Free Republic

HARRISBURG, PA, October 21, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Planned Parenthood officials tried to prevent the mainstream media from covering a series of undercover videos that reveal the abortion giant receives compensation for providing medical researchers with the body parts and tissue of aborted babies, a newly released e-mail confirms. A Planned Parenthood official also provided talking points to her state's Democratic governor about how to respond if the issue came up, the documents reveal. The story of the Center for Medical Progress' undercover videos "has not reached mainstream media yet; we are trying to keep it that way," Sari Stevens, a...

NEW YORK CITY, October 21, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Seven abortion doctors – including some who did illegal abortions – are telling their stories to New York Magazine. According to Dr. Curtis Boyd, doing illegal abortions "was a matter of conscience." "[Women] said, 'If we're going to be equal in society, then we have to be able to control our reproduction. We have to be able to choose if and when we're going to have children and how many. We don't have that. We're at the whim of the pregnancies that come along,'" Boyd told NY Mag. Boyd said that the...

FALLS CHURCH, Virginia, October 21, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- America's largest school district may be hiding information that led to its decision to treat “gender identity” as a protected class, say concerned parents and an attorney for the government watchdog Judicial Watch. "Fairfax parents and taxpayers were shocked by this quick move to implement this transgender-friendly policy," said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. "So we responded to requests for assistance, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request under Virginia state law...and we were just snowballed." As originally reported by CNS News' Lauretta Brown, parents in the Fairfax County Public Schools...

The idea for the conference was sparked when Cheok and Levy, two academics interested in robotics, met several years ago and realized they had goals in common. Levy, author of Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, focuses on the brain, the software side, and the algorithms of humanoid robots. Cheok researches the hardware side from an engineering view, looking at multi-modal interfaces including communication by touch, taste, and smell. These areas of study, Cheok said, will be important in the future of robots. "A lot of the technology that's incubating in my lab will be integrated...

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky, October 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews)—There was a time when Church and State cooperated – when governing powers welcomed the influence of Judeo-Christian values and sought to harmonize its laws with morality. But since the radical secularization of Western society, Christians have been forced into an adversarial, politically incorrect role, much like the early Church in times of persecution. Since a "culture of death" began to dominate the West, genuine Christians have become counter-cultural. The leader of America's largest Protestant denomination, Dr. Albert Mohler, applies this Christian counter-culturalism to the latest politically correct trend in society: the approval of sodomy...

Bruce Jenner, marches everywhere, a series in the New York Times ... It seems as though transgenderism is the next big thing in sexual rights. Why? Is there something here we really need to comes to terms with? Dutch psychologist Gerard van den Aardweg gives some straightforward answers to our questions? MercatorNet: Nowadays Facebook allows people to choose amongst 50 or so genders. What’s the problem with allowing people to be fluid in their sexuality?Gerard van den Aardweg: The gender rage is a modern mythology of a low intellectual level because it denies the evident reality of human nature. Not...

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 16, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – A majority of states may soon use tax dollars to pay for the implantation of dangerous, abortion-inducing IUDs in women immediately after childbirth. The journal Contraception reports that Medicaid now pays for IUDs to be inserted into women following delivery in 19 states. Eight more states are poised to follow suit. Not one state used taxpayer money for IUDs before the Obama administration took office. Within 10 minutes of delivery, doctors are implanting either copper IUDs or chemical-releasing IUDs in women. But potential health complications for the mother are magnified when IUDs are...

Our prelates are playing an extremely dangerous game with the Precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Blessed Lord.Catholics around the world are sitting on pins and needles while bishops and cardinals in Rome play word games with Catholic moral teaching. The supreme irony here is that while the faithful are desperately looking for clearly defined teaching from the supreme authority of the Church, the faithful are being told in press conferences that authority should be deferred to local ordinaries to make decisions on how to deal with issues like homosexuality and divorce.The most contentious issues being discussed at...

OTTAWA, October 14, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- Canada’s Girl Guide organization has produced guidelines for male-to-female transgender members that leaves it up to the troubled youths themselves to decide which washrooms they will use and whom they will sleep with on group excursions. “It’s the path of progress to destruction,” Gwen Landolt, the executive vice president of REAL Women of Canada, told LifesiteNews. A former Girl Guide, Landolt said, “We took an oath back then to support God, family and country. Now it is a case of anything goes.” The “Guidelines for Inclusion of Transgender Members” released on October 5, closely...

WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI, October 15, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- Over the past 17 years, notorious abortionist Michael Arthur Roth has been found negligent and incompetent by the state of Michigan, which has fined him, suspended his license, and put him on probation. Now, in a bizarre and macabre twist, he has been accused of committing abortions out of the trunk of his car. Michigan State Police raided Roth's waterfront home on Orchard Lake Road in the posh suburb of West Bloomfield on Tuesday, following “a gruesome discovery” of 14 plastic jars of "human tissue," which police said was "possibly fetuses,"...

PALATINE, ILLINOIS, October 14, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – The Obama administration is suing yet another school district for refusing to allow a biological teenage male to use the girls' locker room, restroom, and shower facilities. Yesterday, the federal government found a the school in violation of a new interpretation of Title IX, a 1972 law designed to prevent sex discrimination. Nothing in the law – or any other federal civil rights legislation – specifies that it applies to transgender individuals. That decision came after what a district spokesperson described as months of negotiation. A male student who identifies as female sued...

Same-sex marriage further encourages the state to encroach on the domain of that indispensable pre-political community, the family. The first in a two-part series. Same-sex marriage is often touted as a harmless expansion of individual liberty. Yet the legal redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples has far from innocuous consequences, particularly with regard to children’s well-being and religious liberty. Redefining marriage also strikes at our fundamental liberties in deeper though less obvious ways. A crucial aspect of liberty is respect for subsidiarity—in particular, recognition that the family, based on marriage, is a pre-political community with natural and original authority over...

SACRAMENTO, CA, October 12, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - Just days after signing a law to allow assisted suicide, California's Catholic governor is forcing pro-life pregnancy care clinics to provide information on how to obtain abortions to women who come to them for help. Governor Jerry Brown signed "The Reproductive FACT Act" on Friday. The law forces pro-life clinics and medical clinics licensed by the state to tell women where to obtain abortions. Additionally, a document with this information is to be posted and/or distributed at the clinic. According to the law, the document must say: "California has public programs that provide...

Never has there been a time in history requiring that an individual be equipped with critical thinking skills more than now. The biggest problem that America is facing today is the inability of the vast majority of the citizenry to think critically. Matt Drudge went so far as to say that Americans are sick. Lack of the ability to think critically is a mental symptom that affects all people regardless of their level of education, economic status, age, race, ethnicity, sex, or political party (although it appears that liberals are more likely to lack such skills). If we are to...

The decision of the Supreme Court in Obergefell v Hodges effectively legalised same-sex marriage throughout the United States.Or did it?A group of 60 distinguished scholars, mostly lawyers, insist that it does not. They have thrown down the gauntlet, arguing that the Supreme Court is supreme in the federal judicial system. But the justices are not supreme over the executive and legislative branches of government. “And they are certainly not supreme over the Constitution.”Behind this audacious challenge is Princeton Professor Robert P. George, an eminent academic and a seasoned campaigner in the battle to stop same-sex marriage.For village pump lawyers, this...

I recently argued in The Federalist that same-sex marriage is merely a vehicle to abolish all civil marriage, and with it, all family autonomy. I predicted that “singles’ activists” would try to finish the job by using those same “marriage equality” arguments to claim that all civil discriminates against singles and therefore should be abolished. Lo and behold, a singles’ activist, [] Bella DePaulo, confirmed exactly that []: “Morabito says that what I really want is ‘to abolish marriage without saying so.’ That’s not quite right. I’m happy to say so.” As for me connecting “singles’ rights” with the same-sex...

At the age of 42, Walt Heyer was married and had two children. But he had felt for years that he was stuck in the wrong gender. So he fully transitioned and emerged as Laura Jensen. After living as a woman for eight years, he realised that he had made a terrible mistake. Now he has detransitioned back to his birth gender and provides encouragement to people who regret their gender change.MercatorNet: Bruce – now Caitlin – Jenner seems perfectly happy with his gender change. Doesn’t his experience prove that a gender change is possible?Walt Heyer: I was also "perfectly...

BOSTON, MA, October 7, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- Dr. Paul Church is one of the most respected urologists in the United States. The 65-year-old Harvard Medical School instructor and 30-year surgeon at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has conducted live-saving research on prostate cancer and other diseases. For now, however, Dr. Church is unemployed - the result of a decade-long disagreement with his employer about its promotion of homosexuality, which he says science unquestionably proves is dangerous and unhealthy. On March 30, 2015 the hospital president and its 25-member Medical Executive Committee fired Dr. Church. He asked for and received...

MONTGOMERY, Alabama, October 7, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has labeled Liberty Counsel, the law firm representing and supporting Christian Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who famously went to jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a "hate group." Pointing to evidence that Liberty Counsel supports Christian beliefs on homosexuality, SPLC placed the group on a list of "hate groups" alongside other organizations such the Ku Klux Klan, the ultra-violent New Black Panther Party, and neo-Nazi white supremacist groups. On a page explaining the "hate" designation, the SPLC include quotes by Liberty Counsel founder...

TORONTO, October 6, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - The University of Toronto’s elite University College has been forced to recognize the existence of two genders and re-establish separate washrooms for male and female students sharing its co-ed residences. The move was provoked by two separate incidents in mid-September of male students holding their cell phones above the shower stall dividers in so-called gender-neutral communal washrooms at Whitney Hall, a co-ed residence at the University College, to record female students showering. “Given the serious nature the incidents of voyeurism that occurred in September, and the impact on directly affected students we made the...