Free Republic

The issue of euthanasia in Canada is no longer simmering on a back burner. After the Supreme Court of British Columbia found yesterday that Criminal Code provisions which prohibit doctors from helping their patients commit suicide are unconstitutional, it is on a full, rolling boil. In the landmark decision, Justice Lynn Smith set down that if suicide is legal, preventing handicapped persons from taking their lives must be discriminatory.  Judge Smith gave Canada's Parliament a year to draft a law permitting assisted suicide. In the meantime she granted the principal plaintiff in the case, Gloria Taylor, an exemption. This makes...

The Medical Establishment continues to try and misdirect the conversation on the pending threat of “death panels” under Obamacare.  They pretend it is about “end of life discussions.”  But even though Sarah Palin mistakenly made that allusion when she first coined the term, she quickly corrected her mistake–as we noted here. “Death panels” really refer to the threat of health care rationing and centralized cost/benefit bureaucracies deciding that efficacious treatments will not be covered based on quality of life invidious discrimination–as occurs already in the UK, Canada, and Oregon’s Medicaid rationing law.But they keep pretending. Latest example: In the Annals of...

Majority Floor Leader Jim Stamas (R-Midland) gaveled Brown out of order on Wednesday afternoon after she told her colleagues, “I’m flattered you’re all so concerned about my vagina, but no means no.”

What would it be like to starve to death in silence? Can you imagine dying of thirst, but not being able to ask for a glass of water? Student and aspiring filmmaker Adam Hardy, 22, puts his viewers in the shoes of a woman in just that situation.Based on the true story of Terri Schiavo and others like her, Hungry reminds us of the discrimination that people with disabilities face and the sanctity of all human life. Since Live Action is a youth-led movement dedicated to building a culture of life, we love sharing what other young people are doing to communicate life-affirming...

President Barack Obama will host a reception at the White House to observe Gay Pride Month on Friday. In a proclamation earlier this month, the president stressed that his administration has worked to “level the playing field for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people.” Obama’s recent declaration of support for gay marriage was celebrated as a key endorsement among gay rights groups. After the reception, the first family leaves for Chicago, where they will spend the night.

Two new peer-reviewed studies show that family structure matters and children do best when reared by their married biological mother and father. The widely circulated claim that parents engaged in same-sex relationships do just as well as other parents at raising children—a claim widely known today as the “no differences” thesis—is not settled science. Two new peer-reviewed studies released this week by the academic journal Social Science Research challenge the claim that there are no differences in outcomes between children raised by parents who have same-sex relationships and those raised by their biological mother and father in intact, stable marriages.In...

Two peer-reviewed articles published Sunday in a scholarly journal cast doubt on a core assumption used to advance same-sex marriage. A number of studies and articles have suggested that research shows no difference in outcomes between children whose parents have same-sex relationships and their peers raised by heterosexual parents. For example, the American Psychological Association (APA) stated in 2005 that “Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.” Yesterday the academic journal Social Science Research published a detailed methodological review of the research...

A British ethics committee has recommended going forward with creating human embryos with 3 genetic parents. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, an independent body that considers issues in biotechnology and medicine, has found the genetic engineering technique is ethical and should move forward even though the technique is currently against the law in the United Kingdom.Why would doctors want to engineer an embryo with the genetic material from 3 people? Because, it will “prevent” the inheritance of mitochondrial disease. Not all of our DNA that we inherit is in the nuclei of the egg and sperm that join at fertilization....

A disturbing story is making its way out of a small community in Washington State, where residents are outraged over a school lesson that was delivered to fifth-grade children. During a sex education class led by the Onalaska Elementary School principal, graphic descriptions of oral and anal sex were purportedly delivered. According to Fox News’ Todd Starnes, the 11-year-old students were being given a lesson on HIV-AIDS. However, the lesson took a bizarre turn when a student reportedly asked about other forms of sexual activity. At that point, the principal then delved into subjects many would deem too advanced for...

What should be done with elderly Americans when they become very seriously ill? Should we try to save their lives or should we just let them die? Unfortunately, there is a growing consensus among the "intellectual elite" that most elderly people are not going to have a high enough "quality of life" to justify the expense of costly life saving procedures. This philosophy is now being promoted very heavily through mainstream news outlets, in our television shows and in big Hollywood movies. The elite are attempting to convince us that killing off our sick grandparents is cool and trendy. We...

A change in the law to allow doctors to help mentally competent adults to end their lives is 'almost inevitable', Dr Fiona Godlee said, and the medical profession should not oppose it. A survey of GPs found almost two thirds were in favour of the British Medical Association and the Royal Colleges adopting a neutral stance to the issue. Assisted dying is due to be debated at the BMA conference at the end of the month. Dr Godlee said the debate on assisted dying is similar to that of abortion reform in the 1960s when the main medical professional bodies...

June 25, 2012 is the 50th anniversary of the Engel v. Vitale Supreme Court decision which banned prayer in public schools. Minister David Barton has accurately observed that in the years following that landmark 1962 decision, social pathologies increased amongst America’s public school students including promiscuity, pregnancy, abortion, depression, suicide and drug abuse. The daily experience of prayer to a Supreme Being offered a moment of thanks and acknowledgement for the many blessings bestowed on our great nation and reminded our children that there was something greater in the universe than mere material satisfactions. Yet, it should be acknowledged that...

Pressuring women to have an abortion is not limited to sexual abusers, manipulative husbands, and outraged relatives. One young professional is complaining that her co-workers are continually badgering her to abort her wanted unborn child, because it will interfere with her career. Slate magazine’s weekly “Dear Prudence” feature showcases advice columnist Emily Yoffe in a video segment entitled “Abortion Advocates on the Job.” The writer is a working woman in her late 20s who said she unexpectedly became pregnant a few years before she and her husband intended. The couple is happily keeping the baby. That did not make other...

This is a disgrace: Peter Singer has won Australia’s highest civic award. From the Princeton press release: Peter Singer, the Decamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, has been awarded Australia’s highest civic honor. He was appointed Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia “for eminent service to philosophy and bioethics as a leader of public debate and communicator of ideas in the areas of global poverty, animal welfare and the human condition.”Singer is best known for advocating the ethical propriety of infanticide. But that isn’t nearly the limit of...

Right-to-die activists hope more countries will allow assisted suicide or euthanasia in coming years as the world population ages, but opponents are determined to stop them, a dispute that flared ahead of competing conferences in Switzerland. "We have seen over the last 20 years a general migration of positivity towards this being a just cause," Ted Goodwin, the American president of the World Federation of Right-to-Die Societies, told a news conference in Zürich on Tuesday. … Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1942, if performed by a non-physician who has no direct interest in the death. Euthanasia, or...

Hello, My name is Chase! New, hot, & ready to forfill [sic] all of your wildest dreams. Weighing 115 and standing at 5’4” with the complete package to take you to ecstacy [sic] ! ! ! In call starting at $80. Out call starting at $100. Poster's age: 19. That’s an actual sex ad posted today in the Seattle listings of Backpage.com, a website that boasts a 70 percent market share of the nation’s prostitution ads according to AIM Group, the leading research and consulting service for the classifieds industry. The owners of Backpage.com, Village Voice Media, are determined to...

ONALASKA, Wash. - You can tell Onalaska is old fashioned just by looking. "We're in the country, we're small town, we like it that way,” said parent Kadra Gilliland. But something at the elementary school last week has folks in this quiet town making noise. "What gives this woman the right to come down here and go above our authority, is the way I look at it,” said parent Curt Pannkuk. "I was one pissed off cowboy," said parent James Gilliland. These parents are upset about a sex education class for the fifth graders last week. "She learned oral sex...

BATON ROUGE -- Doctors will be barred from performing abortions 20 weeks after conception under a bill signed into law Monday by Gov. Bobby Jindal.Senate Bill 766 by Senate President John Alario, R-Westwego, prohibits all abortions after 20 weeks, about 22 weeks on the typical 40-week gestational calendar. The previous state law prohibited the procedure after the fetus was viable.Alario's bill, which goes into effect Aug. 1, carries fines and imprisonment for any physician that performs an abortion after the cut-off. The bill does allow for abortions performed to protect the life of the pregnant woman.The bill joins two other...

Rep. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, a candidate for U.S. Senate, defended sex-selective abortions and criticized Senate Republicans for opposing abortions instigated because the fetus is a girl. "To many cultures, particularly the Asian culture, this presented the prospect of a doctor grilling an Asian woman for example," Hirono, a Japanese immigrant, said at the Netroots Nation convention. Hirono made clear that she did not oppose sex-selective abortions. "How can we criminalize a decision that should be up to the woman and her doctor?" she asked. Hirono also maintained that "there really is a war on women in Congress." Although President Obama...

OTTAWA, Ontario, June 11, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Muslims of a traditional bent hope that a lack of funding will force Planned Parenthood Ottawa to cut a program aimed at teaching their Muslim teenage daughters a version of “sexual health” that they say is contrary to their “faith-based values and family values.” “Information and education is always good, but when it comes with a clear message of promoting a certain lifestyle which may be in conflict with both the faith-based values and family values [of Muslims] then I have an issue with it,” Shahina Siddiqui, executive director of the Islamic Social...