Free Republic

Pope Francis hinted that the use of contraceptives may be morally acceptable as a response to the Zika epidemic, during an question-and-answer session on February 18. Speaking to reporters who accompanied him on his return flight to Rome, after a visit to Mexico, the Pope said that "avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil." While abortion cannot ever be justified, he suggested, avoiding pregnancy could be a "lesser evil" in light of the alleged dangers of birth defects. During an interview session that proved controversial even by the standards of this pontificate, the Pope said: * US presidential candidate Donald...

"There are times that lay Catholics have to step forward to say what we as priests cannot." These were the words spoken to me during a time in my life that I felt called as a Catholic to defend my Catholic Church from an assault from within. That time has come again this week. To do so is never easy. For nearly three years now Catholics have defended Pope Francis as being "taken out of context" or "misunderstood" by the media. We have watched and cringed at what has come out of the Vatican, been ignored by the Vatican, and...

Seventy million dollars is a lot of dough for a group named the Little Sisters of the Poor.But that's what the religious order says it will be forced to pay the government if they continue to refuse to arrange for insurance that provides lay employees coverage for contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization.This week, the sisters, along with several Christian colleges and other entities, filed a brief with the Supreme Court, which is hearing a challenge to the Obamacare "Contraceptive Mandate" in March.The religious objectors are represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Alliance Defending Freedom."The Little Sisters...

The media never stops banging on about women’s health, particularly in the wake of the disgusting revelations about Planned Parenthood. They’re always telling us that “women’s bodies” and “women’s choices” should be paramount. But just how healthy are the solutions to unwanted pregnancy that they propose? Ladies — I’d like you to imagine that you are Neo from the popular film franchise The Matrix. For the purposes of this thought experiment, I am Laurence Fishburne, except with really good hair, a charming personality, and of course I’m much blacker than he is. In one hand I hold a pill that...

While Republican presidential contenders join with much of the world in focusing on the greatest risk to stability today — Islamic State militants, not climate change — Hillary Clinton insisted Ted Cruz wants to ban contraceptives.Even though it’s not *exactly* true.Pulling a page out of the Barack Obama’s campaign playbook, this time without the assistance of ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Clinton is wanting to shift the conversation away from a foreign policy disaster she helped create by trying to push social issues to the fore. Ted Cruz says no one is trying to ban contraception. Here are five times he tried...

RUSH: Lucy, Columbus, Ohio, Open Line Friday and it is your turn. CALLER: Hello, Rush. RUSH: Hi. CALLER: Hi. Yeah, I don't have a lot of time, I realize that. I want to get right to my point. I'm a vascular specialist who sees a lot of blood clots in the lung, in the leg, sometimes in the arteries, but a lot in the veins, and probably one out of every three blood clots that I see in women is from the use of contraception. RUSH: Wait just a minute. Wait just a minute. Are you telling me, did I...

She died after 25 days on the pill. She was only 21. As in so many blood clot cases caused by birth control, she was misdiagnosed when she went to the hospital struggling to breathe and experiencing pain in her legs and ribs. She was sent home diagnosed with a bruised sternum. Four days later, she collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. On May 14, three days after arriving at the hospital, she was pronounced dead. According to an article in Cosmopolitan, tests revealed a large blood clot on her lung. Her name was Fallan Kurek, and she worked with...

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...

Only an hour ago we had been lamenting yet another incredibly bad road. Here in the Ugandan outback, it is as pointless to complain about the roads as it is to complain about politicians in America, but railing against the unchangeable can lighten the mood. But on the way out of a small village in the Bukedea region of Uganda, we didn’t feel the bumps. That was when our team’s defenses failed, and when the gravity of the assault on women—perpetrated by the champions of “women’s health” and “empowerment”—really hit home. It may have been just me, but my guess...

Shortages of basic products such as corn, milk and chicken have plagued Venezuela for years, creating long lines at supermarkets and pushing inflation well past the 60% mark just in the last year alone. More recently, shortages are affecting people in the South American country in a more personal way. Venezuelan consumers complain condoms and birth control pills are nowhere to be found. Shortages that first affected the dining table have now made their way into the bedroom.

The Supreme Court is heading in the wrong direction by allowing a corporation to impose its religious beliefs on its employees, according to David Gans, the director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center.Gans co-authored the new book titled Religious Liberties for Corporations? Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution with Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.“This is the first time the Supreme Court has said corporations have this right in more than 200 years in our nation’s history,” Gans said during an event at...

Hopelessly confused about how the Catholic Church and leaders at Jesuit universities view birth control, and blissfully unaware that a 36-count pack of Trojan-enz lubricated, latex condoms can be purchased at Amazon.com for just $13.97, student activists at Fordham University are demanding that the school provide free condoms on campus.The activists at Fordham, which bills itself as “the Jesuit University of New York,” belong to a group called S.A.G.E.S. (The acronym stands for Sex and Gender Equity and Safety.) On its Twitter page, SAGES has an image of an erect condom.In a Change.org petition, the group proclaims that a lack...

If you would like to be filled with despair for the prospects of democracy, spend a few minutes attempting to decipher the psephological musings of Lena Dunham, the distinctly unappealing actress commissioned by Planned Parenthood to share with her presumably illiterate following “5 Reasons Why I Vote (and You Should, Too).” That’s 21st-century U.S. politics in miniature: a half-assed listicle penned by a half-bright celebrity and published by a gang of abortion profiteers. It is an excellent fit, if you think about it: Our national commitment to permanent, asinine, incontinent juvenility, which results in, among other things, a million or...

Cardinal Walter Kasper, a close influence on Pope Francis, says it is up to parents to decide how many children to have ahead of global gathering of Roman Catholic bishops to discuss the family A leading reformist Cardinal close to Pope Francis has hinted at the possibility of a reinterpretation of the Roman Catholic Church’s blanket ban on artificial contraception. Cardinal Walter Kasper said it was “the responsibility of the parents” to decide how many children they should have. He also said that so-called natural family planning, which is promoted by the Church as an alternative to contraception, also...

The Obama administration has filed a brief with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver indicating it plans to develop an alternative for Catholic and other religious nonprofit employers to opt out of providing federally mandated contraceptives they object to including in their employee health care coverage. Several media outlets, including AP, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, reported July 23 that the administration said it would come up with a "work-around" that would be different than the accommodation it currently has available to such employers. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as part...

Boy, our political debate is getting crasser by the moment. And so it is that the National Organization for Women has put the Little Sisters of the Poor, an international congregation of Roman Catholic nuns who have devoted their lives to caring for the elderly poor, on its "Dirty 100" list. NOW is upset that the Little Sisters sued the federal government, arguing that new ObamaCare mandates are inhibiting their constitutional right to freely practice their faith - that their vow to advance the dignity of life for every person, no matter how weak or unwanted, means they can never...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren now says that last year’s government shutdown was about birth control. Warren did not make the remark in an off-the-cuff setting. She made it in a prepared speech. Warren said it on the floor of the Senate while supporting a bill that she knows has absolutely zero chance of becoming law. “Remember last year’s government shutdown that nearly tanked our economy?” Warren asked. “That fight started with a GOP effort to hold the whole operation of the federal government hostage in order to try to force Democrats and the president to let employers deny workers access to...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Politicians here have not even figured out how yet to implement their new law requiring us to pay for everybody else’s health care, and already people are clamoring to legalize drugs that are, at the very least, hazardous to their health. The good people of Colorado and Washington state can now buy and smoke pot without violating state laws. The movement to do so is spreading among other states like a hot tropical virus through a detention facility on the Mexican border. I, for one, have never really cared one way or the other if people choose to smoke pot....

To the editor: When the Supreme Court handed down its Hobby Lobby decision, I was glad — glad because it would be the start of our country realizing how insane it is to link business and healthcare. ("The Hobby Lobby case proves the necessity of single-payer healthcare," July 1) I know that offering medical care to workers began as a perk, but having started something is no reason to carry on with an insane system that has made our medical care outrageously and unnecessarily expensive. Medical care must be made affordable to all, without having businesses get in the way....

A judge in Australia has been criticised after saying incest may no longer be a taboo and that the community may now accept consensual sex between adult siblings. Judge Garry Neilson, from the district court in the state of New South Wales, likened incest to homosexuality, which was once regarded as criminal and "unnatural" but is now widely accepted. He said incest was now only a crime because it may lead to abnormalities in offspring but this rationale was increasingly irrelevant because of the availability of contraception and abortion.