Free Republic

February 2, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The forces of death and misery of the pro-abortion industry are at it again, and they are doing their best to use a troubling item in the news to scare and intimidate strongly pro-woman and pro-child Latin American countries into loosening restrictions on abortion. The Zika virus scare is the tool du jour. In an interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered” published on January 30, 2016, reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro interviewed staff of a fertility clinic and abortion activists who decried the slowing down of in vitro fertilizations as women were afraid to become pregnant lest...

ST. PAUL, Minnesota, February 2, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A judge has awarded $115,000 to a man whose employer did not let him use the women's bathroom. Minnesota-based Deluxe Financial Services, the largest check printing company in the U.S., is paying the settlement and apologizing to a Mr. Austin, who now goes by the female name "Britney." Mr. Austin was hired and employed as a man in the Phoenix offices of Deluxe, but in 2011, he announced to his supervisor that he considered himself a woman and began dressing as a female at work. His supervisor would not let him use...

New in the Young Adult section, a novel called Firsts. From the publisher MacMillan’s description: Seventeen-year-old Mercedes Ayres has an open-door policy when it comes to her bedroom, but only if the guy fulfills a specific criteria: he has to be a virgin. Mercedes lets the boys get their awkward fumbling first times over with, and all she asks in return is that they give their girlfriends the perfect first time-the kind Mercedes never had herself.

CUPERTINO, California, February 2, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Want to abort your baby?  There's an app for that. Apple has "fixed" its software, "Siri," to correctly interpret inquiries for abortion business locations. "Siri" is an "intelligent personal assistant" on the Apple iPhone that you can use to find pretty much anything. Simply say, "Where can I get a good steak?," and the Siri software will list steakhouses near your location. But say, "Where can I get an abortion?," and, since 2011, Siri would look up "abortion" –but because abortion facilities are deceptive in their titles (they never use the A-word, but...

'If this appeal is lost, government becomes head of every religious denomination'It's a case in which the U.S. government has been accused of claiming the authority to "determine what is in fact a sin." The critics, meanwhile, have accused the U.S. Supreme Court of tilting the playing field in advance. But the Little Sisters of the Poor case against the Obamacare law is moving toward a resolution with the U.S. Supreme Court announcing arguments have been scheduled for March 23. The nuns who run elder care centers worldwide are contesting the Obamacare requirement that their employee insurance plans cover abortion...

January 29, 2016 (C-Fam) A draft UN report says the family should be understood “in a wide sense” and tries to open the door to recognize same-sex couples in international law and policy. “There is no definition of the family under international human rights law,” according to a report on “protection of the family” prepared by the UN staff and released last week ahead of the next session of the UN Human Rights Council. The report touches on the family, human rights, and social and economic development, and downplays the legally binding understanding of the family as the “natural and...

And you thought politics in the United States were crazy! We've got nothing on the Scots. Due to a "legislative quirk," the Scottish parliament was forced to debate legalizing incestual relationships between consenting adults. The mandatory debate was held today due to a petition submitted by Australian Richard Morris. The Scottish parliament must consider all petitions which propose a law change.

Should people be denied choices at the end of life? It’s a loaded question: the suggestion that someone is being “denied choices” naturally gives rise to a sense of outrage and indignation. “How dare they!”But choices are not always possible, no matter how beneficent they may be; no matter how legitimate they may seem.To suggest, therefore, that people are “denied choices” is to infer that such choices are, indeed, legitimate.Some, of course, are a simple matter of choosing between one legitimate option and another. Some, but not all.Recently, I attended the funeral service for my brother’s father-in-law. An impressive, staunchly...

January 28, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Two years ago, I was asked to speak at our state capitol on behalf of the Marriage Amendment. The hearing was in a center room surrounded by a hallway. Those preparing to speak were kept in the hall until their time to address the amendment.  As I waited in the hallway, I was approached by a man who supported redefining marriage to include unions between members of the same sex. He was quite nice and reasonable in the beginning. "I imagine you're going to be speaking for the amendment on marriage?" he began. "Yes," I...

My journey dealing with controversial research may have begun with my older brother's dissertation in mechanical engineering. When I was 15, he told me that probably one-third of what scientists had thought they knew about the research topic had been incorrect.Later researchers, of course, have shown that this is quite wrong. According to some, the true figure is closer to two-thirds.Even well-known historical events can be deconstructed statistically to show that things did not occur as we have been led to believe. In the RMS Titanic disaster, the lowest survival rates for men and the highest survival rates for children...

MADISON, Wisconsin, January 27, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) -- The University of Wisconsin (UW) medical school and a top pro-life legal group are at odds over whether university officials lied about using a state-based abortion clinic to gather fetal tissue and parts. In a report issued last week, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) accused several university spokespersons of misleading state legislators, media outlets, and the public about UW's use of aborted babies inside the state. “Both Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and UW-Madison publicly denied they had any arrangement to supply baby parts from women undergoing abortion to researchers conducting gruesome experiments, but...

Jan. 27, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - Reading the news these days, I’m reminded of a practice used for generations by the inhabitants of the Amazonian jungles. When crossing rivers with their cattle, they would need to ensure that the razor-toothed piranhas wouldn’t detect them splashing through the water. So a weak, old, or sickly cow would be led upstream and forced into the water. As the piranhas shot in for the kill and reduced the hapless animal to glistening bones in a matter of minutes, the rest of the herd would cross the river before the piranhas were done devouring the...

It seems you don’t have to shoot the messenger any more, just get a Texas grand jury to forget about that ham sandwich and indict the messenger, in this case David Daleiden, director of the Center for Medical Progress, and another pro-life activist, Sandra S. Merritt, for their videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s booming business of selling the body parts of aborted babies for cash.

In 1999, Donald Trump claimed to be "pro-choice in every respect," to the point he would have opposed a ban on late-term and partial-birth abortions. His position at that time reflected the extreme edges of abortion ideology. A mere 14 percent of Americans believe third-trimester abortions should be legal. But Trump has since switched sides, a move that makes sense in today's political climate. Since the 1990s, abortion has become one of the starkest and most consistent lines of demarcation between Democrats and Republicans. It is virtually inconceivable that a Democrat opposing abortion or a Republican supporting legal abortion could...

At first glance, a reader might get the impression that the title of this article refers to individuals such as candidates for political office, abortion advocates like President Obama, or opposing cultural pressure groups. If any of these come to mind, then you should think again. The people to whom I am referring are the preborn—the innocent children whose right to life is bandied about constantly by the media, the debaters, the pundits, and others. It sometimes seems that the phrase “abortion issue” is really all they want to write about or discuss. It is rare to see a reference...

Today, people from all over the country are joining together to stand up for preborn babies who cannot stand up for themselves. The March for Life in Washington, D.C. is an amazing event that brings to light the horror of abortion, the millions of lives lost, and the abhorrence we should all feel when we think back to that fateful day in 1973. Today’s commentary examines this landmark case and challenges us to make a difference in our world. In 1973, two United States Supreme Court decisions forever changed the nation’s attitude toward pregnancy, family, and the gift of a...

The use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) is so common nowadays that it’s easy to forget how quickly social attitudes have changed. The Atlantic recently published a feature about the early days of artificial reproductive technology under the headline “The First Artificial Insemination Was an Ethical Nightmare: The 19th-century procedure involved lies, a secrecy pledge, and sperm from a surprise donor”.The implication is that that contemporary ART is far more ethical than it was in the bad old days.Let’s look first at the origins of ART. The first pregnancy after artificial insemination apparently took place in England in 1790. The...

TAMPA, Florida, January 21, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Is the procreative impossibility of homosexual activity the same as heterosexuals being biologically infertile? Stetson University law professor Joseph Morrissey is suing for a tax deduction of $36,538 for in vitro fertilization treatments and the cost of a surrogate to carry twin boys for himself and his male partner. In denying Morrissey's claim, the IRS explained that for tax deductions, the medical services must be provided to the taxpayer, his spouse, or his dependent. Therefore, a surrogate does not qualify, and neither does IVF for someone other than the filer, his spouse, or...

A family made famous by the reality show "Sister Wives" is calling on a Utah appeals court to uphold a ruling that essentially decriminalized polygamy, saying the state's historic ban on the practice raises constitutional issues about freedom of religion, association, and privacy rights of consenting adults. Kody Brown and his four wives - Meri, Jangle, Christine and Robyn - who began appearing on the TLC reality show in 2010, filed suit against the state of Utah challenging the state's ban.

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 20, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) - The nation's foremost homosexual and transgender political group has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, saying she has made banning reparative therapy and allowing transgender military service "a pillar" of her presidential campaign. “All the progress we have made as a nation on LGBT equality -- and all the progress we have yet to make -- is at stake in November," said Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin. The HRC said that Clinton has made homosexual and transgender political advocacy "a pillar of her campaign and recently unveiled the most robust and ambitious LGBT...