Free Republic

“Potentially unethical.” That’s how one expert described an Italian scientist’s plan to perform a “head transplant” by severing two heads at the same time, then cooling and flushing out the ‘recipient’ head before attaching it to its new body with polymer glue.That is “POTENTIALLY unethical?” Making one person out of two, and throwing away the unused halves, is only “potentially” unethical?Shock and awe.* * * * *Neuroscientist Sergio Canavero is undeterred by criticism, however. Canavero now reports that it’s possible to merge bone marrow, surgically cut with an ultra-sharp knife, when fusing one person’s head onto another person’s spine. The...

I have a large family. Yes, I have 5 children of my own, but I also have 23 nieces and nephews and 30+ great-nieces and nephews. Large.And we’ve heard it all. “Don’t you know what causes that?” (usually chortled with an accompanying poke in the ribs.) “Are you done now?” “Wow, you’ve got your hands full…” (translated: “Dear heavens, what is wrong with you people??”)It’s all good. Say what you want; we like having loud family gatherings, trying to figure out how many chairs we’re going to need for Thanksgiving, buying in bulk and generally holding up our end of...

More than a half-million acres of land across nine Western states is being proposed for designation as critical habitat for the yellow-billed cuckoo. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 546,335 acres of critical habitat is up for listing in 80 separate units in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. The bird is a neotropical migrant that winters in South America and nests along rivers and streams in western North America. ... The Service is seeking information concerning the western yellow-billed cuckoo’s biology and habitat, threats to the species and current efforts to protect...

Planned Parenthood calls abortion “a difficult decision” in many of its consent forms and fact sheets. When NARAL launched a film on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 2013, the president of the pro-choice organization called abortion “a difficult decision” women and couples face. Lawmakers use the adjective, too. “It was a difficult, difficult decision, but it was the right one,” Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores said last month in defending her choice to have an abortion at age 16. In 2005, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton described the decision to have an abortion as “one of the most fundamental,...

Birmingham, AL (LiveActionnews) — Tucked away in a children’s ministry office at Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama, Natalie Brumfield’s sweet voice that engages children to love Jesus almost masks the warrior that lives to fight abortion—but only for a moment. To know Natalie is to know what being wholly pro-life is.Natalie is proof that one ordinary person who doesn’t speak before thousands or write best-selling books can make more of a difference for life than many ever will. But her life also reminds us that we can do the same. In her, the extraordinary is formed from an...

Although he admits it “sounds blatantly authoritarian” and “violates just about every core value we possess in a free society,” a noted transhumanist author has said a world government body should forcibly sterilize anyone “deemed unworthy” of parenthood by using implanted microchips. Constitutional attorney and civil liberties expert John W. Whitehead, founder of The Rutherford Institute, warned LifeSiteNews.com earlier this year that political officials would long to use this seminal technology. In an article for Wired.com today, philosopher Zoltan Istvan wrote that the notion first crossed his mind when he heard a blonde nurse say, “with 10,000 kids dying everyday...

Transgender couple have two kidsA normal, ordinary family with two kids, this is the first impression anyone gets on seeing Bianca, Nick and their two kids. But 32-year-old Bianca was born a boy and 27-year-old Nick was born a girl. Bianca has had breast augmentation and laser hair-removal, while Nick takes testosterone to change his appearance and had his breasts removed, reports Metro. They claim to have led normal lives until Nick got pregnant and then the whole experience became a ‘daily struggle’ when people began staring at him, he says and admits he hated the changes in his body....

Millions of women around the world regret their abortions and thousands upon thousands of women have spoken out over the years about their regret. They talk about the mental anguish and spiritual regrets they feel concerning their abortion and their desire to go back and undo their decision.But one phenomenon is common in many stories about abortion regret: the completely dispassionate way in which abortion facility staff treat what is obviously the destruction of human life and the killing of a tiny baby in an abortion.Consider this post-abortion story from Rachel, a member of the Silent No More Awareness campaign....

Perhaps there are times and places in the history of the world in which it is possible to go through life as just an ordinary, good person—a faithful spouse, a loving parent, a concerned citizen, a regular church-goer, an honest and industrious professional—leading a normal, quiet life, not making waves or standing out in any way. Perhaps. But the United States of America in the year 2014 is not one of those times and places. Rather, in our contemporary society, the only way to be good is to be heroic. Failing to act with heroism inevitably makes us complicit in grave evils. Human...

Jim Caviezel, famed for his role as Christ in The Passion of the Christ, and currently starring as the leading man in TV’s Person of Interest, is frequently outspoken on the issue of abortion. With his publicly Catholic faith to his committed pro-life views, Jim and his wife Kerri have adopted two children from China, both of whom had special needs.Earlier this year, Caviezel had a message about God’s mercy and grace — especially for women who have had abortions. Now he has a message for Americans in general: calling abortion America’s “great sin.”The Christian Post has more: “Many people...

Torture. Physical violence. Abusive sex. Live ActionÂ’s latest undercover investigation unravels Planned ParenthoodÂ’s startling sexology. Live ActionÂ’s new investigative video reveals how far the abortion-giant will go to promote questionable practices to teens, and how the organizationÂ’s rationale essentially condones any sexual activity among partners. Teenagers are not only encouraged to experiment with a slew of sexual practices, they are coached by Planned Parenthood staffers how to view pornography, obtain adult sex toys, and even defecate on each other for sexual pleasure. The organizationÂ’s sexual ideology caters dangerous and violent Fifty Shades of Grey-type BDSM relationships to youths as acceptable,...

A half-dozen strippers paraded topless outside a rural Ohio church as its parishioners entered and exited this Sunday as a counterprotest to the church's efforts to close their business. A total of 30 dancers, friends, fellow employees, and strip industry executives gathered outside New Beginnings Ministries in Warsaw, Ohio, on Sunday, the second week the sex workers protested the evangelical church's strong moral stance. The church, which has about 125 members in a city of 700, has protested the Foxhole North, located just nine miles down the road from its sanctuary, for years. Thomas George who owns that location and...

A few decades ago, marijuana was a topic that relatively few people, mostly counterculture musicians and comedians, spoke about in public. The comedy team of Cheech and Chong made films such as "Up in Smoke" that extolled the pleasures of smoking pot at a time the subject was still taboo."When trouble times begin to bother me," they sang, "I take a toke and all my cares go up in smoke." On the fringes of American society, it was usually possible to find activists who wanted to legalize it, as the reggae artist Peter Tosh famously sang. Efforts to legalize the...

I was eighteen when I took a job as a sign language interpreter at Planned Parenthood. I was raised Roman Catholic, but I was Catholic in the same way that Olive Garden is an authentic Italian restaurant: just because you throw some fancy words on the menu doesn’t make it genuine.For me, abortion was not a choice that I would make personally, but the way I saw it, who was I to judge another woman for having one? I didn’t know her life. I didn’t know her circumstances, and I had prided myself my whole life on not judging people...

New survey research shows that Christians who support same-sex marriage are more likely to hold permissive views on other sexual morality issues, such as divorce and pornography, similar to the general population and far different from Christians who support traditional marriage.The "Relationships in America" survey, conducted by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus, interviewed 15,738 Americans between the ages of 18 and 60. From that sample, Regnerus compared the average views on a range of sexual morality issues of churchgoing Christians who oppose same-sex marriage (2,659 in the sample) and churchgoing Christians who support same-sex marriage (990 in the sample)....

In a discussion regarding a bill in Louisiana’s health and welfare committee, Representative Katrina Jackson expressed her distaste for the large number of African-American abortions. House Bill No. 388 would require abortionists to provide more information to pregnant women seeking abortion, as well as new regulations for abortion practices. One group arguing against the bill said that it would help minority women, especially African-American women who “don’t have necessarily the same access to contraceptive use that higher income women do.” Jackson strongly disagreed, saying: I’ve heard it thrown around by the young ladies at the table today, that this [HB...

Editor’s note: This is a letter to the editor from Russian pro-life group Warriors for Life. In May of this year, Russian Parliament (State Duma) registered a bill N527279-6 “On Amendments and Additions to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation in order to protect the interests of a minor or a person duly recognized as incompetent.” Behind this name hides an official law on the introduction of forced abortions for disabled throughout gestation. The bill was initiated by deputies of the ruling party “United Russia”, which proposes to allow parents, guardians and directors of boarding schools to request through...

A reader emailed me asking if we could do a piece on the oft-touted statistic that “1 in 3 women will have an abortion in her lifetime” (or “by age 45″). Happy to oblige. By the way, suggestions for blog topics are always welcome.The pro-choice movement loves to use the 1-in-3 statistic, arguing that it “humanize[s] the issue.” (The irony of that statement does not escape me.) Of course, from a pro-life perspective, it matters little how many people have had an abortion; we know from history that large masses of people are capable of being very, tragically wrong.The apparent...

Yet another Planned Parenthood abortion business has been caught telling a teenage girl to subject herself to violent sex at the hand of her partner. This time, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minneapolis told an undercover investigator posing as a young teen to allow her partner to abuse her with “rope burns” and “markings” from “clamps.”In Minnesota, the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic counselor tells the Live Action investigator, posing as a 15-year-old girl, that “anything within the sexual world is normal as long as it’s consensual.” That includes going to sex shops, two of which the counselor recommends specifically.“I wouldn’t...

Neither the Ebola outbreak nor the ongoing Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria prevented U.S. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden from raising the issue of homosexuality during last week’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington. The American leaders, along with other current and former Obama administration officials, capitalized on economic concerns to encourage African leaders to expand legal protections and privileges for homosexuals and call for cultural acceptance of homosexuality. Asked repeatedly by African leaders what the continent’s largely war-torn, impoverished nations can do to promote economic growth and development, Obama and Biden both said African countries need to...