Free Republic

The percentage of babies born to unmarried mothers dipped below 40 percent for the first time in 9 years in 2016, dropping to 39.8 percent, according to the final birth-data report for that year published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, there were 1,569,796 babies born to unmarried mothers in the United States during that year, according to the report. That made 2016 the 29th straight year (1988-2016) that more than a million babies were born in the United States to unmarried mothers. Over the past 30 years on record (1987-2016), according to CDC data, there have...

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...

Americans have become so “non-judgmental” that many people can no longer tell the difference between good and evil. We congratulate ourselves for being “nicer,” more sensitive and less prejudiced than past generations of Americans, but we don’t stop to consider how much more there is to morality than that. An America that isn’t full of good people won’t remain a good nation, nor will it remain strong and free over the long haul. Our country’s lack of morality has real consequences that are capable of eventually sinking us as a nation. 1) The Collapse Of Marriage: There used to be...

DUBLIN, March 25, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – An Irish sex-education group’s state funding is being called into question after lawmakers became aware of an article on the website SpunOut.ie offering advice about sexual threesomes to their teenage audience. The Sunday Independent called attention to the article over the weekend, reprinting quotes from the piece that suggested threesomes were a way for teens to “inject serious passion into their bedroom shenanigans.” According to the Independent, the group warned readers not to pick anyone for whom they have real feelings. “If you are in a relationship, but secretly have a thing for someone...

The liberal Democrat political machine has been in high gear seeking restrictions on gun ownership ever since the December 11, 2012 massacre of twenty young children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut. According to the left, that hideous event constitutes inarguable proof that America needs to rescind the Second Amendment. For the good of everyone, and particularly “the children,” the guns must go. It might seem difficult to surpass such phony liberal sanctimony. Yet during the last days of 2012, as the contrived “fiscal cliff crisis” reached its do or die moment, the same old class envy...

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born. The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article's authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”....

When Lord Bromley Betchworth returned to the United Kingdom (U.K.) after living in the U.S. for 12 years, he returned to a culture that had dramatically changed. "I was shocked at how moral values had changed in such a short time and how church attendance in mainstream denominations was in free fall," he said. "Four out of five churches were either declining or simply static." Betchworth wrote those words in the forward to a fascinating new report that seeks to explain the moral breakdown in a once vibrant Christian nation. A Moral Collapse In many ways, what has happened in...

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Conservative Christian groups are urging a boycott of two of consumer product maker Procter & Gamble's key products, charging the company is aligning itself with gay rights groups, according to a published report. The New York Times said Friday that James Dobson of Focus on the Family and the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association are angry at P&G for a statement on the company's internal Web site opposing an anti-gay rights statute in its hometown of Cincinnati. The law exempts gays and lesbians from special civil rights protection. The two influential conservatives charge...

In 1952, while I was a young pastoral student at Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Mo., Dr. G.B. Vick asked the students, "What do you hope to accomplish with your life?" The question has preoccupied my thoughts for more than five decades. About 40 years ago, God spoke to my heart about saving America. At that time, our U.S. Supreme Court - in 1962 and 1963 - had thrown prayer and Bible reading out of our public schools. Ten years later (1973), Roe vs. Wade declared open game on our unborn. Today, we have nearly 45 million dead unborn babies...