Free Republic

It was a rough week for Catholic groups arguing that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects them from being forced to facilitate the provision of contraception to their employees in violation of the groups’ religious beliefs. As you might recall, religious liberty won big at the Supreme Court last year, when the court held that forcing religious businesses to provide contraception in their healthcare plans violated RFRA. But there was a second line of cases that I’ve been referring to as the “accommodation cases,” in which religious groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, Catholic universities like...

There are a few things that I do not like about being a woman. One of them is being lectured by people like Frank Bruni at The New York Times about how I am oppressed by my Catholic faith. Funny, I never realized it. Bruni’s article, “Catholicism Undervalues Women,” has many of the “standing up to the patriarchy” tropes anyone would expect, with some surprises and glaring factual errors along the way. He begins by wryly mentioning Pope Francis’ statement about equal pay for women wherein, Bruni says, the pope “fashioned himself a feminist.” Bruni laughs at this, assuring his...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Monday put health insurance companies on notice that they must cover all forms of female contraception, including the patch and intrauterine devices, without imposing co-payments or other charges. In the last month, the National Women’s Law Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation issued separate reports that found that insurers often flouted a federal requirement to provide free coverage of birth control for women under President Obama’s health care law.

A Hungarian cardinal set to play a key role in the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the family suggested Thursday that no change will result from the summit, either on Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics or on broader matters such as contraception.Cardinal Péter Erdő said that talk of revisions on those fronts is the result of “a pressure with no foundation to change Church teaching.” Erdő was the relator — more or less the chairman — of last October’s synod, and will reprise his role this year. It’s an influential post, among other things giving him the chance...

In a must-read column for the Wall Street Journal, Rev. Donald Sensing, a Methodist minister from Tennessee, argues that acceptance of same-sex marriage “will not cause the degeneration of the institution of marriage; it is the result of it.” Understand that Rev. Sensing is not happy with the situation as he sees it. “I believe that this state of affairs is contrary to the will of God,” he writes. But he argues persuasively that the public understanding of marriage was doomed when society accepted the Pill, and thereby severed the link between marriage and procreation. Marriage, he observes, had traditionally...

The Supreme Court on Monday gave new life to a lawsuit challenging ObamaCare’s contraception mandate, striking down a previous ruling in favor of the federal government. An appeals court in Cincinnati will now reconsider the legal challenge from the Catholic groups in Michigan and Tennessee that had sought exemptions from an ObamaCare provision that requires employers to cover birth control for all workers. The justices asked the lower court to reconsider the case in light of last year's landmark ruling on the contraception mandate. That ruling, which was issued last June, decided that the arts-and-crafts retailer, Hobby Lobby, could...

April 23, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new study confirms what numerous past studies have already shown: Birth control pills are reducing the fish population.A new laboratory study of the effects on fish of environmental exposure to the synthetic hormone found in contraceptive pills reiterates numerous previous studies from around the world that found evidence of fertility reduction, sex reversal, and even entire populations of fish dying off.Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Missouri exposed a small species of aquarium fish, the Japanese medaka, to 17a-ethinylestradiol (EE2), a major ingredient in oral contraceptives for women.The scientists stated...

Michigan Republican Tim Walberg was a Christian minister before winning election to Congress in 2010 — and he hasn't entirely changed jobs. In a rare Tuesday night committee meeting at which House Republicans advanced a bill curtailing reproductive rights, Walberg took the even rarer step of lecturing his colleagues on Scripture. "It is clearly taught by Jesus the Christ himself," Walberg preached to members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, "for those of us who believe in him — and I understand and I accept the fact that there are those who don't — but he said render...

The Supreme Court has again thwarted the Obama administration’s illegal crusade to coerce employers into violating their religious convictions. Late last Wednesday, Associate Justice Samuel Alito stayed an order secured by the administration in a lower court that would have forced several Catholic organizations to comply with Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Despite a high-profile Supreme Court defeat last June in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, President Obama’s HHS bureaucrats and lawyers have continued their attempts to bully obviously exempt entities into obeying the mandate. Justice Alito’s action constitutes the fifth time SCOTUS has been compelled to rein the government in. The Court...

LOS ANGELES, April 15, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Women who use the birth control pill may be shrinking their brains and increasing their chances of developing Crohn's disease, two new studies have found.Neuroscientists from the University of California, Los Angeles found that the two main regions of the brain controlling emotion and decision-making are thinner in women who take the pill.A study published April 2 in the journal Human Brain Mapping reports that the pill’s chemicals block the body’s natural hormones, altering the brain’s structure and function.The study concluded that oral contraceptive use “was associated with significantly lower cortical thickness measurements...

Draft legislation aimed at boosting a flagging birth rate threatens to reduce Iranian women to “baby-making machines” and set their rights back by decades, Amnesty International warned on Wednesday. The London-based human rights group said that a first bill, which has already been approved once by parliament, would restrict access to contraception, forcing women into unsafe backstreet abortions.It said the second draft law, which is to go before parliament next month, would close many jobs to women who choose not to or are unable to have children. …

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March 4, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Although there has always been contraception, its acceptance and practice by society as a whole is a relatively new phenomenon. In the first part of the 20th century barrier methods became through mass production increasingly used. However, with the advent of the hormonal contraceptive pill in the 1960s the contraceptive era, ushering in the sexual revolution, really took off.The term “revolution” is by no means exaggerated, for the result was a fundamental change in the understanding of human sexuality in society. With the pill, people thought, nothing can happen, i.e. no child could be conceived....

Emergency Contraception at Catholic Institutions: Bishops Can No Longer Claim Ignorance by Dr. Brian KoppFebruary 24, 2015Photo courtesy of Mike Mozart. The February 2015 Linacre Quarterly (the official journal of the Catholic Medical Association) features a groundbreaking study by Chris Kahlenborn, MD of The Polycarp Research Institute titled Mechanism of action of levonorgestrel emergency contraception. The study, contrasting the theoretical basis on which emergency contraception (otherwise known as “Plan B”) is claimed to function with the facts and statistics of the most recent research outlining the mechanism by which they cause early abortions, is sure to cause heartburn among...

VATICAN CITY — “African values are not on sale,” the new Chairman of Communications for the African bishops has said. But Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of Oyo, Nigeria, is convinced they are under threat from what Pope Francis has called an “ideological colonization” that is seeking to destroy the family. It's so bad, he says, that the United States has made clear it will not help Nigeria fight the Boko Haram terror group unless the country modify its laws regarding homosexuality, family planning and birth-control.

Washington D.C., Feb 7, 2015 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. bishops and several other Catholic and pro-life groups are asking Congress to nullify two new Washington, D.C. laws that they say could choke their ability to operate according to their religious beliefs. The legislation amounts to “unprecedented assaults upon our organizations,” the coalition of groups stated in a letter to all members of Congress. “Both laws violate the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of association protected by the First Amendment and other federal law.” After a bill is signed into law by the D.C. mayor,...

Carl Djerassi, the chemist widely considered the father of the birth control pill, has died. Stanford University spokesman Dan Stober said Djerrasi died Friday of complications of cancer at his San Francisco home. He was 91.

Both in anecdotes and “exit polls,” former Catholics frequently cite the Church’s teachings on sexuality as a reason for leaving the Faith. But these same countercultural teachings have also been the door into the Catholic Church for believers seeking a consistent morality grounded in the Gospel. Converts have benefited from both the gift of the teaching as well as their entry into the Catholic Church.Krista Millegan is one such convert. She read Blessed Pope Paul VI’s landmark encyclical Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”) with her then-fiancé, Brantly, while they were undergraduates at the evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois. “The...

When academics offer recommendations on how to strengthen families, they usually involve making left-wing policies stronger. At the Center for American Progress (CAP) on Monday, January 12, 2015, George Washington University law professor Naomi Cahn endorsed the think tank’s recommendations for “strengthened American families” which included a higher minimum wage and a higher earned income tax credit (EITC). “Most studies have found that the entire net effect of an increase in minimum wage results in a slight decrease in employment,” the University of Vermont found. “A 10 percent increase would most likely lead to only a 1 percent reduction in...

Planned Parenthood has uploaded yet another video showing Blacks using their services. Specifically abortion and birth control. As a reminder, I recently posted blogs on other videos by Planned Parenthood which negatively portrayed Blacks here and here. The Planned Parenthood of New York City video show various couples who did not properly use their birth control. The message the eugenics founded organization sends is that men need to “Be There” so their sexual partners take their birth control and don’t end up pregnant, “Her health is your health – our health” the video says. he drama begins when one of...