Free Republic

p>This is how the culture of death advances. A clueless, or cowardly–or both–authority figure says he or she is against assisted suicide except as a very last resort when everything else has been tried. Never mind that medicalized killing has never been so limited anywhere assisted suicide/euthanasia is legal. Never. Ever. Nowhere. Not Oregon. Not Washington. Not the Netherlands. Not Belgium. Not anywhere on planet earth. But saying that it is OK, if limited to a very last resort when everything that can be conjured by the minds of medical science has failed allows a surrender with seeming principle. That’s the kind of abjection now pushed by the head of...

Nazi euthanasia memorial A memorial to the victims of the Nazi T-4 euthanasia program will open on Tuesday September 2 in Berlin near the central Tiergarten park. The Times of Israel reported that a memorial to the approximate 300,000 physically and mentally disabled people who were murdered by the German regime between 1939 - 45, was approved in November 2011 and will open on September 2. The article stated that: “The murder of tens of thousands of patients and residents of care homes was the first systematic mass crime of the National Socialist regime,” said Uwe Neumaerker, director of the...

Consider this situation: A man chooses to have sex with a woman who he knows will go for an abortion if she gets pregnant. She does get pregnant. She goes to an abortionist, who performs the abortion. Which of the three people killed the baby? The father, mother, or abortionist? It should be obvious that all three people played a part in the abortion. So no matter what your answer, you are partially correct. The father chose to do the one thing that could result in a pregnancy the mother did not want. The mother chose to abort rather than...

Many girls are terrified and with reason... a girl had her tongue nailed to the table when she threatened to tell. – former government advisor, Daily Mail, 2008 The sexual abuse of children takes different social forms: from sporadic child abductions, to organised child pornography rings, to abuse by parents or care-home staff. All of it is awful, and none of it should be ignored. The phenomenon of gangs of men who loiter with impunity around schoolgirls, luring them into a life of addiction and prostitution is a distinct category of child sexual abuse, but a category that the authorities...

A Christian man was executed during the night by a high-profile ruler after making an uncompromising defense of real marriage. The Christian, who was renowned for his holiness, had told the ruler in public that his relationship with his partner was “against the law” of God. The Christian’s words enraged the ruler’s partner who successfully plotted to have him permanently silenced. John the Baptist was first imprisoned before he was beheaded. The Catholic Church honors him today, August 29, as a martyr and saint. While John’s death happened a little less than 2,000 years ago, his heroic stance for real...

What would you think if you were told that no abortion facility in your home state held a current facility license as required by law, yet all of them continued to do abortions that were technically illegal – with full knowledge of state authorities?That is not simply a hypothetical situation in Ohio. It is the scandalous reality.Operation Rescue confirmed this week that out of eleven abortion facilities in that state, none hold current, active Ambulatory Surgical Facility licenses. While applications for licensure or license renewal have been made by all but one abortion facility, the Ohio Department of Health has...

An abortion supporter attacks a group of pro-life advocates in Columbus, Ohio and was recently ordered to pay restitution in the case. Now, in a strange twist, the abortion backer’s mother has filed suit against the pro-life group claiming “emotional distress” from the publicity surrounding her daughter’s assault of their members.The abortion backer, Victoria Duran, who attacked the pro-lifers in a profane rant captured on video last month has been ordered to pay restitution and the case has been closed.Mark Harrington, founder of Created Equal, and Seth Drayer, who was physically attacked (video below) while leading a group of pro-life...

Prof. David Schultz writes:“When it comes to the issue of abortion, this is not a scientific issue but instead a matter first of theology and then ethics. There is no scientific answer to when life begins. This is a matter of religious faith and I may not choose to agree with the theology that another holds.”Is there no scientific answer to when life begins? That depends, of course, on what one means by “life.” I and most people (in this context) generally mean biological life, specifically the life of a human organism. That is indeed a scientific question, and the...

If you live in Ontario and enjoy a bottle of wine with dinner or a couple beers after getting the yard work finished, you will be exposed to an aggressive marketing campaign the next time you hit the local LCBO to purchase your booze. The government-owned liquor distribution branch launched an advertising blitz this week with a goal of educating consumers about the dangers of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). In addition to installing a series of captivating posters at their approximately 640 stores and outlets, LCBO staff will also be required to watch a video designed to educate them as...

It’s pretty clear when a worldview is barbaric, because worldviews have feet. They reveal themselves in the real world. We saw it the other day when the Islamic State, or ISIS, terrorist group beheaded American journalist James Foley. ISIS then posted the video for a shocked world to see. Only the most depraved, fanatical person would label such behavior as morally correct. But what about the respectable barbarism—you know, the kind that wears a suit, gives snappy interviews, and carries an advanced degree? I’m speaking of the famous British atheist Richard Dawkins, who caused quite a stir the other day when he...

A disabled boy wants to be able to sue the Cape Town based Foetal Assessment Centre over its failure to inform his mother that he had down syndrome before he was born. The child's mother said that had the Foetal Assessment Centre properly informed her of the risks of down syndrome, she would have terminated the pregnancy. The mother missed the window period to file a claim on her own behalf.

After losing in the Hobby Lobby v Burwell Supreme Court case earlier this summer, the Obama administration has just issued new rules for the notorious “HHS Mandate,” the Obamacare provision that requires all employee health plans to include free contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.This marks the eighth time the Obama administration has modified the HHS Mandate. Once again, they’re refusing to listen to the American people—or even the U.S. Supreme Court—and truly respect the employers’ conscience rights.The new rules are nothing more than a slight variation of the so-called “accommodation” first announced in February 2012, whereby some “third party” will provide...

Is opposition to same-sex marriage at all like opposition to interracial marriage? One refrain in debates over marriage policy is that laws defining marriage as the union of male and female are today’s equivalent of bans on interracial marriage. Some further argue that protecting the freedom to act publicly on the basis of a religious belief that marriage is the union of a man and woman is like legally enforcing race-based segregation. This leads some people to think that the government is right to fine a New York family farm $13,000 for declining to host a lesbian wedding in their barn. These...

PIE members were lobbying NCCL officials for the age of consent to be reduced and campaigning for “paedophile love”. Their view that children were not harmed by having sex with adults appears to have been adopted by those at the top of the civil liberties group. Today we publish extracts from an NCCL report written for the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1976 when Mrs Hewitt was general secretary. It says: “Where both partners are aged 10 or over, but under 14, a consenting sexual act should not be an offence. As the age of consent is arbitrary, we propose...

Taking offense certifies the modern man as one who cares. If we take offense on behalf of another, we can number ourselves among the sensitive and loving. If we take offense personally, we can brandish a stop sign declaring to all that the offense must cease. In either case, the offending words must stop and the conversation must end. For the modern lover never offends. Instead he unfailingly affirms. He affirms us with an “okay” that builds our self-esteem, engenders good feelings, and requires nothing of us beyond self-affirmation.But can people who love one another do so simply by...

It turns out that Planned Parenthood staffers love “50 Shades of Grey” — so much that they proclaim the series and its dubious philosophy to teen girls looking for guidance. “Fifty Shades” tells how how hyper-controlling Christian Grey subjects 21-year-old Ana Steele (who, it must be noted, talks like a 13-year-old) to an endless series of physically harmful and degrading sexual situations. Some consider it liberating (or at least titillating), but you can also call it sadomasochistic porn. Of course the mentality here, and its popular success, isn’t new. Recall Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”: With its unending repetition of “I...

A federal judge declared a portion of Utah’s polygamy ban unconstitutional late Wednesday, essentially decriminalizing polygamy in the state.U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups ruled the phrase in the law “‘or cohabits with another person’ is a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and is without a rational basis under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”The ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by reality TV polygamist Kody Brown and his wives, who left Utah fearing prosecution. They sued the state, arguing that the ban violated their right to freely...

The events that have unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri, in recent weeks have revealed many tragedies, among them the fact that the death of so many youth of color in this country is still debatable in its status as a vaunted “feminist issue.” But it is, and the expansive definition of reproductive justice, which reaches into the universe of conditions necessary to create and sustain life, shows us how. As RH Reality Check Senior Legal Analyst Imani Gandy put it so well in a recent tweet: Imani ABL @AngryBlackLady I saw so many people on Twitter saying "I don't want to...

Gay military service personnel may now serve openly, and now former top Pentagon officials believe that another group should be afforded the same treatment: transgendered Americans. A report issued Tuesday by retired Maj. Gen. Gale S. Pollock, former acting surgeon general of the Army; Brig. Gen. Clara Adams-Ender, former chief of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps; and Brig. Gen. Thomas A. Kolditz, a Yale University professor and professor emeritus at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, opened the door for ending a de-facto “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for transgendered individuals, the Washington Examiner reported.

It’s official. Like Belgium, The Netherlands has completely lost any sense of respect for the law and has leapt, lemming like off the moral cliff.Dutch news is reporting on the euthanasia death of an elderly woman who sought euthanasia because she did not want to live in a nursing home.The report said that she visited a ‘special clinic set up to help people whose doctors do not support euthanasia’. This incident sparked the second reprimand of the ‘Life Clinic’ in the last four months. In the previous case the same clinic euthanasied a woman with identified psychiatric problems without enough...