Free Republic

When Ramesh Ponnuru in 2006 authored a book describing Democrats as “ The Party of Death ” (the book’s title), it was met with outraged howls from that party’s fellow travelers in the establishment media. On Jan. 11, every Democrat but one in the House of Representatives left no doubt that the moniker is morbidly, sickeningly appropriate. By a slim 220-210 margin, the House on Wednesday passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, with only one Democrat voting in favor. The point of the bill is straightforward and, in any morally-sane universe, would be so uncontroversial as to attract unanimous...

“This is going to ruin your life.” “You have to drop out of college.” “This is a mistake.” “Abort the baby .” These words, uttered by people whom I trusted and loved most in this world, struck me like a knife. When I learned I was pregnant , I was 21 years old and still in school. I was engaged to be married, and while those two pink lines came as a complete shock, I wanted to be a mother. My feelings were overlooked by those close to me. Rather than offering support, my family and friends responded with criticism...

The Supreme Court takes up its most important abortion case in years on Wednesday, and the question will be how the Justices maneuver their way out of a thicket they should never have entered 50 years ago. Will the Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, settle for an incremental ruling that upholds a Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks, or will it overturn its misguided precedents and return the regulation of abortion to legislatures in the states? These columns have long supported a policy of legal abortion before viability, albeit uneasily as technology has revealed the development...

The Supreme Court will soon reconsider the decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), which made abortion legal in America through all nine months of pregnancy. At that “point in the development of man’s knowledge,” as Justice Harry Blackmun put it in Roe, there was simply no consensus about when life begins. In other words, the fetus could not be said with any certainty to be alive and therefore wasn’t worthy of legal protection. As a diagnostic radiologist—whose youngest patients are fetuses, who are very much alive—I submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization urging the justices...

Over 60 local prosecutors and state attorneys general issued a joint statement Wednesday saying that they will not enforce laws criminalizing abortion if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that first legalized the procedure. The statement comes amid the Senate confirmation hearings for President Trump's third Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. If Barrett is confirmed the court would have a heavy conservative tilt and Democrats have sounded the alarm that Roe v. Wade could be overturned. The 63 prosecutors in the joint statement took aim at state laws looking to curtail abortions as well...

The whole point of the First Amendment was to keep government out of crucial aspects of life –religion, speech, the press – that should be left entirely to voluntary action. It is supposed to shield people against governmental mandates and prohibitions. Government cannot keep you from practicing any religion and it cannot make you practice any; it cannot prevent you from speaking your mind and it cannot make you speak if you do not want to. That’s the concept, anyway. A case that the Court recently heard, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Becerra, puts that concept...

One of the great liberal (in the true sense of the word) decisions by the Supreme Court is West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, the 1943 case where the justices struck down a law that forced school children of the Jehovah’s Witness faith to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance or face punishment for declining to do so. [...] Today’s “liberals” have forgotten the wisdom of Barnette. They care little about liberty and instead desire to impose their ideas by force. We see their authoritarianism popping up all around, and one place is mandatory speech. A...

The Alliance Defending Freedom is a public interest law firm that fights to maintain religious liberty, free speech, and the right of people to freely live out their faith. The group was recently branded a “hate-group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which seems to think that disagreement with its ultra-left beliefs amounts to “hate.” One reason why ADF has earned the enmity of SPLC (and many others on the Left) is the success it has had in litigating against overreaching government policies that infringe upon Americans’ constitutional rights. Such a case is National Institute of Family and Life Advocates...

No excerpt from Bloomberg, story here.

Physician-assisted suicide, much like abortion and same-sex marriage, has become something of a cultural bellwether. Support for the right to end your own life indicates that you are a progressive-minded, compassionate person sensitive to the unique feelings and experiences of individuals facing terminal illness or chronic pain. It means you value the right of self-determination, and oppose the would-be tyranny of moral absolutes promoted by the politically conservative and spiritually religious. The Disovery Institute's Wesley J. Smith recently penned a piece for First Things discussing the media's treatment of the issue of suicide. Smith cites a recent NBC story featuring...

A pro-choice reporter who has been present in the courtroom listening to testimony in the Gosnell trial has changed his mind on abortion, according to one of his fellow reporters. “That's the power of the Gosnell trial,” reporter JD Mullane told former Gov. Mike Huckabee during a recent appearance on the Huckabee Show. Mullane, a pro-life columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times, has been present in the courtroom from the very beginning of the Gosnell trial. His regularly-updated Twitter account has become the go-to place for breaking updates on the case. “There is one journalist sitting in that courtroom...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Where is the unlimited supply of diapers, formula and baby wipes? The free van? The brand-new house?