Free Republic

In an earlier column, I looked at the role the abortion issue would play in the 2016 election -- not very much, I concluded -- and promised another column on other cultural issues. Here goes. On anyone's list of cultural issues that have been debated over the last decade, same-sex marriage ranks just behind abortion. And unlike abortion, opinion on same-sex marriage has changed dramatically in recent years. Not long ago, it wasn't a political issue at all. The gifted writers Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch were making an intellectually serious, and interestingly conservative, case for same-sex marriage. But the...

Jeb Bush, the pro-life former governor of Florida, announced today that he is forming an exploratory committee to examine a potential Republican presidential bid in 2016. Bush is known for signing pro-life legislation and a bill to try to save the life of Terri Schiavo. Bush, the brother of pro-life President George W. Bush, made the announcement on Facebook, saying he and his wife and family had long conversations over Thanksgiving about whether to run for president. “We also talked about the future of our nation. As a result of these conversations and thoughtful consideration of the kind of strong...

Even though pro-life counselors have had success in their campaign against a Michigan abortionist the most recent campaign against him has been lengthy and it is likely not over. Michael Arthur Roth has been operating his abortion facility in West Bloomfield, Michigan under a guise for some time. But Operation Rescue President Troy Newman is not fooled by the façade of Roth’s business and is familiar with him. “This is a guy that likes to call his place the Laser and Anesthetic Center, trying to mask off as being, I guess, a plastic surgeon,” Newman informed. “But in reality, all...

he scariest words uttered during Jonathan Gruber’s recent appearance before the House Oversight Committee were “positive selection.” They were read aloud by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, from a 1997 paper the professor co-authored concerning abortion. The opus in question made the Congressman uneasy because of the following passage: “By 1993 all cohorts under the age 19 were born under legalized abortion and we estimate steady state savings of $1.6 billion per year from positive selection.” Rep. Massie asked the professor what was meant by “positive selection.” This question was evidently not anticipated in Gruber’s pre-testimony coaching, so he became evasive....

Laurie Bertram Roberts, Mississippi State Pres. of the National Organization of Women, comments on Margaret Sanger’s racism: “First of all, Margaret Sanger did not work on abortion. She worked on birth control. Context is everything. I will never deny that Margaret Sanger was connected to the eugenics movement, what they (abortion opponents) never bothered to say is that eugenicists also wanted to limit the birth rate of poor white people and disabled people. It wasn’t just Black people; it was a whole lot of people they deem to be unfit.” Quoted in “Thank God for Stupid Enemies” Speaker for the...

Tom Davis, who is an ordained minister with the United Church of Christ and a chaplain and professor at Skidmore College: “I contend that Planned Parenthood is engaged in a form of sacred work, the work, that is, of securing reproductive justice for women… Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is thoroughly secular. But when it comes to the issue of sacred work, that doesn’t matter. The scripture is clear about one thing: sacred work, the work of justice, is sacred no matter who does it.… In the biblical view, sacred work is love, and in practical social realities, sacred...

Pro-choice author Magda Denes witnessed abortions for her book In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death Inside an Abortion Hospital. Her book was published decades ago, but is still relevant today and is one of the most detailed and poignant books by an observer at an abortion clinic. Here she describes viewing the bodies of aborted babies killed in the second trimester: I am drawn to the unit, irresistable, by my reactions of disbelief, sorrow, horror, compassion, guilt. The place depresses me, yet I hang around after working hours. When I leave, I behave outside with the expansiveness of one...

Last January, I was traveling on business, staying in a little hotel in a college town. I like to think I’m usually more aware of my surroundings, but it was so snowy and windy that I wouldn’t have heard his footsteps even if he had he been stomping. It happened so fast. I got the door open, turned around to close it, and he was there – a huge man. My first instinct wasn’t fear, just confusion. In an instant, he punched me in the face. I don’t remember being dragged from the room, but I was found in the...

I wrote in my book, “unPlanned,” about a church that kicked me out when they found out that I worked for Planned Parenthood. I often get questioned about that, whether I still think they made the wrong decision. My answer is a resounding YES. I try not to go down the “what if” road very often. It isn’t fruitful and just makes you feel crummy. But, just for the sake of this article, let’s go there. What if I had been ministered to instead of shunned by that church? How could my life be different? Well, maybe I would have...

People always ask me what it was like to work inside an abortion clinic. They want to know what the atmosphere was like. Was it a sad place? Did people walk around with tears in their eyes? Was it a somber environment? Was it quiet? It was not a sad place. Why would it be? We didn’t think we were doing anything wrong. We didn’t see that there was anything to be sad about. We joked around with the patients. We enjoyed our work. We talked to them about their weekend plans while the doctor performed their abortion. It was...

The late Richard John Neuhaus famously wrote of bioethicists: Thousands of medical ethicists and bioethicists, as they are called, professionally guide the unthinkable on its passage through the debatable on the way to becoming the justifiable until it is finally established as unexceptionable. In my over 20 years engaged in trying to push back against the bioethics movement, I have found that to be an absolutely accurate formula. Take, as one example, dehydrating the cognitively devastated to death–a slow and potentially agonizing death. That was once unthinkable, it became debatable in the 1980s, and is now unexceptional. Allowing infanticide has...

Jennifer Waloway, a nurse practitioner who oversees six family planning clinics in northeastern Wisconsin, was opening the mail in August when she came upon a letter from the state. It asked NEWCAP Community Health Services, which runs the clinics, to please submit a check payable to the State of Wisconsin. The amount: $1,169,837.10. "I was a little in shock," Waloway said. The letter from the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Health Services said its audit showed that NEWCAP incorrectly had billed — and been paid — by the Medicaid and BadgerCare Plus programs for prescription drugs...

Salon.com ✔ @Salon The right is coming for your birth control — they just don’t want you to know it yet http://slnm.us/btF70R8 via @kmcdonovgh RB @RBPundit Follow Not only is this idiotic piece based on a lie, the moron who wrote it couldn't even argue the lie convincingly. @Salon @kmcdonovgh 2:29 PM - 15 Dec 2014 ortly before the November elections, NARAL suggested that Cory Gardner would ban birth control in Colorado. As Salon demonstrates, such scare tactics haven’t subsided: It’s the lie that won’t die! Salon.com ✔ @Salon The right is coming for your birth control — they just...

Some people are still under the impression that the A Century Ago: Rockefellers Funded Eugenics Initiative to Sterilize 15 Million Americans " tit>Rockefeller Foundation is all about philanthropy: helping people and saving lives. Those people are Bill Gates and Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. In reality, the Rockefellers have been one of the largest financial backers and drivers of the eugenics and the depopulation agenda for over a century now. Check out these 1915 newspaper clippings we came across in research. The first is from The Salem Daily Capital Journal printed Thursday, November 4th, 1915.

The Daily Signal has an in-depth article today on doctors’ controversial efforts to perform successful surgeries on babies. Of course, no one would ever find such a story controversial if it didn’t center on babies who have not been born yet. The Signal piece profiles Drs. Michael Harrison and Scott Adzick, two pioneers in the field of fetal surgery who set about “upending science as the world knew it” in the early ’80s. “The idea arose from the frustration of caring for babies after birth and realizing it was too late: the damage was already done,” said Adzick, chief of...

In Missouri, a new pro-life measure (HB 182) would allow a court to deny a father custody of his child if he attempted to coerce the mother into getting an abortion. In 2009, the Elliot Institute, an Illinois-based organization that researches abortion’s impact on women, found that as many as 64 percent of women say they have felt pressure to have an abortion; and in most cases, the pressure came from partners or spouses. Tragically, there are countless stories of women being coerced into abortion and in some of these cases, the coercion became violent. For example, in February 2011,...

More than 65,000 unborn babies have been killed in Minnesota with taxpayer funds since a Dec. 15, 1995, Minnesota Supreme Court ruling required taxpayers to fund abortions, according to the Minnesota Department of Human Services (MDHS). The Doe v. Gomez ruling established the most extreme abortion-on-demand state policy in the nation. “The Doe v. Gomez decision by a handful of activist judges has been disastrous for Minnesota women and their unborn babies,” said Scott Fischbach, Executive Director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL). “On this 19th anniversary of the decision, Minnesotans continue to believe it is not the mission...

So apparently there’s a uterus puppet going around the country making videos about abortion clinics and lack thereof. Yes, there’s a puppet named Eunice, and she’s a sad uterus. Hans Johnson from JillStanek.com found this great little gem and we just had to share. He wrote: In the “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” category comes a video called “The Abortion Desert.” Taking a cue from the idea of “food deserts” - a lack of urban grocery stores – the abortion lobby group Lady Parts Justice nervously brings attention to the dwindling number of abortion clinics. For a serious subject,...

"This is a graphic misrepresentation of abortion." - Responding to Pro-Abortion Slogans Created Equal responds to the allegation that our photos are fake. Watch our response to protesters at Texas State University. VIDEO ONLY ON LINK (WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES)

Protesters against President Obama's HHS mandate requiring religious institutions provide contraception and abortion related services through health insurance hold signs outside City Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio, March 23, 2012. Although a federal funding bill the House passed on Thursday includes language urging the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure Obamacare's federal health exchange provides consumers with transparency on which plans include a separate elective abortion surcharge, pro-life advocates are skeptical that HHS will actually listen to Congress. Pro-lifers in the House sought to include in the CRomnibus appropriations bill, which would keep the federal government funded through next...