Free Republic

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Conservative lawmakers in Alabama last year tried to enact the nation's most stringent abortion ban, but the attempt to outlaw the procedure may have had one ironic twist. An Alabama-based abortion rights group used a flood of donations that poured in from across the country after the ban to purchase the state’s busiest abortion clinic to ensure it stays open. Yellowhammer Fund — a group founded to help low-income women access abortion — announced the purchase of West Alabama Women’s Center on Friday, the one-year anniversary of the passage of the Alabama ban.

NORTHERN IRELAND & LONDON — "I'm starting to hear things that I haven't heard in a long time," Eileen Weir told Business Insider. "There was a republican funeral here yesterday and they shot over the coffin. I know that's a matter of honour for that fallen comrade, but at the same time, the IRA said all of there guns were out of use, so where did they get that gun?" Weir runs a cross-community women's centre in Shankill, west Belfast. Shankill was a focus of violence during The Troubles. Irish republican and unionist paramilitaries carried out lethal bomb attacks and...