Free Republic

Media freedom around the world has suffered a “deep and disturbing decline” due to by pressure from governments and businesses, an international media watchdog said Wednesday. The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in an annual report that many of the world’s leaders have developed “a paranoia” about journalism and are clamping down on the media, while coverage in privately-owned outlets is increasingly shaped by corporate interests. …

Since her humiliating defeat in the 2014 Texas gubernatorial race, Wendy Davis has not backed down from her abortion-fueled fame. On the contrary, she has double downed on her commitment to promoting abortion, referring to advances in the pro-life movement as getting “knocked down, but by God, we can get back up and we fight to see a new day.” Reading Jezebel’s new interview with the pro-abortion Texan, it is clear that getting clobbered in an election does not make Davis any less of a progressive darling. Jezebel lovingly describes Davis during her filibuster of a Texas pro-life law as...

Congressional Republicans say they have evidence that suggests an unnamed abortion provider and an unnamed fetal tissue company may have run afoul of federal laws that ban them from profiting from handling fetal tissue. The allegation stems from documents collected by the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, which was established by House Republicans in the wake of the sting videos against Planned Parenthood last summer. "Concern has been raised about following the law and how the procurement companies operate within the framework of the law. There has been sufficient doubt raised around these relationships and the pricing schedules," Chairman...

Planned Parenthood abortion clinics profit from the sale of aborted baby organs, according to new documents released by a congressional committee investigating the organization’s practices.The U.S. House Select Panel on Infant Lives released a preview of its findings after a months-long review of internal documents obtained from the nation’s top abortionist, as well as organ procurement companies and buyers. The panel concluded that abortion clinics incur no additional costs in harvesting organs obtained from an already-aborted baby and that the sale or transfer of those organs represented “pure profit” for the clinic.“The [abortion clinic] has no costs so the payments...

Laced with her typical crude behavior and profanity, Miley Cyrus launched a campaign last week to support the abortion giant Planned Parenthood. The singer and actress, known for shocking audiences with nudity, sexual gestures and generally grotesque behavior, posted a photo on Instagram and Twitter last week to announce the campaign, according to Wonderland Magazine. The post shows Cyrus wearing a bright pink pin with the abortion giant’s logo and the words, “Don’t f— with us/Don’t f— without us.” Cyrus also did a photo shoot with pro-abortion feminist Marilyn Minter, and proceeds from the photo prints, pins and T-shirts will...

A Northern Ireland Presbyterian minister is creating waves after she began advocating for abortion against the church’s teachings. The Rev. Lesley Carroll, who is running for election in the Irish Assembly, recently waded into the abortion debate when she gave a public statement to the pro-abortion Belfast Feminist Network, according to the News Letter. Abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland, but abortion activists are pushing to change that. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland has vocally opposed changes to the law, saying it “protect[s] both the life of the mother and the unborn child,” according to the news outlet. However, Carroll...

The Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), reportedly erased data to suggest that the nation’s largest abortion provider, and intrauterine devices (IUDs), have both worked to substantially reduce unintended pregnancies. Writing at The Federalist, Willis L. Krumholz asserts that the Guttmacher Institute has fudged its data in order to protect the abortion business.

Planned Parenthood abortionists Mary Gatter and Deborah Nucatola were outed by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) whose undercover videos exposed Planned Parenthood’s gruesome baby parts operation. Ironically, they authored a research paper on Digoxin for inducing fetal death prior to second-trimester surgical abortion. Gatter was recorded telling Center for Medical Progress investigators that she wanted a Lamborghini. A look at Planned Parenthood’s compensation for Mary Gatter reveals that they paid her over ONE MILLION DOLLARS in less than 10 years for her work. In the CMP video, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Medical Directors’ Council President, Dr. Mary...

A newly released video shows a pro-life activist confronting a pastor who drove his daughter to work at a Northern California Planned Parenthood abortion clinic. Don Blythe has been involved in pro-life ministry for 32 years and regularly witnesses the Gospel outside abortion clinics. In his many years, he has also observed a disconnect in the church regarding abortion. Blythe told Live Action News that there are many church leaders today that are both participating in abortion as well as defending it. He personally confronted one such Pastor who drove his daughter to Planned Parenthood years ago. The interaction was...

Sexism and abortion go hand in hand. While Planned Parenthood regularly aborts little boy and girls, it preaches women’s rights and complains about a phony war on women that pro-life advocate are supposedly waging because they bother to care about human life before and after birth. Last week, Cecile Richards, the president and CEO of the nation’s biggest abortion business, said she finds her hope elsewhere: in women who brag about killing their babies in abortions. Now, the abortion company director is complaining about men who want to protect women and unborn children from the horrors and dangers of abortions....

**SNIP** Joined by Louisiana and Kansas, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Obama administration Thursday seeking to overturn a fee imposed under the Affordable Care Act. The lawsuit seeks a refund of that amount and an order prohibiting future collections of the fee. Paxton says this is “functionally an unconstitutional tax on the states in order to fund the insolvent Obamacare mandate”. Brownback said, “The federal government is threatening to cut $1.6 billion of federal Medicaid funding affecting more than 400,000 Kansans in need unless Kansas pays millions of dollars in taxes to the federal government to support Obamacare”....

I’ve often found myself wondering about the bias I see at the Catholic News Service(CNS), which seems to gloss over many of the serious problems in the Church. Today, my friend Michael Hichborn at the Lepanto Institute has a story on CNS Director and Editor in Chief Tony Spence that may help shed some light on the bias of the USCCB’s official news and information service: Tony Spence has been the head of the Catholic News Service since 2004.  Over the last few weeks, Spence has been publishing statements on his own twitter feed, identifying him as the head of CNS, speaking...

If people manage to be proud of being perverts, it stands to reason that they can also be proud of the horrible diseases they contract through their perversion. That’s why Twitter is acrawl with the #ShoutYourStatus hashtag, in honor of April being STD Awareness Month: Seems to me that with the virally disproportionate spread of STDs among practitioners of sodomy, it would make more sense to “raise awareness” about the natural consequences of sexual promiscuity during June, which President Obama regularly dubs “LGBT Pride Month.” Nonetheless, and speaking of pride and promiscuity, you oughta head on over to Twitter and...

I was super excited to find out about a bunch of liberal state attorneys general aping the Obama administration’s use of government power to persecute their political enemies. This thrilling development is awesome because it gives us conservatives the opportunity to do the same to liberals. Yeah, if the new rule is that the majority in power uses its authority to persecute its opponents, then shouldn’t we conservatives do it too? Except only harder and more ruthlessly. Right now, you have attorneys general in places like New York and the Virgin Islands going after the heretics who dare dispute the...

Kamala Harris, the Attorney General of California, is an example of the new jackbooted fascists pretending to be responsible public officials. Democrat politicians like Harris and Jerry Brown demonstrate their disgust with the Constitution by placing their own political beliefs above the will of the people, when Brown refused to defend Californians votes for Prop 8, and free speech, when Harris tries to criminalize speech she doesn’t like. While some will reject such strong language, there is really no other way to describe an attorney general who uses the full power of her office to attack a reporter who is...

California State Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) justified her office's raid on the home of pro-life activist David Daleiden this week, contending that "the actions of Mr. Daleiden constitute a clear and present danger to the State and the values we are trying to protect." Daleiden was instrumental in the acquisition and airing of undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officers and employees engaged in illegal trafficking of human organs harvested from aborted fetuses. Harris has declined to initiate an investigation of this illegal trafficking because "the evidence gathered by Mr. Daleiden was obtained through surreptitious methods. An invasion of privacy...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - A proposal to censure a Planned Parenthood official is advancing to the floor of the Missouri Senate. A Senate committee voted 5-2 Thursday to endorse holding regional Planned Parenthood CEO Mary Kogut in contempt of the Senate, which can entail a fine and 10 days in jail The resolution would demand she come to the Senate to answer why she has not complied with a subpoena involving lawmakers’ investigation into fetal tissue donation. Senate Majority Leader Mike Kehoe said he expects the Senate to vote on the contempt resolutions next week. Planned Parenthood has said...

Editor’s note. This post ran a couple of Aprils ago, but the arguments we summarize address issues of ever-green significance: intolerance of pro-life view on college campuses and unbounded pro-abortion extremism, the latter of which we have addressed multiple times just this week. ProLifeYouthMarchAn opinion piece that seamlessly ties together at least two important issues—well, doing so is not as easy as it might look. But, of course, when the common denominator is the monomaniacal pro-abortion mind, it’s a lot easier to weave the threads together. Which is to take nothing away from George Will’s latest column, “Johns Hopkins’s and...

We received disappointing news this week: Taxpayer funded abortions jumped more than 16 percent to a total of 3,957 in 2014, costing taxpayers $953,187 (Minnesota Department of Human Services latest figures). And guess which abortionist was responsible for virtually all of the increase? Planned Parenthood—no surprise. Abortion numbers have been trending down as more women in the state turn away from abortion. Since 2007, abortion numbers have decreased every year but one. Likewise, in only two of those years has the number of taxpayer funded abortions increased. But 2014 saw a bigger spike than has occurred since 2000. Just as...

David Daleiden is not a reporter. His grossly misleading, politically irresponsible videos purporting to implicate Planned Parenthood in illegal behavior make that clear. It's an insult to responsible journalism. The only question Attorney General Kamala Harris needs to answer for her investigators' raid of Daleiden's home Tuesday is: What took her so long?