness that honor the moral and spiritual values exemplified by Christ the King.
Commentary
Whose Life Actually Matters?
Look at this little cluster of stories and ask a simple question: whose life counts.
Not in slogans. In law. In budgets. In the way real power behaves when nobody’s watching.
In North Dakota, the law just snapped back to calling abortion what it is. You end a baby’s life there, you can go to prison. The mother is not treated as a criminal, the child is not treated as medical waste, and the doctor is no longer a “provider.” He’s a guy the state might put in a cell if he kills a child. That is a massive moral statement, whether people want to admit it or not.
At the same time, in D.C., you have activists and lawmakers trying to starve Planned Parenthood of federal money for good. Not just “no Medicaid for a year” but “you don’t get to live off the taxpayer at all.” That is another clear moral statement. The machine freaks out about it because it touches the cash flow and the sacrament at the same time.
Then there are the pregnancy centers. Nobody in Brooklyn media wants to talk about the fact that over a million women came through their doors last year, most of them getting free help. Diapers. Formula. Baby clothes. Someone actually willing to sit in a room and talk through the fear without handing them a clipboard and a pill. And the data point that wrecks the whole “choice” narrative is this: most women who had abortions in the past say they would have chosen birth if they’d had support. So the system that calls itself “pro-choice” is built on women being isolated and broke.
Now put Kansas in the picture. You have a conservative Catholic lawmaker standing up and saying, “If I’m pro-life, that has to mean something for the guy on death row too.” That’s not soft. That’s actually more hardcore. It’s one thing to say, “We defend the innocent.” It’s harder to say, “We don’t hand the state the power to kill the guilty either, because we don’t trust it and because souls don’t stop being souls when they sin.” That’s a very different civilization than the one that thinks dignity is something the government issues like a license.
Overlay all of that with Apple quietly turning your passport into a Digital ID and feeding it to TSA scanners. On the surface, that story looks unrelated. Tech convenience. Faster lines. No more rummaging for your wallet while your kid is yelling about snacks. But under it is a totally different picture of human beings. To the machine, you are not a soul made for eternity. You are a QR code that can be green or red depending on whether you followed the rules. Vaccine status, carbon score, “disinformation” history, child welfare flag, mental health profile. There is no natural stopping point with this stuff.
And then you get this tiny little line item in Michigan: a resolution declaring Christ the King Sunday. People will shrug it off as symbolic. But symbolism is politics. It’s the state saying, even if lightly, “Christ is King, not us.” That might be the most offensive sentence you can put in a government document right now. Kingship implies limits. It implies that there are some things the State, the Party, the Market, and the Algorithm do not own and may not rewrite.
So you have two religions colliding.
One says: life is sacred from womb to tomb, including the guy on death row and the single mom in the pregnancy center parking lot. The family is the basic unit of civilization. Identity is granted by God, not the app store. Your name is written in Heaven, not on a chip inside your phone.
The other says: life is negotiable, human beings are conditional, and what really matters is whether you are “in compliance.” Abortions are “care,” old people are “cost centers,” the condemned are “leverage,” and your freedom to move or buy is whatever the system’s database says it is today.
As a dad, you don’t get to sit that out. You are already raising your kids under one of these religions or the other. You’re either teaching them their life and other people’s lives are sacred, or you’re handing them over to a world that thinks souls are just meat with data attached.
My job, and yours, is pretty simple: build a little outpost of the first religion inside the ruins of the second. In our homes. In our parishes. In how we talk about babies and prisoners and strangers and screens and passports.
The regime will keep shouting that its version of “life” and “rights” and “safety” is the only adult, professional option. Remember, professionals only, dad.
You and I know better.
The Daily Table – Week 1
Monday – Virtues & habits
Theme:
Courage To Do The Right Thing
Scripture Passage:
“Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who hope in the Lord.”
Psalm 31:24
Reflection:
Your kids are growing up in a world that tells them the worst thing they can be is “weird.” Different. Out of step. So most people go along to get along. As a dad, your job is to teach them that following Christ will make them weird in the best way. Sometimes that means saying no when everyone else says yes. Sometimes it means standing up for someone who’s alone. Courage is not feeling zero fear. Courage is doing the right thing even when your stomach flips, because you trust God more than you trust the crowd.
Table question:
“Can you think of a time you did the right thing even though it was hard or scary? What happened?”
Prayer:
“Lord Jesus, give our family the courage to do what is right, even when it costs us something. Make our hearts strong in You. Amen.”
Thanks for reading and God Bless,
Greg @ The Dissident Dad
