Free Republic

A new era of communication has begun, however, says Sister HollandThe controversial investigations of the US women religious by the Vatican stemmed largely from a “cultural chasm”, the group’s president has said. But the chasm is closing, Sister Sharon Holland added, and a new era of communication has begun. Immaculate Heart of Mary Sister Holland, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, told the group’s annual assembly yesterday (August 12) that behaviour that is normal for a woman in American culture – such as asking questions and thinking critically – might easily be perceived as disrespectful in another setting....

Sean Hannity invited Charles Cooke from National Review on tonight to debate Ann Coulter on the rise of Donald Trump. Cooke went on the attack right at the start but Ann Coulter let him have it. Via Hannity: The Blaze reported on the exchange: “ National Review reporter Charles Cooke appeared on the Fox News Channel Thursday night and confronted host Sean Hannity and guest Ann Coulter about their apparent support for Republican presidential contender Donald Trump. “I am just astonished by the collective insanity that seems to have marked the conservative movement over the last month,” Cooke said, reacting...

Just weeks after a prominent health-care expert predicted that Democrats would begin a nationwide push for taxpayer-funded contraception for schoolgirls, including abortion-inducing drugs, Virginia is proving to be the next battleground. The idea started in a Colorado pilot program, in which teenage girls were given contraceptives including implanted abortafacients known as long-acting reversible contraceptives, or LARCs, and intra-uterine devices, also called IUDs. The program showed marked reductions in teenage births and reported abortions. Efforts then began to enact a taxpayer-funded version of the program, but it died in the Colorado Legislature over conscience and religious liberty concerns. Writing in the...

A Fox News Channel panel became heated Thursday as two conservative hosts on “The Five” clashed with their liberal colleague over the Planned Parenthood controversy. Passions were ignited when Geraldo Rivera accused Eric Bolling of being against federal funding for Planned Parenthood because he is pro-life. Bolling was not in the mood for an on-air battle. “Can you not do this again today? Can you not do this again today?” he asked. Rivera continued hammering away at him. “I’m not commenting on abortion, Geraldo!” Bolling quipped. “I’m commenting on selling body parts!” “What is a good abortion to you?” Rivera...

The progressive movement that has overtaken the Democratic Party gains its moral authority in a morally relativistic world in part based on its support of the “oppressed” over the “oppressor.” As Joshua Muravchik ably argues in his Making David Into Goliath, in this construct, Israel has morphed into the oppressor, swapping roles with the Muslim countries that have wished to destroy her from the time of her founding. The Leftist-Jihadist nexus of which Andy McCarthy writes, on display from elite college campuses to the president’s cabinet, is perhaps stronger than it has ever been. It believes in punishing the ultimate...

The more areas in which government interjects beyond its clearly defined Constitutional prerogatives, the greater the probability that it will use taxpayer funds to support causes that violate the beliefs of large swaths of citizens. This is true on a bipartisan basis. And this brings us to one of the brilliant insights of the Founders, who created a constitutional republic as opposed to a democracy. In a republic, the rights of the smallest minority, the individual, are protected because of a limited government with negative rights. On the other hand, in a democracy we get majority rule, where 51% of...

Planned Parenthood has long been able to promulgate its 3% abortion lie, and the mainstream media has eaten it up hook line and sinker, not once questioning the veracity of the largest abortion provider in the U.S. That is all changing. For the first time, the mainstream media has begun to question Planned Parenthood. The gruesomeness of Planned Parenthood’s barbarity – selling murdered babies for parts – has been exposed, and the mainstream media has been forced to look at the stark reality of the Culture of Death. Yesterday, the Washington Post – no friend to the pro-life movement –...

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson claims that the “Black Lives Matter” activists are “creating strife”. Carson said, “I spent my entire career as a pediatric neurosurgeon, frequently staying up all night, fighting, struggling to save the lives of little babies, even operating on babies inside the womb”. When asked how he sold himself to voters and why they should pick him over the other 16, Carson said, “Because I have a long record of accomplishment of solving very complex problems in many cases things that people have been trying to solve for decades …” “What the Republican Party needs to...

Let’s be honest. Obamacare was nothing more than a bait and switch. But Americans never took the bait. In 2010, as President Obama and his fellow Democrats were trying desperately to ram Obamacare down our throats, they made one false claim after another. They told us health-care premiums would go down. They insisted if you liked your health-care plan you could keep it. They guaranteed Obamacare wouldn’t include any tax increases for the middle class. Americans didn’t buy these lofty promises then, and they certainly don’t now, given that each and every one of them has been broken. Five years...

Dr. Ben Carson spoke with Eric Bolling on The O’Reilly Factor about his recent controversial statements about how Planned Parenthood clinics are strategically placed in order to control the African American population. Carson began the discussion by reiterating his position that Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was a eugenist who was “was not enamored of black people.”As Bolling asked him about abortion rates in black communities, Carson responded by saying it was a matter of deciding whether those black lives matter as much.“The number one cause of death for black people is abortion, and I wonder if maybe some people might...

The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery has issued a statement saying a bust of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger will remain in the museum even after a group of black pastors asked for it to be removed.In a letter to the gallery last week, the group – Ministers Taking a Stand – said Sanger was a eugenicist who favored slowing the birthrate of blacks or eliminating it altogether."Perhaps the Gallery is unaware that Ms. Sanger supported black eugenics, a racist attitude toward black and other minority babies, an elitist attitude toward those she regarded as 'the feeble minded;' speaking at a...

I wanted to use our time tonight to directly deal with an attack launched on me today by the left and the media. A couple questions came in on this subject, so I want to address it head on. Today I was accused by the press as having done research on fetal tissue. It simply is not true. The study they distributed by an anonymous source was done in 1992. The study was about tumors. I won’t bore you with the science. There were four doctors' names on the study. One was mine. I spent my life studying brain tumors...

A judge with the Superior Court of the State of California issued a ruling this afternoon denying a request by StemExpress to access videos and documentation obtained by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) during its investigation into Planned Parenthood's practice of harvesting and selling the body parts of aborted babies. Judge Joanne O’Donnell argued that the requested injunction, which would have prevented CMP from releasing some of their undercover footage featuring high level StemExpress employees, would violate CMP's First Amendment rights.

Women who get pregnant from rape or incest should be able to go to the emergency room for an "abortion pill," Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Thursday. Speaking on Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” the anchor asked Carson if he believes women should be able to get abortions in cases of rape or incest. “I would hope that they would very quickly avail themselves of the emergency room, and in the emergency room, they have the ability to administer RU-486 and other possibilities before you have a developing fetus,” Carson said, more than five minutes into...

On the Five in a discussion about Planned Parenthood harvesting fetal tissue, organs and cadavers for profit and/or research Geraldo Rivera is arguing with Greg Gutfeld about uses for the physical remains that PP takes during abortions.

Former President Jimmy Carter has said in an interview that he does not believe Jesus Christ would support abortion in most cases, identifying the "only conflict" he's had between his political duties and Christian faith. "I have never believed that Jesus would be in favor of abortion, unless it was the result of rape or incest, or the mother's life was in danger. That's been the only conflict I've had in my career between political duties and Christian faith," Carter told The New York Times in an interview posted on Friday. The Democrat made the comments in response to a...

The financial ties between Planned Parenthood and Democrats run deep, with the taxpayer-funded women's health care and abortion provider's employees and political arms donating at least $25 million to party lawmakers over the past 15 years, according to a FoxNews.com analysis. The money, which flowed through an extensive web of Planned Parenthood employees, political action committees and soft-money donors accounts for 99 percent of all political donations linked to Planned Parenthood, leaving little doubt about the partisan preference of the organization. Amid calls for ending the organization's roughly $500 million in annual federal funding, Planned Parenthood may need its political...

I say: Privatize everything. Regulations forbid buying and selling organs, so the market cannot operate. Desperate patients must wait and hope someone gives an organ out of sheer generosity, that someone dies at just the right time, and that hospital administrators bump their case to the top of the list. In the United States, 100,000 people are on waiting lists for kidneys. Kidneys make up 80 percent of the organ shortage. We have two kidneys but need only one. Donors could save many lives, but not enough choose to donate. By contrast, in Iran, there’s often a waiting line of...

I had almost given up on anyone helping me understand what Scott Walker meant when he explained why he opposed abortion exceptions not just for rape and incest, but also to save the life of the mother. "There are many other alternatives that can also protect the life of that mother," Walker said during Thursday's debate. "That's been consistently proven." But then a reader came to my rescue, and it turns out that Jonathan Allen had it right in the first place. It really does derive from the Catholic doctrine of intent in medical care. Bryan Fischer of the American...

Three more states—Alabama, Louisiana, and New Hampshire—have cut off state funding to Planned Parenthood (PP) in the wake of recent videos released by the Center for Medical Progress that appear to show PP officials negotiating over the sale of aborted baby organs and tissue. The three are the latest states to defund the nation’s largest abortion provider. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker ended state funding of abortion-performing facilities, including Planned Parenthood, in 2011. According to LifeSiteNews, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, and Texas also prohibit state funds from going to any facility that performs abortions. …