Free Republic

FOR women living in large swathes of the American South, it is increasingly difficult to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Onerous new rules and regulations are forcing abortion clinics to shut down in states across the region. A Texas law passed last year has already forced nearly half of the state’s 40 clinics to close. Only eight would still be in service had not the Supreme Court intervened on October 14th to block temporarily parts of the law. Remaining clinics are reporting longer waiting lists, with women travelling greater distances (and sometimes across state lines) to get the procedure. Similar rules...

Why do we keep making the same mistakes? How do I stay pure with all of today’s modern pressures? In reality, it boils down to two main concepts: Lead Us Not into Temptation Remember that line from the Our Father? It doesn’t say “lead us not into sin” but “lead us not into temptation.” See, we aren’t called merely to stay away from sin; we are called to avoid temptation. To do otherwise is asking for trouble. Imagine you are watching TV and a news alert flashes across the screen: “Rabid dogs loose in your neighborhood. Do not go near...

Three brothers alleged to have abused more than 50 girls in Rotherham remain at large - despite police being told about their activities more than a decade ago, it has been claimed. A former Rotherham Council researcher said mentions of the brothers, who are of Pakistani descent, featured ‘very heavily’ in a dossier she produced for police in 2001 on suspected abusers in the town. But the information was never acted upon - and the researcher has told MPs that the men have never been prosecuted for the alleged abuse, despite facing other charges on different criminal matters. In her...

(LiveActionNews) — The ethical problems with euthanasia have been detailed at Live Action News extensively. People with disabilities, people suffering from mental illness, people who were just lonely or old but otherwise healthy, even children — all can be euthanized in countries like Belgium and the Netherlands. That’s not good enough for the assisted suicide lobby though, which continues to campaign for the right to kill increasingly more people, from the disabled to the poor.This slippery slope is now headed for the United States, with cancer patient Brittany Maynard saying she will kill herself on November 1, and until then,...

So Planned Parenthood says that that only three percent of all Planned Parenthood health services are abortion services. Makes abortion seem pretty rare for Planned Parenthood doesn’t it?Here is Planned Parenthood’s Annual Report from 2012 to 2013. This pie chart represents every single service Planned Parenthood performed during that year, and this slice of the pie represents the number of abortion services they provided in comparison to all the procedures they performed.And this clearly shows that abortion services were only 3% of the total pie. Right?So then why are pro-life groups claiming that this 3% number is misleading? What’s their...

The state’s highest court has toppled a cultural taboo — legalizing a degree of incest, at least between an uncle and niece — in a unanimous ruling. While the laws against “parent-child and brother-sister marriages . . . are grounded in the almost universal horror with which such marriages are viewed . . . there is no comparably strong objection to uncle-niece marriages,” Tuesday’s ruling reads.

This past weekend saw the 2014 Faith of Our Fathers conference, held in Knock, Ireland, and organised by the Catholic Voice newspaper. John Smeaton, chief executive of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Children (SPUC) and the co-founder of Voice of the Family, delivered an address entitled Why defending marriage is a pro-life issue (full text). In his address, Mr Smeaton explained: Statistical evidence on abortion clearly shows that marriage as an institution protects children, both born and unborn. [Also], same-sex marriage represents an attempt to redefine marriage, thus undermining marriage and family life, as a growing body of academic research clearly shows. It is...

NOTE: Readers may require a barf bag to get through this post.  If you’re on an airplane, check the seatback pocket in front of you.  If you’re anywhere else … good luck. What do you think of when you hear the word “magical"?  Childlike wonder?  Fairy dust?  Unicorns?  Santa Claus?  Disneyland?  Narnia?  How about abortion? No?  Well, writer Shelby Hodge disagrees with you.  In a fawning article for Culturebeat Houston, she recently covered Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast’s annual fundraising gala, giving her piece the unbelievably adulating title, “Magical Planned Parenthood gala transcends party lines and raises $1.3 million.”...

(LiveActionNews) –On Wednesday, former Planned Parenthood director and pro-life activist Abby Johnson sent out a letter describing the retreat that her organization, And Then There Were None, recently held. Her letter is an eloquent plea to pro-lifers to support workers who are fleeing the abortion industry and suffering emotionally because of what they experienced.She included some testimonies from the workers, including: I can still hear the sound of babies’ skulls being crushed. By its very existence, And Then There Were None gives a challenge to the pro-life movement – are we pro-life only for the babies, or are we pro-life...

p>In May 2010, Douglas Wayne Ring was arrested after sexually abusing a female relative for years after he took the teen for an abortion.Authorities say the attacks began when the girl was 8 years old and continued until she was 20. According to reports, the victim became pregnant three times starting when she was 16.The first time she testified that she after she discovered that she was pregnant Ring took her to a clinic in Houston where she had an abortion.Life Dynamics, an organization located in Denton, Texas reviewed hundreds of criminal cases where adult men were raping their young...

There is one particular thing that illustrates better than anything else the unreasonableness — and some would say gall — of homosexuality activists. It’s not demanding that bakers, shirt printers, and wedding planners be party to events and expression deeply contrary to their principles, as offensive as that is. What I speak of is something even more fundamental, something again brought to light by the recent Vatican synod on the family. As many know, the synod made news with an unwisely released and widely misrepresented mid-term report containing language that the secular media interpreted as signaling church capitulation on the...

The pro-life movement is blessed to have quite a number of former abortion practitioners, abortion clinic operators, and abortion facility staff who are now passionately pro-life. They are some of the leading figures talking about the horrors of what goes on in abortion clinics — where unborn babies and women are both violated by abortions.In many cases, what led them to exit the abortion industry was a confrontation with abortion itself and a final awakening of their senses that they were involved the the sad and tragic destruction of human life.On her Facebook page, Abby Johnson shares the story of...

A ‘Christian’ wedding chapel—a private business—in Idaho is suing for the right not to marry gay couples. There is no such right. Yet.The first thing you need to know is that most “wedding chapels” are not actually chapels. They are private businesses, sometimes run by ordained ministers who are thus licensed to perform marriage ceremonies, but just as often run by Elvis impersonators. Thus, the question of how marriage-equality laws apply to private wedding chapels is ostensibly a question of under what circumstances the government can lawfully step on a for-profit company’s blue suede shoes. Ground zero for this debate...

Future Abortion Doctor: “Seeing an Arm Being Pulled Through the Vaginal Canal Was Shocking” by Sarah Terzo | LifeNews.com | 10/24/14 4:28 PM(LiveActionNews) — Men and women who are considering providing abortions as a career must overcome their natural revulsion to witnessing violence. They must silence their consciences and prepare themselves to participate in the destruction of human life on a daily basis. If they cannot do this, they will not be able to perform abortions. Here are quotes from four people – two medical students, a doctor, and a would-be Planned Parenthood director, going through this process.1.) A doctor...

It’s not unusual to hear people talk about aborting their baby with Down syndrome because it is the “merciful” thing to do. One woman wrote about her decision to abort her baby with Down syndrome because of the “suffering” the baby and her family would be forced to endure, and somehow still has the audacity to claim that she “loves” her son. To her, she was making some kind of noble choice because he otherwise would have had a miserable, empty, meaningless life. Richard Dawkins caused a huge controversy when he argued that it was immoral to knowingly give birth...

Charlotte Was Born at 24 Weeks When Abortion’s Legal For Any Reason, Look at Her Now by Sarah Zagorski | LifeNews.com | 10/22/14 3:32 PMEarlier this year, the Women Speak Out PAC, partner of the Susan B. Anthony List, (SBA) launched an ad exposing Sen. Kay Hagan’s (D-North Carolina) support for late-term abortion. SBA works to elect pro-life candidates and in November, North Carolina will decide if they are going to elect pro-abortion Sen. Kay Hagan or pro-life Thom Tillis to Congress.The ad features Ned and Rebecca Ryun who open up about their daughter’s premature birth. Their daughter was...

Rayna Rapp, a former abortion clinic worker, interviewed women getting genetic testing to find out if their babies would be disabled or have a genetic problem. Here are some things that people said about why they would abort a down syndrome baby: “The bottom line is when my neighbor said to me: “Having a “tard,” that’s a bummer for life.” … downsyndromebaby30“I have a cousin, my mother’s sister’s son, he’s retarded and 38. Oh, it isn’t Down’s, it’s something else. He’s done fine, he’s likely to live a normal life, to die at 80. But it’s really messed up the...

Politics and Religion Pt. 1 Catholic Answers published its now-famous “Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics” back in 2004 (updated in 2006) that has now sold millions of copies with millions more having been distributed for free. In that document, for which Catholic Answers has taken a lot of flack by the way, we give guidance to Catholics in voting so that, quite frankly, Catholics will “vote like Catholics,” yet, we do much more than just that. We give instruction, in complete harmony with the teaching authority of the Church, as to the most important moral issues of our day that are politically in play....

Every single day over 3,000 unborn children in the United States are brutally murdered by having their limbs literally torn and ripped apart.  This is the cold hard truth, and although every year there are hundreds of pro-life laws attempting to confront this dark reality legislatively, you will almost never hear a positive news story about pro-lifers. I believe that Heather and Brady's story needs to be heard and that the political media should be chastised for burying and distorting it. In the spring of 2013, I drafted and was one of the two proponents of the Colorado Brady...

A new book – a gospel of responsibility-free sex – defines abortion as “right,” “good” and “moral.” It’s what’s “best for kids” and it’s all about a woman’s “unalienable right” to pursue happiness.  When Katha Pollitt, an outspoken feminist and columnist for The Nation, published “Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights” on Oct. 14, the journalists used it as a launching pad for their latest abortion obsession: no-fault abortion. Pollitt’s book “reframes abortion” as “a moral right with positive social implications.” And since nobody ever went broke telling the self-obsessed what they want to hear, the book has received rapturous praise from the feminist left. Here, as given to us by Pollitt’s media...