Tom Shakely

Research Fellow, Center on Human Exceptionalism

Tom Shakely is a Research Fellow with Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism, where he focuses on human dignity, human rights, and law and policy. Tom also serves as Chief Engagement Officer at Americans United for Life, a national leader in advancing life-affirming law and policy, where he hosts "Life, Liberty, and Law," featuring conversations on the human right to life.

Tom previously served as Executive Director of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, whose Crisis Lifeline serves patients and families facing denial of basic care and strives to awaken the conscience on human dignity and bioethical issues.

Tom has spoken on human rights issues at the United Nations, testified to the District of Columbia City Council on conscience rights, and advised on testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and U.S. House of Representatives. Tom is a member of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and Knights of Columbus, and is a Charlotte Lozier Institute guest contributor and a Sons of the American Revolution life member. Tom serves as a board member for the Mount Nittany Conservancy and has previously served as a board member for the Pro-Life Union of Greater Philadelphia and as an at-large member of Archbishop Charles J. Chaput’s Archdiocesan Pastoral Council in Philadelphia, as well as a National Review Institute Washington fellow and as a Leonine Forum fellow.

Tom holds a B.A. in Political Science from the Pennsylvania State University, M.S. in Bioethics from the University of Mary, and Certification with Distinction in Health Care Ethics from the National Catholic Bioethics Center. Tom has written for National Review, HuffPost, National Catholic Register, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and other nationally recognized media.

Archives

‘Suffering and Sacrifice Are Part of a Flourishing Human Life’

Tom Shakely
July 9, 2021
Dr. Jennifer Frey delivered an excellent talk on “Suffering and the Problem of Evil” to the Thomistic Institute’s Yale University chapter this April. Listen to the whole talk, which I think is really a call to be practically wise amidst the tumult of our chaotic lives. I’ve transcribed the below from Dr. Frey’s talk and any errors are mine. First, on the classical view of justice: Now, it’s central to the virtue of justice in particular that there are certain things we must never do because that sort of action is to wrong someone. So, if we were to commit this sort of action—the wronging someone sort of action—then we would be not exercising justice but injustice. Murder, torture, rape, Read More ›

A Time for Choosing on Roe and the Abortion Regime

Tom Shakely
July 7, 2021
The U.S. Supreme Court must reverse Roe v. Wade, writes Ramesh Ponnuru: “[Pro-Lifers] ought to be seeking nothing less than the full overturning of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. We ought to be asking, that is, for a declaration that the Constitution contains no right to abortion, allows legislatures to enact bans on abortion, and does not authorize judicial second-guessing of those bans. … The pro-life movement and Republican politicians should explain that overturning Roe won’t by itself ban abortion. They should make that point because it’s accurate, because it will help prepare pro-lifers for the political battles to come if they succeed in court, and because it will do a little to calm the nerves of those who fear drastic and sudden change in abortion Read More ›

The Supreme Court and American Independence from Abortion

Tom Shakely
July 1, 2021
The U.S. Supreme Court is once again turning to the issue of abortion, having decided to consider Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization later this year. At the heart of the case is a Mississippi law that would protect human life at 15 weeks from conception, the moment of sperm-egg fusion at which science and medicine recognize that a new and distinct human life comes into existence. The Supreme Court won’t hear the Mississippi case until this fall, and America likely won’t learn of their decision until next summer. In the meantime, we’ll be left to speculate. Ever since the Supreme Court created abortion rights out of thin air with its 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, it has been Read More ›

China, Human Rights, and Washington’s Lack of Strategy

Tom Shakely
June 22, 2021
Bruno Maçães writes on the United States and our shifting and ill-defined aims with respect to China: I have a column out today that takes a broadly positive view of the European Union’s strategy on China. That strategy seems to me the brightest line of the struggling new geopolitical Union being developed in Brussels. The column goes some way towards explaining why that is the case, but I wanted to add a couple points directly related to how the EU compares to the United States when it comes to China. Well, the essential point, it seems to me, is that Washington still lacks a strategy. I am not talking about the erratic policy of the Trump years. The problem has persisted and Read More ›

Carter Snead on the Fundamental Disagreement of Our Time: What a Person Is

Tom Shakely
July 22, 2020
“The fundamental disagreement … is about what a person is — what human flourishing is, what is the nature of human identity, what is human nature, is there such a thing as human nature. And I think that it divides along, broadly, two polarities that you see play out in our public conversations and our private conversations…” One view, as Professor Carter Snead of Notre Dame lays out in this rich five minutes, is that what defines a human being is that you have “will and desire”. The other and older view is what Alasdair MacIntyre calls “recipricol indebtedness”: Professor Snead points to the question of telos; to whether human life has any concrete end or purpose outside of our Read More ›

Independence Day and Renewed Vigor

Tom Shakely
July 4, 2020
Happy Independence Day! As America marks July 4th, it’s worth taking a few moments to pause in gratitude for the Declaration of Independence and its lasting importance for what America’s framers recognized about the human person, the source of human dignity, and the nature of human rights. Clarke Forsythe, Senior Counsel at Americans United for Life (and a colleague and friend) writes in National Review today on why the Declaration still matters for all Americans: Amid our national dialogue over race and justice, my family’s reading of the Declaration of Independence will be even more meaningful than usual this Fourth of July. At the core of the Declaration — the founding political document of America — is the principle that the Read More ›

‘The Committee Heard From People Who Had Made Plans for Suicide’

Tom Shakely
May 21, 2020
Australia braces for more intentional killing, as Queensland appears set to join Victoria in embracing what we euphemistically term “assisted dying”: Queenslanders are set to find out this week whether [assisted suicide and/or lethal injection euthanasia] laws will be introduced by the Palaszczuk government. In March, a parliamentary health committee recommended Queensland legalise voluntary assisted dying for adults with advanced terminal medical conditions. … The committee, which began its inquiry in November 2018, gauged public opinion on the issue and found most Queenslanders were in favour of helping terminally ill people to die. The committee heard from people who had made plans for suicide in circumstances where they had a life-limiting illness or debilitating condition. It found a terminally-ill person Read More ›

What If We Ignored Those Most Vulnerable to COVID-19?

Tom Shakely
May 15, 2020
“We locked down America with relative speed in March and we avoided all the worst predictions of the potential impact of the coronavirus, but we struggled to reach consensus anywhere on how to responsibly open back up.” If we had to write the one sentence history of the COVID-19 pandemic today, that would be something like America’s version. We don’t know how things will continue to play out, but what’s clear at the moment is that state and local leaders appear to be paralyzed. Unfortunately, those bearing some of the greatest costs of this ruling class paralysis aren’t likely the first to come to our minds. Their story is not told in the TL/DR history of this time. We’re witnessing Read More ›