Free Republic

California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a controversial new law regarding judges' discretion on whether or not to add individuals to the state’s sex offender registry who have committed sodomy with minors. Newsom signed the bill, passed by the Democratic-controlled state legislature, into law without comment on Friday, expanding the discretion granted to judges in statutory rape cases, according to ABC 7 News Los Angeles. California law permitted judges to decide whether a man was placed on the sex offender registry if he had consensual intercourse with someone 14 to 17 years old and was not more than 10...

A “disturbing” new research paper has revealed how 94 percent of Belgian doctors support the killing of new-born babies after birth if they are diagnosed with a disability. Michael Robinson, SPUC Director of Communications said: “It is deeply disturbing that medical professionals who should protect and value each human life hold these shocking beliefs.” The research article surveyed the attitudes of healthcare professionals in Belgium towards the ‘termination of pregnancy at viable stage.’ 93.6% of physicians in Flanders region, Belgium, surveyed “agree that in the event of a serious (non-lethal) neonatal condition, administering drugs with the explicit intention to end...

Every argument supporting gay marriage—‘Love is love,’ ‘we deserve equal protection under the law,’ and ‘we’re not harming anybody’—also supports group marriage. The Massachusetts town of Somerville has become the first in the nation to legalize polyamorous relationships. It’s evidence of the slippery slope social conservatives warned would follow legalizing gay marriage.Polygamy was the obvious evolution of redefining marriage. After all, every argument supporting gay marriage—“Love is love,” “we deserve equal protection under the law,” and “we’re not harming anybody”—also supports group marriage.Somerville’s legal recognition of polyamory came about on June 25 while the city council was changing its domestic...

Let me be totally clear at the outset. One of the purposes of this article is to say, “I told you so!” Or, more precisely, many of us have been predicting this moment for years. As reported in the New York Times, “A Massachusetts City Decides to Recognize Polyamorous Relationships. The city of Somerville has broadened the definition of domestic partnership to include relationships between three or more adults, expanding access to health care.” Is anyone really surprised?After all, if the winning mantras of the same-sex “marriage” movement have been “Love is love” and “Love wins” and “I have the...

At the tail end of a City Council meeting last week, so quickly and quietly that you could have easily missed it, a left-leaning Massachusetts city expanded its notion of family to include people who are polyamorous, or maintaining consenting relationships with multiple partners.

More than 20 years ago, the Dutch Supreme Court approved the assisted suicide of a woman in despair because her children had died. So we shouldn’t be surprised that it has now explicitly approved the forced euthanasia of patients with dementia if they asked to be killed before becoming incompetent. From Reuters: The Dutch Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that doctors could legally carry out euthanasia on people with advanced dementia who had earlier put their wishes in writing even if they could no longer confirm them because of their illness. What the Reuters story failed to mention — and...

Facing a potentially historic vote on whether to legalize medical marijuana in Kentucky, Republican lawmaker John Schickel is conflicted. A retired law enforcement officer, Schickel once steadfastly opposed medical cannabis, but his stance has softened. Now he says he’s approaching the question with an open mind. […] Schickel’s dilemma stands as yet another sign that views about marijuana are changing across the South, where efforts to legalize it have long been stymied by Bible Belt politics. While medical cannabis is legal now in 33 states, including Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida, other Southern states remain among the holdouts. Whether wavering resistance...

Michael Lee and Angela Peang can hardly wait for the birth of their first child — even if it results in them spending time behind bars. The husband and wife from Eagle Mountain, Utah, are first cousins: Peang’s father is the older brother of Lee’s mother. Since the baby’s existence proves they had sex, they could face up to $10,000 in fines and five years in prison, because intercourse between cousins is illegal in their home state, due to the long-held fear of birth defects. (According to a 2018 Columbia University study, the chances of cousins having a genetic disorder...

A Dutch court acquitted a doctor on Wednesday of all charges for the euthanasia of an elderly woman who suffered from dementia but may not have wanted to end her life when her life was taken. The landmark case received widespread media attention because prosecutors claim the doctor, who remains unnamed, did not properly consult her patient before injecting her with a lethal dose of drugs. The unnamed 74-year-old patient was given a sedative in her coffee and had to be restrained by her husband and daughter as the doctor injected her with the deadly drugs. "We conclude that all...

It was a big day for the kids in Mr. Ratburn’s grade-school class — and, by extension, the children (and parents) who watch the long-running PBS Kids series Arthur. In today’s Season 22 premiere of the animated show, Arthur and his friends learn that their teacher Mr. Ratburn was going to be married. What none of them was expecting is that he is tying the knot with an aardvark named Patrick. The episode, titled “Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone,” shows the teacher taking a cell phone call while preparing to hand out a pop quiz on homework.

A professor emeritus of biology tries to make the case that newborn babies can ethically & morally be killed because they are not “cognizant of themselves” — i.e., they are morally equivalent to a fetus which he maintains is a non-person.

TORONTO – In a prestigious medical journal, doctors from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children have laid out policies and procedures for administering medically assisted death to children, including scenarios where the parents would not be informed until after the child dies. The article appears just three months before the Canadian Council of Academies is due to report to Parliament on the medical consensus about extending voluntary euthanasia in circumstances currently forbidden by law. The Canadian Council of Academies is specifically looking at extending so-called assisted dying to patients under 18, psychiatric patients and patients who have expressed a preference for...

A euthanasia case in the Netherlands made international headlines last year after it came to light that a woman was euthanized against her will. Now, the doctor who killed her is finally being held responsible. The patient, who has not been identified, was 74 years old and reportedly suffering dementia. She was living in a nursing home, and had previously said she wanted to undergo assisted suicide when “the time is right.” However, she never put in a request for assisted suicide, so even though her dementia had progressed to the point that she was no longer capable of giving...

(AP) — In a rare series of moves, Dutch authorities are investigating whether doctors may have committed crimes in five euthanasia cases, including the deaths of two women with advanced Alzheimer’s disease. In one of the Alzheimer’s cases, which prosecutors began probing in September, a physician drugged the patient’s coffee without her knowledge and then had the woman physically restrained while delivering the fatal injection. The ongoing criminal investigation is the first since the Netherlands made it legal for doctors to kill patients at their request in 2002. Dutch prosecutors announced they were examining four other cases last month, including...

Washington Post deputy editorial page editor, Ruth Marcus, penned an op-ed yesterday defending the “right” to selectively kill babies inside the mother’s womb who have been diagnosed with Down syndrome. The piece is filled superfluous nonsense that matters neither here, nor there in the main point of her argument. Marcus is not defending killing babies due to perceived disabilities, but rather asserting her belief that a woman should be able to kill the baby inside her womb at anytime and for whatever reason, without question. “There is a new push in antiabortion circles to pass state laws aimed at barring women...

Apparently assisted suicide is not enough for the death peddlers in this Pacific Northwest State. Now they are pushing legislation in the Oregon State Legislature that would allow starving mentally ill patients to death. A similar bill was defeated last year but the euthanasia promoters are back with a new one, Oregon Right to Life tells LifeNews. House Bill 4135 is scheduled for a hearing and possible work session in the House Health Care Committee at 3:00 pm on February 7th. It is believed this bill will move quickly because there are only 35 days in the 2018 regular session....

<p>Pedophilia is considered to be the most taboo issue in the world. For obvious reasons, those who are known pedophiles live with a huge stigma attached to them. Many of them struggle with pedophilic impulses but don’t act on them - and they have been the subject of much media attention, scientific attention, and psychiatric attention as well.</p>

Australia's "marriage equality" campaign triumphed in this month's referendum under the slogan "Let's Get It Done". In other words, it's inevitable, so why waste another five years arguing about it? Let's get it done, and over, and move on to transgender bathrooms or whatever's next. That's how "progressives" think about progress. As a certain author wrote long ago in a certain bestselling book: We assume that social progress is like technological progress: it can't be reversed. Just as you can't disinvent the internal combustion engine, so you can't disinvent women's rights. Just as the horse and buggy yielded to the...

With the rise of prenatal screening tests across Europe and the United States, the number of babies born with Down syndrome has significantly decreased, but few countries have come as close to eradicating Down syndrome births as Iceland. Since prenatal screening tests were introduced in Iceland in the early 2000s, the vast majority of women -- close to 100 percent -- who received a positive test for Down syndrome terminated their pregnancy.

Rabat – Fifteen minors who sexually assaulted a donkey in the small rural town of Sidi Kamel in the communal providence of Sidi Kacem have been treated for rabies infections received from the animal. The sexually frustrated children and teenagers stayed at the Mechraa Belksiri Hospital for one week to receive rabies vaccinations after the animal transmitted the disease to them, explained Moroccan daily Al Akhbar in its August 10 edition. The incident has put the families of these fifteen young people into distress and horror, reports the daily.