Who makes the crucial decisions about the education of your children? The rights of parents to make these essential decisions must be asserted and defended in every generation. There are others who would wish to make those decisions concerning your children.

What really explains the disastrous fall in European birthrates? The collapse of birthrates in Europe covers almost the entire continent and has left many observers scratching their heads in puzzlement. Writing in The Weekly Standard, Steve Ozment, Professor of History at Harvard University argues that the contemporary German vision of the good life, for example, simply does not include kids. Children are prime life-style interrupters, and today’s Germans, as one leading German politician argues, increasingly look for a life of constant fun.

Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation was interviewed by W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia in the current issue of Books & Culture. Longman is the author of The Empty Cradle, a look at the long-term impact of falling fertility rates worldwide.

The Associated Press is out with a rather amazing news report. It seems that India is now ready to raise unwanted baby girls in special orphanages throughout the nation. The practice of female infanticide is so widespread in India that a gender imbalance threatens the future vitality of Indian society.

TIME magazine is out this week with a cover article on “The Abortion Campaign You Never Hear About.” The magazine’s focus is the work of crisis pregnancy centers and the lead reporter, Nancy Gibbs, gets to the magazine’s real question — are these centers “playing fair?”

Sheryl Henderson Blunt of Christianity Today interviewed me about “Plan B,” “the Pill,” and what is going on among young Christian couples. The interview is published at Christianity Today’s Web edition. Here is a selection that gets to the heart of the issue:

When “The Pill” was introduced in the 1960s, most evangelicals responded with eager acceptance. The century had seen the discovery and invention of modern antibiotics, the development of the Salk and Sabin vaccines againt polio, and countless other medical breakthroughs. The Pill just seemed to be the next great thing.

Russell Shorto contributes the cover article for The New York Times Magazine this week — and his article is sure to attract attention and controversy. In “Contra-Contraception,” he looks at the emerging discussion and debate over birth control and sexuality among American evangelicals, among others.

The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age–and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm. One indication of that firestorm is the cover story in the current issue of The New York Times Magazine. That article cites Dr. Mohler’s arguments concerning the issue of contraception. In that light, in this article, published on March 30, 2004, Dr. Mohler considers the question, “Can Christians Use Birth Control.”