Free Republic

Jill Hartle might seem an unlikely advocate for abortion rights, but after a devastating pregnancy loss, she’s raising her voice. A conservative Christian and former Ms. South Carolina, Jill was a Republican until last summer, when in the wake of new abortion restrictions in her state, she endured the “excruciating” experience of terminating a pregnancy with a baby who had a severe heart defect. Because of South Carolina’s abortion laws, Jill and her husband, Matt, had to spend weeks waiting for availability at a clinic out of state, fly there, endure wrenching time away from their family and support system,...

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the nation should move away from restrictive measures such as quarantines and social distancing and focus on reducing severe disease from Covid-19. In new guidelines released Thursday, the agency no longer recommends staying at least 6 feet away from other people to reduce the risk of exposure -- a shift from guidance that had been in place since the early days of the pandemic. The shift is a sign of how much has changed since the beginning of the pandemic more than two years ago. Nearly the entire US population has...

CNN — A new data analysis identifies clusters of unvaccinated people, most of them in the southern United States, that are vulnerable to surges in Covid-19 cases and could become breeding grounds for even more deadly Covid-19 variants. The analysis by researchers at Georgetown University identified 30 clusters of counties with low vaccination rates and significant population sizes. The five most significant of those clusters are sprawled across large swaths of the southeastern United States and a smaller portion in the Midwest. The five clusters are largely in parts of eight states, starting in the east in Georgia and stretching...

Vaccines never tested in people with immune deficiencies While there's no clear number of how many Americans are taking medications that might prove to be a challenge for the Covid-19 vaccine, a new study can help give an estimate. In a paper published last month, Dr. Beth Wallace, a rheumatologist and her team at the University of Michigan, looked at a database of more than 3 million Americans to see how many took immunosuppressants. Based on that data, Wallace estimates that about 60 million Americans are taking immunosuppressants that could interfere with the vaccine.

Has CNN found their new Sandra Fluke poster child for “free” birth control? On Monday, CNN posted a real “tear jerker” tale about a married couple fearing they would not longer be able to get prescriptions for birth control if the GOP’s health care bill passed in the Senate because it would shut down their local Planned Parenthood clinic. Ariana and Kevin Gonzalez told CNN that they would have to resort to going to Mexico to get the contraceptives they need, since the new bill would likely shut down their local clinic because of slashed government funding. Instead of taking an...