Free Republic

Lena Dunham has blasted a right-wing website’s “upsetting and disgusting” claims that she molested her little sister when they were kids. Truth Revolt’s article, “Lena Dunham Describes Sexually Abusing Her Little Sister,” points to a section of the “Girls” creator and star’s new book of essays, “Not That Kind Of Girl,” in which she describes examining her then-one-year-old sister Grace’s vagina when she was 7 to see if it looked the same as her own. The piece also mentions a National Review article that calls the essay “especially suspicious” and says “there is no non-horrific interpretation of this episode.” Dunham...

New York State Blesses 'Incest' Marriages Between Uncle, Niece By Julia Marsh, New York Post October 29, 2014 | 5:39am ... state’s highest court ... toppled ... cultural taboo — legalizing... incest... uncle and niece... unanimous ruling. ... laws against “parent-child and brother-sister marriages... grounded... universal horror... no comparably strong objection... uncle-niece marriages,” ... Judge Robert Smith... were lawful... until 1893 ... ... case ... Vietnamese citizen ... appealed a ruling ... immigration judge. The judge... boot her from... United States... 2000 marriage ... mother’s half-brothe... ... ... “They’ve been married 14 years... ... language of the state’s domestic-relations law....

It seems like only yesterday, not for a good reason, but because the horror of the case made the memories so vivid.A year ago last June we reported on the arraignment of the mother and sisters of Robert Gensiak. The women were charged in the starvation death of the 32-year-old Taylor, Pennsylvania, man.Mr. Gensiak, who had Down syndrome, weighed 69 pounds at his death, ”his shrieking flesh raked by scabies and lice,” wrote Chris Kelly for the Scranton Times Tribune.I just learned today that earlier this month all three were sentenced by Lackawanna County Judge Margaret Bisignani Moyle. The mother,...

The Obama administration has said the U.S. Army “discriminated” against a transgender male employee by not allowing him to use the female restroom, calling him “he,” and asking him to stop having uncomfortable and “unwanted” discussions with his co-workers about his upcoming surgical castration. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) found that the Department of the Army committed gender identity discrimination against “Tamara” Lusardi, a civilian quality assurance specialist who announced he wanted to become a woman. Lusardi, who has been a civilian employee since November 2004, announced his transition in April 2010 and began presenting himself as...

Earlier this month, The Huffington Post published an excerpt of Katha Pollitt’s new book, “Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights.” The excerpt is titled “The Abortion Conversation We Need to Have” and starts with Pollitt”s statement that abortion “is a common, even normal, event in the reproductive lives of women.”Theresa Bonopartis, the director of a post-abortion healing program, gives a good rebuttal to this statement, “It [abortion] is not “normal,” regardless of its frequency, and no amount of writing or talking will ever make it so. That is why abortion continues to be such a controversial issue. She tries to justify her...

The Obama administration has unveiled a new policy that effectively grants U.S. citizenship to foreign women in exchange for acting as surrogate mothers for U.S. couples or selling their eggs to American women. The new policy guidance, announced on Tuesday, redefines the terms “mother” and “father” in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). “A 'natural mother' or 'natural father' is a genetic parent or gestational parent,” the new policy says. This “includes a non-genetic gestational mother if she is the legal parent at the time of birth.” By bearing the child of an American couple, the mother is then placed...

Brittany Maynard has officially decided to delay her decision to kill herself under Oregon’s assisted suicide law on November 1. She says it “doesn’t seem like the right time now” to end her life.Although cancer patients and pro-life groups have tried to talk her out of the decision, it now appears Maynard may have either been used by assisted suicide advocates to promote their agenda or may have been a part of a plan working in concert with them to attempt to legalize assisted suicide in additional states.The 29-year-old terminally ill patient made nationally-discussed plans to take the lethal pill...

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...