Free Republic

It's hard to shake the feeling that eugenics can make a comeback. Or that it never really left us.When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave a recent interview to Elle, she let slip a statement that almost sounded like something a 1920s-style eugenicist would say. Talking about the rise of state-level restrictions on abortion, the liberal justice said, "It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people."And remember, a few years ago, Ginsburg had to deny that she believed eugenic thought influenced the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. She had noted a...

We exploit information on compulsory schooling reforms in 11 European countries, implemented mostly in the 1960s and 70s, to identify the impact of education on religious adherence and religious practices. Using micro data from the European Social Survey, conducted in various years between 2002 and 2013, we find consistently large negative effects of schooling on self-reported religiosity, social religious acts (attending religious services), as well as solitary religious acts (the frequency of praying). We also use data from European Values Survey to apply the same empirical design to analyze the impact of schooling on superstitious beliefs. We find that more...

Pedophilia, in the sense of the persistent sexual attraction to children, is a disorder, not a crime, and deserves special protections in law. That’s the premise of a recent New York Times opinion piece by Rutgers law professor Margo Kaplan, who argues that “stigma” surrounding adults who are sexually attracted to children prevents them from seeking psychological help. As a result, Kaplan asserts, pedophiles should be protected by the same anti-discrimination laws that require society to accommodate other “disabilities.”“By some estimates, 1 percent of the male population continues, long after puberty, to find themselves attracted to prepubescent children. These people are...

Excitement over a newly-released paper on stem cells making insulin is a tribute to the Harvard stem cell Press Office.The actual report is quite a bit less earth-shaking than you might be led to believe by the Harvard press office. The science itself, in a paper from the lab of Dr. Doug Melton published in the journal Cell, provides an incremental improvement in the derivation of functional (insulin-secreting) beta cells. MeltonÂ’s lab developed an improved method to generate millions of insulin-secreting cells from human embryonic stem cells (hESC, which require the destruction of a young human being) and from human...

FULL TITLE: ‘Very cold, dark winter’ for Catholic Church unless Synod addresses failure since 1968 to preach sexual teachings - Humanae Vitae preacher The Vatican’s Synod of Bishops on the Family, taking place in Rome from October 5-19, will not be successful unless it addresses the failure of clergy to preach the Catholic teaching on sexuality found in Humanae Vitae, says a U.S. Catholic priest of 56 years. Father Daniel McCaffrey, from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, served as a military chaplain in Korea, Pakistan and during the Vietnam conflict and now travels throughout the country preaching God’s truth on...

Hugh Hefner has been idolized by millions of men of dubious morals for his “Playboy” lifestyle—his huge mansion, never-ending stream of celebrity guests, and, of course, the girls. He is considered the ultimate playboy, the silk-pajamaed icon of the Sexual Revolution, the man who brought “free love” to the free market and made a killing. He’s also sexually dysfunctional. In her emotionally mauling book Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, researcher Gail Dines writes how the infamous TV show "The Girls Next Door," which started in 2005, "provides a sanitized version of life at the Playboy mansion, never showing...

[In this blog series, we'll be on a journey that will help us understand the deepest meaning of our life and our existence, a journey that will help us answer some of the most fundamental questions of the human heart: Who am I? Why am I here? How does life make sense? Our journey will lead us to the only one who can satisfy every question, every desire, and every thirst the human heart experiences. The first question in this series explores the most important question: Why was I created?] Justin Bieber’s song “As Long as You Love Me” sold...

SEIU, the Center for American Progress, American Women, Planned Parenthood and other partners have announced today the launch of Fair Shot Action, what they call, “a new effort aimed at engaging voters on issues surrounding women.“ According to their press release, the coalition will help voters understand, “which candidates support women’s access to reproductive health” which is code for abortion on demand as they describe it as, “an area that has been under attack during the last year as a result of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision.”A major component of the new effort will be a new online tool...

Monday’s decision by the Supreme Court not to take up numerous state appeals regarding same-sex unions pretty much signals that the secular redefinition is here to stay. This is really no surprise given the rather deep confusion about sexuality and marriage in our culture. The polygamists and any number of other groups demanding recognition for their aberrant notions of marriage are sure to follow with all due haste. And what is to stop them, legally, at this point? The word “marriage” is now largely meaningless since, if marriage can mean anything, marriage means nothing, in the linguistic sense. At my...

To donate vital organs, a donor must be dead. Tough this is known as the “dead donor rule,” I have been warning that utilitarian bioethicists and transplant medical professionals want to shatter the DDR to permit killing living living profoundly cognitively disabled patients for their organs.Now, we see what appears to me to be a push poll type question in a study measuring popular support for such a change in the law.A push poll seeks to obtain a desired answer by the way the question is framed. Here is the question from “Abandoning the Dead Donor Rule?” in the Journal...

A pro-abortion Democrat accused a pro-life politician of having a weak personality because she turned to alcohol, drugs, and thoughts of suicide after she had two abortions.The verbal dust-up occurred between Republican Texas State Representative-elect Molly White and State Rep. Dawnna Dukes, a Democrat, during a September 20 abortion debate, with Dukes revealing for the first time publicly that she, too, has had an abortion.White, who won the March Republican primary for House District 55, was taking part in the Texas Tribune’s “Women’s Health Debate” panel, where her introduction included that she was post-abortive and that her experience with two...

There’s a necessary humility in acknowledging our utter inability to live chastely outside the grace of God. The first step, it seems to me, is to acknowledge our complete need for God in winning the battle. Thomas Merton wrote that “real self-conquest is the conquest of the self by the Holy Spirit.” This is most true in the battle for chastity. St. John Cassian teaches that human effort alone will never make someone chaste: If we really desire to enter into this spiritual combat on the same terms as the spostle (2 Tim. 4:7), let us concentrate our every effort...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says its doctrine on marriage will remain unchanged despite Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively legalized gay marriage in five states, including Utah, and opened the door for legalization in six more. “As far as the civil law is concerned, the courts have spoken,” the church said in a statement reacting to the Supreme Court’s decision. “Church leaders will continue to encourage our people to be persons of good will toward all, rejecting persecution of any kind based on race, ethnicity, religious belief or nonbelief, and differences in sexual orientation.” In...

“Putting the paddles on the chest of a divisive issue with absolutely no hope of the outcome he promises is a hallmark of Ted Cruz,” says GOP consultant Rick Wilson acidly, the memory of last year’s doomed “defund” effort firmly in mind. Okay, but the fine print on what Cruz wants to do is interesting. Typically when social conservatives start talking up amendments aimed at gay marriage, they’re thinking of a substantive change — namely, a new law of the land that says marriage involves one man and one woman and no other combination. Once that’s in the Constitution,...

Since today is the feast of the Holy Rosary, in this post I'd like to remind us that the rosary is a powerful weapon in our battle against unchastity and in particular pornography. “To recite the rosary,” wrote Pope John Paul II, “is nothing other than to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ.” To commit to praying the rosary, perhaps even daily, is to commit to spending fifteen to twenty minutes in quiet contemplation. Quieting the Mind Often those who use pornography habitually say they experience an inner disquiet that can make contemplation seem almost impossible. The rosary is...

Editor’s Note: This story contains mature subject matter. Reader discretion is advised. A Washington state parent is speaking out after she was left stunned by a school awards ceremony that she said featured profanity, inappropriate jokes and a box of sex toys. The parent, who sent an email to KOMO-TV, but wished to remain anonymous, said she was left in tears by what she witnessed when she accompanied her 17-year-old daughter to the event put on by Bellingham High School drama teacher Teri Grimes. “I sat there with my mouth open in shock and the final straw was when a joke...

(Reuters) - Sex could keep the Ebola epidemic alive even after the World Health Organization (WHO) declares an area free of the disease, one of the discoverers of the deadly virus said on Tuesday. The WHO is hoping to announce later this week that Nigeria and Senegal are free of Ebola after 42 days with no infections -- the standard period for declaring an outbreak over, twice the maximum 21-day incubation period of the virus. However, it appears the disease can last much longer in semen. "In a convalescent male, the virus can persist in semen for at least 70...

It’s a liberal media specialty: advertising abortion like it’s a good thing.Starting next week, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) will offer a class on “Abortion: Quality Care and Public Health Implications” through Coursera, an online course platform. Targeting clinicians, health care workers, and students, the course will “contextualize abortion care within a public health framework from both clinical and social perspectives.” Media heralded the news, calling the class “exactly what abortion education needs to move forward” and looking forward to “breaking down the barriers women looking for abortions face.”Breaking the news, Daily Beast contributor Samantha Allen explained why...

A terminally ill 29-year-old woman has chosen November 1 as the day she will die. Shortly after her wedding in 2013, Brittany Maynard of Portland, Ore., began experiencing debilitating headaches. While on vacation with her husband in January, Brittany was diagnosed with grade II Astrocytoma, a severe brain tumor. Doctors told her she had 10 years left to live. “I have to tell you,” she says in the video, “when you’re 29 years old, being told you have that kind of timeline still feels like being told you’re going to die tomorrow.” Following the original diagnosis, doctors said her cancer...

As I have explained many times, often the most revealing stories come courtesy of our faithful readers. This post comes from the Herald Sun (Australia). It’s headlined, “No shame in aborting unborn life” and is written by Susie O’Brien.Let’s be clear. The objective of pro-lifers is not “shaming” anyone, but rather saving the lives of unborn babies and the future psychological, emotional, and spiritual health of women facing crisis pregnancies.Where we part company (actually we part company even earlier, but…) with people like Ms. O’Brien is over the self-serving and lethal mistake-erasing notion that it is better to be the...