Shortly after the draft Dobbs decision leaked, I wrote a piece for America, reflecting on the time I invited friends to come to my house and have a better fight about abortion. In 2016, I opened my doors for what I expected would be the worst event I would ever host. In the wake of… Read More
Author: Leah Libresco
Family Policy Can’t Be Gender Neutral
For Mother's Day, I wrote for Deseret on why gender neutral family policy tends to shortchange mothers. In an uneventful pregnancy, a mother will still have a harder timechan than her partner as she navigates fatigue, nausea and pain. Drawing attention to these difficulties can feel like letting other women down — if women carry… Read More
When Need Comes Knocking
As Ukrainian refugees streamed into Europe, people near and far looked for a way to help. I'm at Deseret, writing about one crowdsourced site for opening your hope to those in needs, and discussing what that practice can look like far from a war zone. When need comes knocking, it changes the way we see… Read More
Rethinking Sex with Christine Emba
I got to interview Christine Emba about her new book Rethinking Sex: A Provocation. The full interview is embedded below, and the Institute for Family Studies ran an excerpt as part of their "Five Questions for..." series. We also had a lively conversation in the comments of Other Feminisms. Here's an excerpt: Sargeant: It feels like… Read More
The Olympic Disciplines that Destroy the Body
I'm at Deseret, making my case against a number of Winter Olympic sports that destroy bodies, rather than reveal their excellence. Ladies' quads in figure skating are particularly destructive. Quads don’t work for older skaters. The physics get hard once a skater is past puberty and begins to develop a woman’s body. Restrictive eating can… Read More
There’s No Neutral Answer to When Life Begins
For my first piece in Deseret News, I'm analyzing a line of argument in Dobbs, claiming that that the question of when life begins is beyond what government can answer. But this question isn't uniquely the domain of religion—everyone needs to be able to furnish and defend an answer. Where a loose consensus prevails, it… Read More
Encanto and the Benedict Option
Encanto doesn't have a conventional Disney villain, because the musical is about learning to live in safety, putting aside the bad habits that come from fear and scarcity. I covered the musical for First Things, with a particular emphasis on the parallel dangers for Christians. The village is not so different from a Benedict Option… Read More
Sacrifice Is Not a Therapy
As the Omicron wave crested in January, many institutions tried to do more and seemed to assume that the more intrusive or inconvenient a restriction, the more powerful it was. I talk about why this is the wrong way to think about medicine at The New Atlantis. They assume that our safety is proportional to… Read More
Covid, Vulnerability, and a Miasma Mindset
The New Atlantis convened a slate of writers for a symposium on lessons to learn from covid. My contribution to the "Beyond the State of Exception" symposium is "Bad Air," a mediation on aerosols, ventilation, and vulnerability. We’re used to starting with a premise of safety and sterility. The goal of our policy and our… Read More
The Green Knight and the Elderly Gunman
First Things asked contributors for the best film they saw in 2021, and my husband and I both picked films by David Lowery. My choice was The Green Knight, and (once I had dibsed it) Alexi chose The Old Man and the Gun. Here's an excerpt from my reflection: To call it an adaptation of… Read More