Free Republic

AURORA, CO – A Planned Parenthood affiliate awarded a local business for increasing the number of abortions it performed over the previous year. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains gave a special commendation to its office in Aurora, Colorado, for "exceeding abortion visits first half of fiscal year 2012 compared to first half of fiscal year 2013.” A former abortion industry worker took a picture of the award and sent it to And Then There Were None, the ministry of former Planned Parenthood manager Abby Johnson to those employed in her former industry. “Ever since I left Planned Parenthood, I...

Archbishop Paul Coakley has called on Catholics to pray that God might change the minds of the organizers of a “Black Mass” scheduled for later this year in Oklahoma City. On Tuesday, Coakley expressed his astonishment and disappointment at this event and called on community leaders to reconsider whether it is an appropriate use of public space. “The ‘Black Mass’ that is scheduled for the Civic Center in September is a satanic inversion and distortion of the most sacred beliefs not only of Catholics, but of all Christians,” Coakley said. Coakley, leader of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, said for...

House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi recently said while visiting the U.S.-Mexico border this past weekend that Americans should see the influx of children immigrating to the U.S. as an "opportunity," rather than a "crisis," arguing that they are all "God's children." The House Democratic leader made her comments while visiting the Texas-Mexico border over the weekend. According to Fox News, Pelosi argued on Saturday that Americans should see the influx of immigrating children as a humanitarian opportunity, rather than a crisis, although the Democrat did admit that the situation has "crisis qualities." "This crisis that some call a crisis, we...

NARAL added to its tidy collection of lies today when the group released a meme that juxtaposed Viagra and a pack of regular, hormonal birth control pills. Over the picture of Viagra was stamped the word “Covered.” Over the picture of the pack of birth control pills were stamped the words, “Not covered.” Why does this matter? Because it’s a lie that many pro-abortion advocates believe, and are spreading throughout social media with abandon.So let’s set the record straight: Today’s SCOTUS ruling did NOT ban low-dose hormonal contraceptives (although a strong case can be made for the abortifacient qualities of...

No line in bioethics is ever fixed. Rather, the push to eradicate the boundaries that keep medical professionalism tied to Hippocratic values (sniffed at as “paternalism” by many in the field) continues unabated, with new boundary lines created, consolidated, and then moved again into ever-more extreme territory.Some call this, the “slippery slope.” Case in point: Suicide by starvation, known as VSED (voluntary stop eating and drinking). Not only do bioethicists say doctors should participate in this method of suicide by palliating the pain starvation and dehydration causes, but also DO IT FOR THE PATIENT if they stated they wanted to...

Reliance on junk science, backwards ideas about religious freedom—it’s all there in the conservative majority’s awful Hobby Lobby ruling. In its much-anticipated Hobby Lobby ruling, the Supreme Court has ruled by the usual 5-4 margin that closely held corporations cannot be required to provide contraception coverage. The ruling was narrowly tailored to apply only to the Obamacare contraception mandate and no other insurance mandates and explicitly does not shield employers who might rely on religious grounds to justify other discrimination. That said, while the ruling could have been worse, it's still dumb. At the heart of both Hobby Lobby and...

Governor Rick Perry of Texas recently made waves when he was asked whether he thought homosexuality is a disorder. He replied that he was not professionally qualified to pronounce on a medical or mental health question, and then added, “Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that . . . I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.” As you might expect, this...

<p>The Supreme Court has ruled on behalf of Hobby Lobby against ObamaCare mandating them to pay for at least four drugs they deem abortive which would violate their religious freedoms!</p> <p>Following the ruling, Twitter filled up with treats to burn Hobby Lobby to the ground.</p>

Dov Charney was called the CEO of Sleezecake, responsible for the heightened pornification of fashion advertisements aimed at very young women, and he remained king of the mountain at American Apparel as long as the heap he was sitting on was green, as in money. For a while, it was. But last week, the board of directors of the company he created fired him and the reign of Dov Charney, came to an end. He still owns 27 percent of the company, and he's fighting the sacking. For anyone unfamiliar with fashion-trade gossip, American Apparel offered a mixed bag of...

ear Demetria: I am the mother of two. I have an amazing husband and father to my children. The last child is not his, and he is unaware. His best friend and I had a one-night stand two years ago when my hubby was out of town. I can’t bring myself to come clean. I just started going to therapy about this. The guilt is making me miserable. I feel honesty would break our whole family apart. I'm afraid to find out what my husband may do. —Anonymous My grandmother had a saying about truth: “What’s done in the dark...

PHILADELPHIA, PA – On Thursday, the Kermit Gosnell legal saga finally came to an end as the last two employees of his “house of horrors” abortion facility faced justice. Former Gosnell associates Lynda Williams and Tina Baldwin became the final defendants to be sentenced in the most publicized abortion case in decades. Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner sentenced Williams, 45, to serve five to 10 years in prison for two counts of third-degree murder. Baldwin, 48, received 30 months of probation after pleading guilty to sustaining a corrupt organization, conspiracy, and corrupting a minor. Williams entered a guilty plea...

At long last, a mainstream movie about a procedure that millions of American women have undergone. It also happens to be really funny. Regardless of what one thinks about abortion, it cannot be denied that it is a common medical procedure for women. Roughly 30 percent of American women will obtain one. And yet, as Slate’s Dana Stevens has observed, abortion has virtually disappeared as a subject from popular American film and television. Dramas featuring young women routinely use convenient miscarriages as plot devices to avoid having characters make realistic choices, while movies like Knocked Up and Juno follow all...

<p>The Daily Journal has reported on a “mistaken” request by the Pennsylvania Health Department, directed to Planned Parenthood.</p> <p>According to a Health Department spokeswoman, an employee took the initiative to ask Planned Parenthood to “provide information about its physicians’ admitting privileges at Pennsylvania hospitals.” But what seemed like a reasonable request was deemed a mistake by the Health Department.</p>

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Most pro-life groups had a warm response to today's Supreme Court decision in McCullen v. Coakley, finding that the state of Massachusetts had overreached when barring pro-life sidewalk advocates from exercising their free speech rights within a 35-foot zone of abortion facilities. But three justices, led by Antonin Scalia, issued a scathing rebuke to part of the otherwise unanimous decision. “Today’s opinion carries forward this Court’s practice of giving abortion-rights advocates a pass when it comes to suppressing the free-speech rights of their opponents” and “continues the onward march of abortion-speech-only jurisprudence,” he wrote. The justices unanimously...

A boom in state laws restricting and regulating abortion over the past three years has some abortion advocates quietly building support to overturn all of them, with federal legislation far more sweeping than the original Roe v. Wade decision. Since its first introduction by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the abortion-deregulation bill called the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) has gained 34 co-sponsors in the Senate and 116 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives — all of them Democrats. The proposed law (S. 1696) involves such sweeping deregulation of the abortion industry that pro-life advocates dubbed it the “Gosnell Prerogative Act,”...

Joy Pullman entitles her excellent column on The Federalist this way: "Discrimination Is Healthy And Normal – Sex Confusion Is Not." She begins her piece by pointing out how the left has hijacked a perfectly good word and twisted its meaning: "Discrimination sounds so terrible. Shouldn't people with power stop it in every form? That sounds plausible, but like the other arguments offered by LGBTQ activists (when they offer arguments instead of appeals to emotion), it's wrong and hurtful." She goes on to point out that "non-discrimination" ordinances, which sound so constructive at first blush, are actually "anti-science, anti-reason, and...

On May 31, 2009, late-term abortionist Dr. George Tiller was shot by a mentally disturbed convicted felon named Scott Roeder. The darkness of late-term abortion and infanticide was met with the darkness of murder. In the aftermath, condemnations and accusations abounded as activists, talking heads, and politicians argued about who, exactly, had more blood on their hands.Four years later in 2013, a film titled After Tiller was released by directors Martha Shane and Lana Wilson. The documentary follows the four remaining late-term abortion providers in the U.S. and purported to shine a light into the cultural darkness surrounding the issue....

The Huffington Post reports that the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved by voice vote an amendment that will extend abortion coverage to Peace Corps volunteers.From the report: The GOP-controlled committee blocked the abortion coverage provision last year after the Senate tried to include it in the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill. But no Republicans spoke out against the measure on Tuesday at a committee mark-up of the FY 2015 version of the bill, and the provision passed quickly by a voice vote. (emphasis mine) This is the first time both the House and Senate committees have approved of...

As North Carolina lawmakers debated a proposal to prevent charter schools from discriminating against applicants based on sexual orientation, one representative suggested Tuesday that adult sexual attraction to children is a sexual orientation like homosexuality. The amendment was tabled by Republicans, preventing a vote on it. But during the debate, Republican Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake, said pedophilia, masochism and other illegal sexual practices are sexual orientations like homosexuality and he questioned the role adults who are sexually attracted to children might have in schools. Several lawmakers called those comments offensive. After the House session, Twitter lit up with criticism of...

BEAUMONT, TX -- A Texas judge has bought some time for a man whose estranged wife is attempting to have him removed from life support over the objections of his brother and sister-in-law. Terry Martin Terry Dean Martin, 54, is on a ventilator and receiving nutrition and hydration care at the Baptist Hospital of Southeast Texas in Beaumont after being admitted June 13 with complications of diabetes and kidney failure.  He suffered cardiac arrest on June 15, but doctors were able to resuscitate him.  He has not fully regained consciousness since, but his brother Gary Martin says he is able...