Free Republic

Accused mom Sheila Fletcher walked resolutely out of jail on a $300,000 bond late Tuesday night - a little over 24 hours after she was arrested for the 'murder' of her autistic daughter, who was found fused to a sofa in her own excrement. Sheila and husband Clay Fletcher, both 64, were charged with second-degree murder Monday and now face life in prison without parole if convicted over 36-year-old Lacey Ellen Fletcher's secret horrific ordeal that lasted at least 12 years. Pictured leaving East Feliciana Parish Jail in exclusive DailyMail.com photos after her release, Sheila looked straight ahead and refused...

I recently told you about California Assembly Bill 2223, which contains a provision preventing any person from being subject to civil or criminal liability “based on actions or omissions with respect to their . . . alleged pregnancy outcome, including . . . perinatal death.” You may recall that the “perinatal” period covers roughly from 28 weeks of pregnancy to 1-4 weeks post birth. Based on our legal analysis of Assembly Bill 2223, and Maryland Bills 626 and 669, we informed you that the legislation – as proposed – could handicap the investigations into the deaths of newborns and effectively...

When asked about the controversial late term abortion bill presented in Virginia’s House of Delegates this week, Governor Ralph Northam said a fully developed child born in the third trimester would be kept alive, but the physician and mother would get to discuss and decide whether to take its life or not. “If a mother is in labor…the infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and mother,” Northam said on WTOP’s “Ask The Governor”...

The field of bioethics seems to be less and less concerned about what is considered ethical in medicine, and more and more concerned with justifying a culture of death. It’s no longer enough for abortion to be legal; bioethicists are increasingly calling for the murder of born infants to be permitted. And though these calls for legal infanticide are always met with outrage, they continue to come. Finnish bioethicist Joona Räsänen has argued in the medical journal Bioethics that pro-life arguments against infanticide “are not convincing” and “cannot show infanticide to be immoral.” While Räsänen has not argued for infanticide...

A Republican Senate candidate in North Carolina is defending his remarks that some abortion rights groups contemplate infanticide. Greg Brannon, who is challenging Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan, told a group in November that killing babies who survived abortions could happen in America, according to a report Wednesday in Mother Jones magazine. …

In particular, longtime abortion proponent Beth Wessel-Kroeschell of Ames railed against House Republicans for advancing the legislation. She also read off a laundry list of inconveniences a baby would cause for women, including colic. Colic is an infant crying for more than three hours per day.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday cleared a first-of-a-kind blood test that can help diagnose mental disabilities in babies by analyzing their genetic code. The laboratory test from Affymetrix detects variations in patients’ chromosomes that are linked to Down syndrome, DiGeorge syndrome and other developmental disorders. About 2 to 3 percent of U.S. children have some sort of intellectual disability, according to the National Institutes of Health. …

A teenager is in jail on a million dollars bail, accused of delivering a baby in the bathroom of her high school and then throwing it in the trash.. Police say 19-year old Cherlie Lafleur gave birth to the baby Tuesday at McCaskey East High School in Lancaster County. The fetus was delivered and found at McCaskey East High School in a restroom, the dead fetus was found at about 10 p.m. last night by custodian in a trash can. Police confirm they have identified and arrested the 19-year-old woman who delivered the fetus as a student at the school,...

On Tuesday night, a central Pennsylvania teenager gave birth in her high school bathroom to a baby who was approximately 27-29 weeks old. She initially tried to flush the baby’s body down the toilet and, when that didn’t work, she placed the baby in the trash can and left. Police say Cherlie LaFleur, a 19-year-old McCaskey East High School student, is responsible. She has been charged with concealing the death of a child. From a local news report on what happened: Officer David Shell after they reviewed school surveillance footage and conducted extensive interviews at the school where the male...

Florida legislators considering a bill to require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion were shocked during a committee hearing this week when a Planned Parenthood official endorsed a right to post-birth abortion.

The Weekly Standard today released video of a Planned Parenthood official arguing for the right to slaughter babies who survive an abortion. The Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa Laport Snow argued the point in a Florida committee hearing. (VIDEO AT LINK) This is the same position Barack Obama held in 2002. Barack Obama argued in support of killing babies born alive after an attempted abortion.....

Take Peter Singer, author of "Animal Liberation." This publication has been the inspiration for PETA; featured in the movie "Legally Blonde" and is the animal rights bible to which animal rights activists turn for guidance the same way Christians reference the actual bible. Beyond rights for animals (see if you catch the irony here) Singer believes that abortion should be available for any reason, up to and beyond birth. That's right - if you eat a hamburger, he'll call you a murder, but if you kill a baby he'll say you're doing the right thing. He believes that killing a...

Question from the bottom of page 2: Most proponents of the right to die would agree with your ideas about euthanasia. But you lose them when you suggest that it's OK to kill a baby before it's 28 days old, because until that time, it is not self-aware and "doesn't have the same right to life as others." Answer: I wrote that in 1995. I have changed my position. Now I believe you should look at every individual case.

A 14-year-old girl has been arrested and charged with murder after she allegedly killed her newborn baby in a school bathroom. Baytown, Texas, police said the eighth-grade student submerged the 7 pound infant in a Cedar Bayou Junior School toilet and jammed toilet paper down his throat so he wouldn't cry, the Houston Chronicle reported. Police have been investigating the incident since the baby was found April 2. The baby also suffered blunt trauma to his head and neck, according to a Harris County autopsy. Gerald Yoakum, the girl's attorney, claims she wasn't aware that the baby was in the...

WICHITA | An abortion protester who claims Dr. George Tiller intentionally hit him with his vehicle outside the clinic has sued the Wichita doctor in a small claims case that has attracted the attention of two court television programs. Mark Gietzen, the director of Kansas Coalition for Life, is seeking $4,000 for his injuries for an April 2006 incident at the edge of the driveway into the Women’s Health Care Services. Two court television programs — Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown — have written Gietzen asking him to allow the case to be arbitrated on their shows. Gietzen, who...

Senator Barack Obama is one of the leading candidates who parades as a compassionate Christian. He is just the opposite. Per AP, Obama "told a church convention Saturday that some right-wing evangelical leaders have exploited and politicized religious beliefs in an effort to sow division." Of course, Obama will target as the religious hypocrites the evangelicals. They are the church's nuisance. They are the bothersome crew. They are the cloistered, self-centered cads who are clogging up the righteous spout. The truth is that United Church of Christ member Obama is true to his theologically liberal Protestant denomination, but he is...

A second Los Angeles judge threw out the murder charge against a suspended USC student accused of killing her newborn child on Tuesday. Holly Ashcraft, a 22-year-old architecture major who has stood trial for two years, still faces a June 27 hearing for one charge of child abuse. Ashcraft was arrested in October 2005 after a newborn was found in a Dumpster behind the 29th Street Cafe. DNA evidence proved it was her son. Prosecuting Deputy District Attorney Franco Barrata had cited a coroner's conclusion that the baby was born alive, but defense attorney Mark Geragos had repeatedly challenged that...

Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by the BBC suggests. Disturbing video footage of post-mortem examinations on dismembered tiny bodies raises serious questions about what happened to them. Ukraine has become the self-styled stem cell capital of the world. There is a trade in stem cells from aborted foetuses, amid unproven claims they can help fight many diseases. But now there are claims that stem cells are also being harvested from live babies. Wall of silence The BBC has spoken to mothers from the city of...

ORTH LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - The mother of a newborn boy who survived being tossed out of a moving car has been identified and interviewed by investigators, authorities said Friday. "It is my belief ... that this person is the birth mother of the child," Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne told reporters. The sheriff also said that the interview with the unidentified woman "puts a whole new light on this story" but he gave no specifics. A news conference was planned for later in the day to provide more details. "We do believe at this point ... that we will...

MADRAS, INDIA – The oleander plant yields a bright, pleasant flower, but also a milky sap that, if ingested, can be a deadly poison. It's one of the methods families use to kill newborn girls in the Salem District of Tamil Nadu, a part of India notorious for female infanticide. Though the government has battled the practice for decades, India's gender imbalance has worsened in recent years. Any progress toward halting infanticide, it seems, has been offset by a rise in sex-selective abortions. Too many couples - aided by medical technology, unethical doctors, and weak enforcement of laws banning abortion...