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Archdiocese of Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley will boycott the commencement at Boston College because the Catholic educational institution is hosting the Prime Minister of Ireland at a time when the nation faces a government bill that would okay some abortions. The College is scheduled to award Edna Kenny an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Pro-life advocates, led by Students for Life of America, are galvanizing pro-lifers against Ireland’s first pro-abortion Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s planned address to Boston College graduates. It has launched a web site, NotAtBC.com, to gather supporters to protest the speech. “Since the university has not withdrawn...

One of the most disgusting serial killers in American history is standing trial in Philadelphia at the moment – and, since it’s happening in the US, where reporting restrictions are light, the media are free to discuss his case. Only they haven’t – at least, not until recently, and even when the crimes are reported, they haven’t merited many headlines. Which is horrifying, when you consider what the killer is accused of. I’m going to leave out the nastiest details – but, seriously, if you don’t want to feel sick to your stomach, look away now.

My husband I just ended our debate about having children. To breed or not to breed, this was the question — and it had been ticking like an egg timer in the back of my head for 15 years. We talked about it for five months. In the car on the way to work. During dinner. For five minutes, for 30 minutes. After seeing nephews and nieces. I wanted it to be a decision we made, not one made for us by chance or time. I turned to friends with kids for advice. “Feel free to convince me to your...

It's the Culture of Death, silly! Brothers and Sisters, Peace be with you. Like many of you, I've been perusing the more "thoughtful" introspections by writers of national recognition. One by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker's blog caught my eye. It's titled Newtown and the Madness of Guns. Here's an excerpt: The people who fight and lobby and legislate to make guns regularly available are complicit in the murder of those children. They have made a clear moral choice: that the comfort and emotional reassurance they take from the possession of guns, placed in the balance even against the...

A federal judge Monday rejected Hobby Lobby Stores Inc.'s request to block part of the federal health care overhaul that requires the arts and craft supply company to provide insurance coverage for the morning-after and week-after birth control pills.

Adam Gopnik is a gifted essayist and writer whose contributions, often published in The New Yorker, are almost always thoughtful and interesting. Nevertheless, one of his most recent writings is deeply disturbing, and at the deepest level. Reflecting on the debate between Vice President Joseph Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan, Gopnik registered alarm at “something genuinely disturbing and scary” that had been said by Paul Ryan. Gopnik first complained that Biden and Ryan should not have even been asked about the role their Roman Catholic faith plays in their thinking, specifically on the issue of abortion. Gopnik then wrote: “Paul...

Read and weep!! Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The following is a compilation of bill signings, speeches, appointments and other actions that President Barack Obama has engaged in that have promoted abortion before and during his presidency. While Obama has promised to reduce abortions and some of his supporters believe that will happen, this long list proves his only agenda is promoting more abortions. During the presidential election, Obama selected pro-abortion Sen. Joe Biden as his vice-presidential running mate. http://www.lifenews.com/2010/11/07/obamaabortionrecord/

I don’t want to give this one away, but you must stop for 5 minutes and watch this latest LifeSiteNews video. Powerful, touching and, deeply moving! It reveals so much in so little time. There is also some astonishing new information about the woman who plays the mother in the video. Watch it and then read on.

Awhile back, The Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating and deeply saddening article exploring the reasons behind the Kennedy Family’s staunch pro-abortion position. Believe it or not, Ted Kennedy used to be pro-life. So how did he and all the other prominent Kennedys swing so far in the wrong direction? For that matter, what about some of the other Catholic pro-abortion zealots in (or recently in) high public office, such as Nancy Pelosi, Mario Cuomo, and Tom Daschle? What happened to them? (NB: I originally posted this blog entry on January 2, 2009. Given all the chattering right now from...

A new California law could expose young women who have abortions to additional safety risks because it allows unlicensed individuals to perform abortions under certain circumstances, according to pro-life advocates. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill into law over the weekend permitting nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants and midwives to perform abortions due to what Democrats see as a shortage of available doctors.

An extraordinary poll published by the British Humanist Association (BHA) highlights the public ambivalence about assisted suicide and euthanasia. In conjunction with other recent surveys, it shows that more people are in favour of the law allowing the killing of relatively healthy patients like Tony Nicklinson than of those who are terminally ill. The "respectable" wing of the assisted dying movement, Dignity in Dying, wants a very limited right to medically assisted suicide: only people who are terminally ill and in full possession of their faculties would qualify. Even this limited position is hugely controversial. But the BHA believes that...

The International Olympic Committee decided not to include in the opening ceremony a moment of silence to honor the eleven Israeli athletes killed by Palestinian gunmen during the 1972 games in Munich. That move drew the ire of NBC’s Bob Costas. During Friday’s ceremony, he commented that, although a private moment of silence was held before a mere 100 people this week at the Athlete’s Village, “for many, tonight, with the world watching, is the true time and place to remember those who were lost and how and why they died.” Instead, the Olympic ceremony featured a weird, politically correct...

The economist Thorstein Veblen once quipped that "invention is the mother of necessity." That was before the age of air-conditioning, but no technology better illustrates Veblen's point. Having developed efficient cooling, we've designed homes, businesses and transportation systems that are completely dependent on it, while the resulting greenhouse emissions create the need for even more air-conditioning. (snip) We must break this feedback loop, but what does one say to someone living in one of the tropical nations where much of the increase in cooling demand is expected? Surely not that Americans are addicted to air-conditioning and can’t give it up,...

PROVIDENCE, June 14, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Democratic congressional candidate called for attendees at a progressivist conference to exercise “cultural power” by proudly touting past abortions, and urged post-abortive audience members to stand and be recognized. Darcy Burner, who is running for a seat in the House of Representatives for Washington State’s first district, was the opening speaker for an afternoon plenary session of Netroots Nation, a convention for liberal activists held this past week in Providence, Rhode Island. The session was titled, “The War on Women,” and the theme of Burner’s talk was “Going on the Offense.” “If you...

What should be done with elderly Americans when they become very seriously ill? Should we try to save their lives or should we just let them die? Unfortunately, there is a growing consensus among the "intellectual elite" that most elderly people are not going to have a high enough "quality of life" to justify the expense of costly life saving procedures. This philosophy is now being promoted very heavily through mainstream news outlets, in our television shows and in big Hollywood movies. The elite are attempting to convince us that killing off our sick grandparents is cool and trendy. We...

Right-to-die activists hope more countries will allow assisted suicide or euthanasia in coming years as the world population ages, but opponents are determined to stop them, a dispute that flared ahead of competing conferences in Switzerland. "We have seen over the last 20 years a general migration of positivity towards this being a just cause," Ted Goodwin, the American president of the World Federation of Right-to-Die Societies, told a news conference in Zürich on Tuesday. … Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1942, if performed by a non-physician who has no direct interest in the death. Euthanasia, or...

A British citizen native to Taiwan was arrested in Bangkok Thursday after Thai police discovered in his belongings bodies of six tiny children, apparently all young enough to be victims of abortion, roasted and covered in gold leaf. The UK’s Independent newspaper reports that the children, aged between two and seven months’ gestation, were roasted “as part of a black magic ritual.” No word on whether any of the “foetuses” were still alive when the ritual began. Chow Hok Kuen, 28, faces a 2,000 baht fine ($64 U.S.) and a year in prison for possessing the bodies. “He said he...

A British man of Asian origin was arrested in Thailand after police found him in possession of six human fetuses that had been roasted and covered in gold leaf in a black magic ritual, The Telegraph reports. The man, Chow Hok Kuen, 28, confessed to police he had bought the fetuses from a Taiwanese man a few days earlier for 200,000 baht ($6,382), and he intended to smuggle them into Taiwan, where he would have been able to sell them for at least six times that amount. While the fetuses were found in a separate hotel from the one Chow...

Once, at a smart wedding in Northamptonshire when I was about 30, someone handed me a newborn baby and my skin broke out in hot hives. In Brazil, I met a ten-year-old street kid. I fed him, let him sleep and shower in my hotel room, bought him clothes, and felt an overwhelming desire to protect and nurture him. I had never before felt such a forceful maternal instinct. These events were profoundly physical reactions, both shocking to me. Just around the time of my trip to Brazil, the ghost of my never-born came back to haunt me. I began...

WASHINGTON, February 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - What do Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, “father of the sexual revolution” Alfred Kinsey, Lenin, and Hitler have in common? All these pioneers of what some call the culture of death rooted their beliefs and actions in Darwinism - a little-known fact that one conservative leader says shouldn’t be ignored. Hugh Owen of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation told an audience on Capitol Hill before the March for Life last month that the philosophical consequences of Darwinism has “totally destroyed many parts of our society.” Owen pointed to Dr. Josef Mengele,...

Because the first movie is coming out soon, I have a question for anyone who has read The Hunger Games trilogy: What did you think was the ultimate political message of the books? Because I've heard some conservatives claiming that it's a politically conservative message, but I'm not convinced. Are we saying the series has a conservative theme because of the evil, oppressive government? How do you reconcile the possibly conservative themes with the end of the last book and the changes in government? (Which to me amounts to a political version of "Meet the new boss, same as the...

The Hunger Games" is a rarity -- a Hollywood blockbuster that inspires political discourse. Is it a liberal movie? Is it a conservative flick? Is it both? It all depends on who you ask. An article from the Hollywood Reporter explains how folks can see their own beliefs reflected in the story. For example, people who back the Occupy movement note that the movie and the book it is based upon feature a world divided into rich and poor. The rich are viewed as layabouts and the poor are hard-working and put upon. Actor Penn Badgley, best known for his...

Taking Mercy, an edition of the Global TV program “16x9” in Canada, concerns a mother, Annette Corriveau, who wants her children with disabilities to be killed by euthanasia. The show also features Robert Latimer, the man who killed his daughter Tracy in 1993. Tracy had Cerebral Palsy. The show speaks to pro-euthanasia ethicist Arthur Schaefer who suggests that Robert Latimer should have been given “mercy.” Schaefer also suggests that Corriveau should simply stop feeding her children, but Corriveau says she does not wish to starve her children to death. This is a dangerously one-sided show. Taking Mercy represents the first...

A disturbing belief is spreading within the hearts of many around the world and within America: that a person is better off dead than disabled.But a leading advocate for people with disabilities is fighting that notion and looking to educate the world and the church about the precious lives and rights of "those who seem to be weaker."The Christian Post spoke to Joni Eareckson Tada on Thursday, the founder and CEO of Joni and Friends International Disability Center, about her countless achievements for the disabled community, unwavering faith in God, battle with breast cancer, and her latest recognition by Breakpoint...

An engineer has come up with macabre rollercoaster concept where passengers are thrilled and then ‘killed’. The chilling Euthanasia Coaster is a theoretical machine engineered to ‘humanely, with elegance and euphoria, take the life of a human being’. It is designed to subject the rider to a series of unique experiences from euphoria to thrill and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness. When travelling at 100m/s, the passenger would then pass away following a lack of oxygen reaching the brain. The surreal structure is the brainchild of Lithuanian engineer Julijonas Urbonas.

The culture of death is again attempting to rationalize infanticide with a kinder, gentler euphemism they call “after-birth abortions.” The central tenet of this latest approach revolves around the relativist argument that if a child can be killed in the mother’s womb for reasons of convenience, then why not murder the child after it is born with the same rationale? Two university students in Australia, Alberto Giubilini who attends Monash University in Melbourne, and Francesca Minerva at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne, have written an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics...

Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, has described 2011 as “the most difficult year in [Planned Parenthood’s] history.” Well, welcome to 2012. The Alliance Defense Fund, in conjunction with the Susan B. Anthony List, released its summary report on publicly available federal and state audits that identify waste, abuse, and potential fraud by Planned Parenthood and state family planning programs and reveal systemic misuse of nearly $100 million taxpayer dollars. The audits speak for themselves in detailing Planned Parenthood’s misuse of the money that’s been funneled to state family planning programs and Planned Parenthood affiliates. Ten state...

If there is one word that captures the Orwellian nature of contemporary feminism, it is "choice." It's not just the word's wide use as a euphemism for abortion. You can understand why people on that side of the abortion issue prefer to frame their position in abstract terms, as a defense of liberty, rather than concretely discussing the specific freedom they are defending. Some of them are no doubt sincere in saying that they favor "the right to choose" in general and have no brief for abortion in particular. But not all. People who claim to favor "reproductive choice" are...

Life-end Clinic will send teams to the homes of patients' whose doctors refuse to carry out the procedure A mobile euthanasia clinic will begin operating in the Netherlands on Thursday, to assist patients' whose own doctor refuse to carry out the procedure. According to the AFP news agency, the the Levenseindekliniek (Life-end clinic) has prepared several teams made up of a specially-trained doctor and nurse to attend to patients in their homes. "People who think they comply with the criteria for euthanasia can register," the Right To Die Netherlands (NVVE) spokeswoman Walburg de Jong is quoted as saying. "If they...

Good grief! A Maryland state legislator has filed a bill that would allow surrogate decision makers to “donate� kidneys and liver lobes. From HB 449: THIS SUBSECTION APPLIES ONLY TO A PATIENT WHO HAS BEEN CERTIFIED UNDER § 5–606(B) OF THIS SUBTITLE TO BE IN A PERSISTENT 8 VEGETATIVE STATE. (3) A PERSON AUTHORIZED TO MAKE HEALTH CARE DECISIONS FOR ANOTHER UNDER THIS SECTION MAY AUTHORIZE THE DONATION OF A NONVITAL ORGAN IF THE DONATION IS BASED ON: (I) THE WISHES OF THE PATIENT AS PREVIOUSLY EXPRESSED BY THE PATIENT; OR (II) A DETERMINATION BY THE SURROGATE THAT THE DONATION...

Rick Santorum's claim that the Netherlands advocates mass murder through involuntary euthanasia has prompted a furious backlash from the Western European country, with local news sources calling the Republican a "crazy extreme" candidate making up facts to stir up his political base. "Rick Santorum Thinks He Knows the Netherlands: Murder of the Elderly on a Grand Scale" fumed the headline of the newspaper NRC Handelsblad on Saturday. The article references an interview, barely played up by the American press, in which Santorum claims that euthanasia makes up "10 percent of all deaths" in the Netherlands," and that many of those...

UPDATE, 12:14p: More evidence the “compromise” stinks: Planned Parenthood likes it. UPDATE, 12:02p: From a House source: This “new policy” is a distinction without a difference.  The services the religious organization opposes won’t be listed in the contract, but the insurance companies will give it the employees anyway.  Insurance companies will justify providing the coverage that the religious charity opposes by swearing that birth control coverage doesn’t actually cost anything because it’s cheaper than pregnancy services, so it’s just a free perk. The administration will argue that people of faith should be fine with this arrangement, because they can tell...

The drama continues to deepen.When the board of directors of the Susan G. Komen Foundation decided to halt funding to notorious abortion provider Planned Parenthood, abortion activists launched an informal investigation. Something sinister was happening here; some pro-life plague had to have infiltrated Komen. They pinned their attention on Komen’s relatively new VP, Karen Handel, an admittedly pro-life former Republican candidate for the governor of Georgia. They pointed out that the announcement of Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns’ investigation into Planned Parenthood preceded Komen’s revision of its grant eligibility criteria, which now excludes any organization under investigation by local, state or...

Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee has opened a new satellite health center in Johnson City. Located at 409 E. Unaka Ave., the Planned Parenthood office is open to patients... ...That's all you need to know. Go straight to the first comment!

“Planned Parenthood’s mission is to pressure as many women into having an abortion as it can,” a former abortion facility worker has revealed. From Catherine Anthony Adair’s op-ed piece in The Washington Examiner: In 1997, I began working at a Boston Planned Parenthood clinic as a young, idealistic college student who strongly believed in what I had been told about the organization, that I would be helping other young women access safe and affordable health care. My time there was not spent providing prenatal care to pregnant women, providing counseling or basic health care services or educating women about reproductive...

Amelia "Mia" Rivera has Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, a complex genetic disorder that causes mental and physical impairments, and her family said that the 3-year-old will die if she does not get a kidney in the next six months to a year. Mia's mother Chrissy Rivera has said the family is willing to donate a live organ, but Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has reportedly told her that they will not recommend transplantation for the toddler because of her disabilities. Rivera blogged about her daughter's plight last Friday, and now more than 20,000 online supporters from 15 states are petitioning the hospital to...

HUXLEY, Iowa -- An Iowa woman was charged Tuesday in the death of her newborn twins. The Department of Public Safety said Huxley police were called to check on the welfare of a 22-year-old woman, now identified as Jackie Burkle. Burkle was found inside a duplex in the 500 block of North Main Avenue on Saturday. When authorities arrived, they found she'd given birth to two baby girls in the apartment. Authorities said the babies did not survive. Authorities said the babies were found in the trunk of Burkle's vehicle, which was parked in the driveway. "Miss Burkle indicated she...

Guy Bechor reports that Egypt is in the process of destroying all remnants of its ancient, non-Muslim cultures. It was barely mentioned in the Israeli and global media, but the following event pertains to the whole of Western civilization: Last Saturday, violent groups of Islamic-Salafi radicals burned the famous scientific institute established by Napoleon in Egypt after its first encounter with the West. Some historians consider it the start of modern times in the Middle East. The site, L’Institut d’Egypte, held some 200,000 original and rare books, exhibits, maps, archeological findings and studies from Egypt and the entire Middle East,...

Imagine California without the sunshine, New York without the cultural elan, New Jersey without Chris Christie. That’s Illinois. I have previously deemed the Governor of Illinois, Patrick Quinn (D.), the worst governor in the country. Go here to read the post in which I bestowed the title. After his meeting with the Illinois bishops on Friday December 16, 2011, I have attached “Lying” to his title. The bishops asked for the meeting to protest the constant pro-abortion advocacy of Quinn. After the meeting here is what Quinn said: “A lot of the discussion was how we could work together to...

The “slippery slope” is often derided as a logical fallacy. But when one of the leading advocacy groups for euthanasia in Belgium posts an article entitled “Euthanasie: tijd voor de volgende stap, Euthanasia, time for the next step”, it’s hard not to think that it may not be so illogical after all. The Humanistisch-Vrijzinnige Vereniging (Humanist-Liberal Association) complains that eligibility for euthanasia is far too restrictive. At the moment, only people with unbearable suffering can be euthanased. This leaves out people in irreversible comas, people with dementia, people with irreversible brain diseases and people who are under 18. This is...

A woman in Australia who was pregnant with twins decided to have one of her babies aborted after doctors discovered that he had a life-threatening congenital heart defect. The seriously disturbing part? The doctors aborted the wrong fetus, terminating a perfectly healthy child. After doctors realized the "blunder," the woman, who was 32 weeks pregnant, had to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the sick fetus, where it was later terminated. The Royal Women's Hospital confirmed the incident and referred to it as a "terrible tragedy." Um, yeah ... one could say that. I honestly really don't even know what...

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as...

As the world population reaches seven billion people, the BBC's Mike Gallagher asks whether efforts to control population have been, as some critics claim, a form of authoritarian control over the world's poorest citizens.> In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson warned that the US might be overwhelmed by desperate masses, and he made US foreign aid dependent on countries adopting family planning programmes. Other wealthy countries such as Japan, Sweden and the UK also began to devote large amounts of money to reducing Third World birth rates. > Meanwhile, Paul Ehrlich has also amended his view of the issue. If he...

As Jenny lay on the obstetrician's examination table, she was grateful that the ultrasound technician had turned off the overhead screen. She didn't want to see the two shadows floating inside her. Since making her decision, she had tried hard not to think about them, though she could often think of little else. She was 45 and pregnant after six years of fertility bills, ovulation injections, donor eggs and disappointment – and yet here she was, 14 weeks into her pregnancy, choosing to extinguish one of two healthy foetuses, almost as if having half an abortion. As the doctor inserted...

I'm penning this column from Australia where I was privileged to speak a few days ago at an event at Parliament House celebrating Australia's National Marriage Day. As in America, marriage in Australia is under attack by homosexual activists who seek to shoehorn their lifestyle choices into a shoe that will never fit: marriage. They want the law-and public opinion--to redefine marriage to include homosexual sex as something good, the moral equivalent of marital sexuality expressed by a husband and a wife. Pro-family Australians are blessed with charismatic leaders like MP's Bob Katter and Kevin Andrews, and pro-family advocate Babette...

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, August 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A recently retired New York Times reporter has penned a book in which she details how she followed through on a shocking pact to help her 88-year-old mother, Estelle, starve to death. Julia Gross with her mother Estelle. In an excerpt from the book, “A Bittersweet Season,” published recently in the Daily Mail, Jane Gross describes her mother’s increasing dissatisfaction with life as her health deteriorated, and her mounting desire to die, despite the fact that she was not terminally ill. “So here we were, my mother and I, wishing that she...

I am sure this will be happening in Madrid as it did in London. Richard Dawkins brought at least one laspsed Catholic back to the Church during the Papal visit to the UK. She saw the the anti-Pope snarling mob led by Dawkins and Tatchel, with their plastic devil horns and inflated condoms, sex "toys" and angry faces and she saw the sheer joy of those cheering the Pope and the banners carried by the enthusiastic youth. She said it wasn't about arguments, it was about faces. Dawkins & co. glaring and hopeless, those who were there cheering the Pope...

Most philosophical arguments against the personhood of embryos, fetuses or comatose patients focus on consciousness as the capacity that corresponds to the possession of moral value.  Conscious human beings, even minimally conscious, are obviously ‘one of us’ — have interests, feel pain, perceive objects, and can offer at least rudimentary gestures of self-report.  Since they are “persons� they should not be subjected to purely instrumental treatment such as lethal experimentation or deadly dosages of drugs.  Those who cannot exercise consciousness are either not yet persons (e.g., embryos) or no longer persons (e.g., irreversibly comatose patients). In end-of-life issues, all the...

President Obama is on the verge of achieving his liberal revolution. His goal is to destroy our Judeo-Christian culture and replace it with European-style radical secularism. The administration is now contemplating forcing health insurance companies to provide free birth control - including the "morning-after" pill - as part of Obamacare. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is seriously considering adding contraception to the list of services that must be fully covered by insurers without charging co-payments. HHS is expected to make its final decision before Aug. 1.

WASHINGTON – Millions of women stand to gain free access to a broad menu of birth control methods, thanks to a recommendation issued Tuesday by health experts advising the government. An Institute of Medicine panel recommended that the government require health insurance companies to cover birth control for women as preventive care, without copayments. Contraception — along with such care as diabetes tests during pregnancy and screening for the virus that causes cervical cancer — was one of eight recommended preventive services for women. "Unintended pregnancies carry health consequences for the mother — psychological, emotional and physical — and also...