Free Republic

A British citizen native to Taiwan was arrested in Bangkok Thursday after Thai police discovered in his belongings bodies of six tiny children, apparently all young enough to be victims of abortion, roasted and covered in gold leaf. The UK’s Independent newspaper reports that the children, aged between two and seven months’ gestation, were roasted “as part of a black magic ritual.” No word on whether any of the “foetuses” were still alive when the ritual began. Chow Hok Kuen, 28, faces a 2,000 baht fine ($64 U.S.) and a year in prison for possessing the bodies. “He said he...

A British man of Asian origin was arrested in Thailand after police found him in possession of six human fetuses that had been roasted and covered in gold leaf in a black magic ritual, The Telegraph reports. The man, Chow Hok Kuen, 28, confessed to police he had bought the fetuses from a Taiwanese man a few days earlier for 200,000 baht ($6,382), and he intended to smuggle them into Taiwan, where he would have been able to sell them for at least six times that amount. While the fetuses were found in a separate hotel from the one Chow...

Once, at a smart wedding in Northamptonshire when I was about 30, someone handed me a newborn baby and my skin broke out in hot hives. In Brazil, I met a ten-year-old street kid. I fed him, let him sleep and shower in my hotel room, bought him clothes, and felt an overwhelming desire to protect and nurture him. I had never before felt such a forceful maternal instinct. These events were profoundly physical reactions, both shocking to me. Just around the time of my trip to Brazil, the ghost of my never-born came back to haunt me. I began...

WASHINGTON, February 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - What do Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, “father of the sexual revolution” Alfred Kinsey, Lenin, and Hitler have in common? All these pioneers of what some call the culture of death rooted their beliefs and actions in Darwinism - a little-known fact that one conservative leader says shouldn’t be ignored. Hugh Owen of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation told an audience on Capitol Hill before the March for Life last month that the philosophical consequences of Darwinism has “totally destroyed many parts of our society.” Owen pointed to Dr. Josef Mengele,...

Because the first movie is coming out soon, I have a question for anyone who has read The Hunger Games trilogy: What did you think was the ultimate political message of the books? Because I've heard some conservatives claiming that it's a politically conservative message, but I'm not convinced. Are we saying the series has a conservative theme because of the evil, oppressive government? How do you reconcile the possibly conservative themes with the end of the last book and the changes in government? (Which to me amounts to a political version of "Meet the new boss, same as the...

The Hunger Games" is a rarity -- a Hollywood blockbuster that inspires political discourse. Is it a liberal movie? Is it a conservative flick? Is it both? It all depends on who you ask. An article from the Hollywood Reporter explains how folks can see their own beliefs reflected in the story. For example, people who back the Occupy movement note that the movie and the book it is based upon feature a world divided into rich and poor. The rich are viewed as layabouts and the poor are hard-working and put upon. Actor Penn Badgley, best known for his...

Taking Mercy, an edition of the Global TV program “16x9” in Canada, concerns a mother, Annette Corriveau, who wants her children with disabilities to be killed by euthanasia. The show also features Robert Latimer, the man who killed his daughter Tracy in 1993. Tracy had Cerebral Palsy. The show speaks to pro-euthanasia ethicist Arthur Schaefer who suggests that Robert Latimer should have been given “mercy.” Schaefer also suggests that Corriveau should simply stop feeding her children, but Corriveau says she does not wish to starve her children to death. This is a dangerously one-sided show. Taking Mercy represents the first...

A disturbing belief is spreading within the hearts of many around the world and within America: that a person is better off dead than disabled.But a leading advocate for people with disabilities is fighting that notion and looking to educate the world and the church about the precious lives and rights of "those who seem to be weaker."The Christian Post spoke to Joni Eareckson Tada on Thursday, the founder and CEO of Joni and Friends International Disability Center, about her countless achievements for the disabled community, unwavering faith in God, battle with breast cancer, and her latest recognition by Breakpoint...

An engineer has come up with macabre rollercoaster concept where passengers are thrilled and then ‘killed’. The chilling Euthanasia Coaster is a theoretical machine engineered to ‘humanely, with elegance and euphoria, take the life of a human being’. It is designed to subject the rider to a series of unique experiences from euphoria to thrill and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness. When travelling at 100m/s, the passenger would then pass away following a lack of oxygen reaching the brain. The surreal structure is the brainchild of Lithuanian engineer Julijonas Urbonas.

The culture of death is again attempting to rationalize infanticide with a kinder, gentler euphemism they call “after-birth abortions.” The central tenet of this latest approach revolves around the relativist argument that if a child can be killed in the mother’s womb for reasons of convenience, then why not murder the child after it is born with the same rationale? Two university students in Australia, Alberto Giubilini who attends Monash University in Melbourne, and Francesca Minerva at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne, have written an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics...

Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, has described 2011 as “the most difficult year in [Planned Parenthood’s] history.” Well, welcome to 2012. The Alliance Defense Fund, in conjunction with the Susan B. Anthony List, released its summary report on publicly available federal and state audits that identify waste, abuse, and potential fraud by Planned Parenthood and state family planning programs and reveal systemic misuse of nearly $100 million taxpayer dollars. The audits speak for themselves in detailing Planned Parenthood’s misuse of the money that’s been funneled to state family planning programs and Planned Parenthood affiliates. Ten state...

If there is one word that captures the Orwellian nature of contemporary feminism, it is "choice." It's not just the word's wide use as a euphemism for abortion. You can understand why people on that side of the abortion issue prefer to frame their position in abstract terms, as a defense of liberty, rather than concretely discussing the specific freedom they are defending. Some of them are no doubt sincere in saying that they favor "the right to choose" in general and have no brief for abortion in particular. But not all. People who claim to favor "reproductive choice" are...

Life-end Clinic will send teams to the homes of patients' whose doctors refuse to carry out the procedure A mobile euthanasia clinic will begin operating in the Netherlands on Thursday, to assist patients' whose own doctor refuse to carry out the procedure. According to the AFP news agency, the the Levenseindekliniek (Life-end clinic) has prepared several teams made up of a specially-trained doctor and nurse to attend to patients in their homes. "People who think they comply with the criteria for euthanasia can register," the Right To Die Netherlands (NVVE) spokeswoman Walburg de Jong is quoted as saying. "If they...

Good grief! A Maryland state legislator has filed a bill that would allow surrogate decision makers to “donate� kidneys and liver lobes. From HB 449: THIS SUBSECTION APPLIES ONLY TO A PATIENT WHO HAS BEEN CERTIFIED UNDER § 5–606(B) OF THIS SUBTITLE TO BE IN A PERSISTENT 8 VEGETATIVE STATE. (3) A PERSON AUTHORIZED TO MAKE HEALTH CARE DECISIONS FOR ANOTHER UNDER THIS SECTION MAY AUTHORIZE THE DONATION OF A NONVITAL ORGAN IF THE DONATION IS BASED ON: (I) THE WISHES OF THE PATIENT AS PREVIOUSLY EXPRESSED BY THE PATIENT; OR (II) A DETERMINATION BY THE SURROGATE THAT THE DONATION...

Rick Santorum's claim that the Netherlands advocates mass murder through involuntary euthanasia has prompted a furious backlash from the Western European country, with local news sources calling the Republican a "crazy extreme" candidate making up facts to stir up his political base. "Rick Santorum Thinks He Knows the Netherlands: Murder of the Elderly on a Grand Scale" fumed the headline of the newspaper NRC Handelsblad on Saturday. The article references an interview, barely played up by the American press, in which Santorum claims that euthanasia makes up "10 percent of all deaths" in the Netherlands," and that many of those...

UPDATE, 12:14p: More evidence the “compromise” stinks: Planned Parenthood likes it. UPDATE, 12:02p: From a House source: This “new policy” is a distinction without a difference.  The services the religious organization opposes won’t be listed in the contract, but the insurance companies will give it the employees anyway.  Insurance companies will justify providing the coverage that the religious charity opposes by swearing that birth control coverage doesn’t actually cost anything because it’s cheaper than pregnancy services, so it’s just a free perk. The administration will argue that people of faith should be fine with this arrangement, because they can tell...

The drama continues to deepen.When the board of directors of the Susan G. Komen Foundation decided to halt funding to notorious abortion provider Planned Parenthood, abortion activists launched an informal investigation. Something sinister was happening here; some pro-life plague had to have infiltrated Komen. They pinned their attention on Komen’s relatively new VP, Karen Handel, an admittedly pro-life former Republican candidate for the governor of Georgia. They pointed out that the announcement of Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns’ investigation into Planned Parenthood preceded Komen’s revision of its grant eligibility criteria, which now excludes any organization under investigation by local, state or...

Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee has opened a new satellite health center in Johnson City. Located at 409 E. Unaka Ave., the Planned Parenthood office is open to patients... ...That's all you need to know. Go straight to the first comment!

“Planned Parenthood’s mission is to pressure as many women into having an abortion as it can,” a former abortion facility worker has revealed. From Catherine Anthony Adair’s op-ed piece in The Washington Examiner: In 1997, I began working at a Boston Planned Parenthood clinic as a young, idealistic college student who strongly believed in what I had been told about the organization, that I would be helping other young women access safe and affordable health care. My time there was not spent providing prenatal care to pregnant women, providing counseling or basic health care services or educating women about reproductive...

Amelia "Mia" Rivera has Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, a complex genetic disorder that causes mental and physical impairments, and her family said that the 3-year-old will die if she does not get a kidney in the next six months to a year. Mia's mother Chrissy Rivera has said the family is willing to donate a live organ, but Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has reportedly told her that they will not recommend transplantation for the toddler because of her disabilities. Rivera blogged about her daughter's plight last Friday, and now more than 20,000 online supporters from 15 states are petitioning the hospital to...

HUXLEY, Iowa -- An Iowa woman was charged Tuesday in the death of her newborn twins. The Department of Public Safety said Huxley police were called to check on the welfare of a 22-year-old woman, now identified as Jackie Burkle. Burkle was found inside a duplex in the 500 block of North Main Avenue on Saturday. When authorities arrived, they found she'd given birth to two baby girls in the apartment. Authorities said the babies did not survive. Authorities said the babies were found in the trunk of Burkle's vehicle, which was parked in the driveway. "Miss Burkle indicated she...

Guy Bechor reports that Egypt is in the process of destroying all remnants of its ancient, non-Muslim cultures. It was barely mentioned in the Israeli and global media, but the following event pertains to the whole of Western civilization: Last Saturday, violent groups of Islamic-Salafi radicals burned the famous scientific institute established by Napoleon in Egypt after its first encounter with the West. Some historians consider it the start of modern times in the Middle East. The site, L’Institut d’Egypte, held some 200,000 original and rare books, exhibits, maps, archeological findings and studies from Egypt and the entire Middle East,...

Imagine California without the sunshine, New York without the cultural elan, New Jersey without Chris Christie. That’s Illinois. I have previously deemed the Governor of Illinois, Patrick Quinn (D.), the worst governor in the country. Go here to read the post in which I bestowed the title. After his meeting with the Illinois bishops on Friday December 16, 2011, I have attached “Lying” to his title. The bishops asked for the meeting to protest the constant pro-abortion advocacy of Quinn. After the meeting here is what Quinn said: “A lot of the discussion was how we could work together to...

The “slippery slope” is often derided as a logical fallacy. But when one of the leading advocacy groups for euthanasia in Belgium posts an article entitled “Euthanasie: tijd voor de volgende stap, Euthanasia, time for the next step”, it’s hard not to think that it may not be so illogical after all. The Humanistisch-Vrijzinnige Vereniging (Humanist-Liberal Association) complains that eligibility for euthanasia is far too restrictive. At the moment, only people with unbearable suffering can be euthanased. This leaves out people in irreversible comas, people with dementia, people with irreversible brain diseases and people who are under 18. This is...

A woman in Australia who was pregnant with twins decided to have one of her babies aborted after doctors discovered that he had a life-threatening congenital heart defect. The seriously disturbing part? The doctors aborted the wrong fetus, terminating a perfectly healthy child. After doctors realized the "blunder," the woman, who was 32 weeks pregnant, had to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the sick fetus, where it was later terminated. The Royal Women's Hospital confirmed the incident and referred to it as a "terrible tragedy." Um, yeah ... one could say that. I honestly really don't even know what...

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as...

As the world population reaches seven billion people, the BBC's Mike Gallagher asks whether efforts to control population have been, as some critics claim, a form of authoritarian control over the world's poorest citizens.> In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson warned that the US might be overwhelmed by desperate masses, and he made US foreign aid dependent on countries adopting family planning programmes. Other wealthy countries such as Japan, Sweden and the UK also began to devote large amounts of money to reducing Third World birth rates. > Meanwhile, Paul Ehrlich has also amended his view of the issue. If he...

As Jenny lay on the obstetrician's examination table, she was grateful that the ultrasound technician had turned off the overhead screen. She didn't want to see the two shadows floating inside her. Since making her decision, she had tried hard not to think about them, though she could often think of little else. She was 45 and pregnant after six years of fertility bills, ovulation injections, donor eggs and disappointment – and yet here she was, 14 weeks into her pregnancy, choosing to extinguish one of two healthy foetuses, almost as if having half an abortion. As the doctor inserted...

I'm penning this column from Australia where I was privileged to speak a few days ago at an event at Parliament House celebrating Australia's National Marriage Day. As in America, marriage in Australia is under attack by homosexual activists who seek to shoehorn their lifestyle choices into a shoe that will never fit: marriage. They want the law-and public opinion--to redefine marriage to include homosexual sex as something good, the moral equivalent of marital sexuality expressed by a husband and a wife. Pro-family Australians are blessed with charismatic leaders like MP's Bob Katter and Kevin Andrews, and pro-family advocate Babette...

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, August 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A recently retired New York Times reporter has penned a book in which she details how she followed through on a shocking pact to help her 88-year-old mother, Estelle, starve to death. Julia Gross with her mother Estelle. In an excerpt from the book, “A Bittersweet Season,” published recently in the Daily Mail, Jane Gross describes her mother’s increasing dissatisfaction with life as her health deteriorated, and her mounting desire to die, despite the fact that she was not terminally ill. “So here we were, my mother and I, wishing that she...

I am sure this will be happening in Madrid as it did in London. Richard Dawkins brought at least one laspsed Catholic back to the Church during the Papal visit to the UK. She saw the the anti-Pope snarling mob led by Dawkins and Tatchel, with their plastic devil horns and inflated condoms, sex "toys" and angry faces and she saw the sheer joy of those cheering the Pope and the banners carried by the enthusiastic youth. She said it wasn't about arguments, it was about faces. Dawkins & co. glaring and hopeless, those who were there cheering the Pope...

Most philosophical arguments against the personhood of embryos, fetuses or comatose patients focus on consciousness as the capacity that corresponds to the possession of moral value.  Conscious human beings, even minimally conscious, are obviously ‘one of us’ — have interests, feel pain, perceive objects, and can offer at least rudimentary gestures of self-report.  Since they are “persons� they should not be subjected to purely instrumental treatment such as lethal experimentation or deadly dosages of drugs.  Those who cannot exercise consciousness are either not yet persons (e.g., embryos) or no longer persons (e.g., irreversibly comatose patients). In end-of-life issues, all the...

President Obama is on the verge of achieving his liberal revolution. His goal is to destroy our Judeo-Christian culture and replace it with European-style radical secularism. The administration is now contemplating forcing health insurance companies to provide free birth control - including the "morning-after" pill - as part of Obamacare. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is seriously considering adding contraception to the list of services that must be fully covered by insurers without charging co-payments. HHS is expected to make its final decision before Aug. 1.

WASHINGTON – Millions of women stand to gain free access to a broad menu of birth control methods, thanks to a recommendation issued Tuesday by health experts advising the government. An Institute of Medicine panel recommended that the government require health insurance companies to cover birth control for women as preventive care, without copayments. Contraception — along with such care as diabetes tests during pregnancy and screening for the virus that causes cervical cancer — was one of eight recommended preventive services for women. "Unintended pregnancies carry health consequences for the mother — psychological, emotional and physical — and also...

In 1992, my friend Frances committed suicide on her 76th birthday. Frances was not terminally ill. She had been diagnosed with treatable leukemia and needed a hip replacement. Mostly, though, she was depressed by family issues and profoundly disappointed at where her life had taken her.Something seemed very off to me about Frances’s suicide. So I asked the executor of her estate to send me the “suicide file” kept by the quintessentially organized Frances and was horrified to learn from it that she had been an avid reader of the (now defunct) Hemlock Quarterly, published by the aptly named Hemlock...

The BBC has received hundreds of complaints from views over a program it aired Monday night showing an assisted suicide of a person killing himself at a suicide tourism facility in Switzerland. The program featured footage of a man dying at a Dignitas suicide tourism clinic in Switzerland and it was hosted by Sir Terry Pratchett and it showed millionaire Peter Smedley taking a lethal cocktail of drugs that resulted in his death. Almost 900 people contacted the BBC to complain while just 82 supported the showing of the program. Four senior peers complained abotu the program and accused the...

Fury at suicide on BBCA DESPERATELY ill man will be shown on TV choking and begging for water before he dies in a suicide clinic. The harrowing scenes to be screened by BBC2 on Monday are set to spark outrage. Millionaire hotelier Peter Smedley, 71, was filmed swallowing a lethal dose of the barbiturate Nembutal - helped down with a praline chocolate. He gasps for breath. Within a minute his face turns red and he chokes as he pleads for water. The documentary Choosing To Die shows an "escort" at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland holding on to Peter as...

Today, at age 83, Dr. Jack Kevorkian slipped into eternity and left in his wake a trail of civilizational wreckage from which we may never recover. With his Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) movement, he was one of the Twentieth Century’s architects of the Culture of Death; the Margaret Sanger of the opposite end of the life spectrum. As Msgr. William Smith taught so very well:1. All social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering.2. All evil begins with a lie. Identify the lie, and we succeed in unmasking the evil.Kevorkian began his evil with a lie by omission. He frightened terminally...

Jack Kevorkian and his supporters portrayed the death doc as a compassionate man who offered "death with dignity" to individuals suffering from a poor quality of life. I always saw him as a man who preyed on vulnerable individuals by telling them their lives weren't worth living -- as I watched Kevorkian survive over the years, despite medical problems that dwarfed those of many of his victims.In 2007, I wrote: Fans of Kevorkian ought to be asking themselves: In that the ailing Kevorkian is in worse physical shape than many of the people whose lives he helped snuff out, why...

Dr. Jack Kevorkian passed away early Friday morning at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak. Kevorkian died of pulmonary thrombosis around 2:30 a.m. He was 84-years-old.

A Texas teen mom could face life behind bars after she was caught on camera trying to smother her baby with a blanket and her hands. Shantaniqua Nykole Scott, 18, of Waco was convicted Thursday of injury to a child. She previously told authorities that she couldn't handle the stress of being a single, unemployed mom and wanted the 4-month-old "out of my life."

Washington D.C., May 10, 2011 / 01:36 pm (CNA).- A United States attorney has indicted a man who described himself as a “pro-choice terrorist” with six counts of making interstate threats against pro-life advocates such as Priests for Life director Father Frank Pavone and Princeton University law professor Robert P. George. New York resident Theodore Shulman, 49, has plead not guilty to six counts of communicating interstate threats. The charges each carry a maximum five-year sentence and were filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York. Shulman allegedly left a threatening voice mail message with the Calif.-based...

Changing the law could make it possible for nurses and chemists to prescribe medication to sick and disabled patients which would enable them to kill themselves, according to a report by Lord Carlile and Baroness Finlay. In the paper commissioned by the pressure group Living and Dying Well they also warned that liberalising euthanasia regulations could lead to state agencies being set up to decide whether or not people should be helped to die. Lord Carlile is the Government-appointed independent assessor of terror legislation while Lady Finlay is Professor of Palliative Care at Cardiff University. Their analysis warned that desperate...

The Cemetery of the Innocents at Clarion University in Clarion, PA is supposed to commemorate the millions of babies lost to abortion. But last week, the quaint memorial with 350 wooden crosses resembled a satanic ritual scene after it was vandalized during the campus’s Life Week, which also happened to be Holy Week. Students for Life of America (SLA) explains the vandalism: In a breathtaking public display of anti-Christian and anti-Life motivations, 350 crosses were pulled up and re-inserted in inverted fashion, a well-known anti-Christian symbol. Additionally, red paint was splattered on crosses and signs. Even eerier was the mock...

WINDSOR, Ont. — Baby Joseph napping at home in his crib on Easter Sunday is all the proof his father needs that his Ontario doctors were wrong. Only months ago, the fate of 15-month-old Joseph Maraachli was a question mark. Doctors at London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ont., sought to take the infant off life support as he battled a progressive neurological disease. But on Sunday, the round-cheeked baby was home in Windsor, resting in a cradle packed with plush toys. Now and then he opened his eyes or wriggled a little, or moved his arms beneath father Moe...

Former green jobs czar Van Jones spoke to the attendees of the global warming conference Power Shift 2011 this weekend. During his remarks, which can be viewed in full here, he went off on an odd diatribe about how our society is powered by death. He says that because fossil fuels are made of dead things that we shouldn’t be surprised burning them brings death in the form of global warming, oil spills, asthma, and cancer. Yea. He says that we need to replace these dead forms of energy with the “living sun” and wind power. Because, somehow, we are...

Msgr. Philip Reilly leads the faithful in praying the Rosary outside Chicago's Family Planning Associates abortion facility Indomitable pro-life veteran and world renowned sidewalk counselor Monsignor Philip Reilly visited the Chicago area this past weekend for a series of events to pray with and encourage Chicago pro-lifers in the spiritual battle against abortion. Restoring a Culture of Life On Friday, April 8, Msgr. Reilly gave a powerful talk entitled “The Roots of the Culture of Death and Restoring a Culture of Life” at St. Cletus Parish in west suburban LaGrange. Philip Moore — a nephew of Msgr. Reilly who coordinated...

NEW YORK, April 14 (C-FAM) The contrast between the priorities of the developed and developing world was as clear as night and day. “It is detrimental to not have adequate family planning resources,” a visibly US delegate told the room. “Why is there a resistance to acknowledging access to family planning as a necessity?” The soft-spoken delegate from the small island nation of St. Lucia replied, “How do we get our fertility rate to rise? We were told we needed to reduce our fertility rate –now we have an aging population.” Both voices spoke out during a UN panel hosted...

VHEMT (pronounced vehement) is a movement not an organization. It’s a movement advanced by people who care about life on planet Earth. We’re not just a bunch of misanthropes and anti-social, Malthusian misfits, taking morbid delight whenever disaster strikes humans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Voluntary human extinction is the humanitarian alternative to human disasters. We don’t carry on about how the human race has shown itself to be a greedy, amoral parasite on the once-healthy face of this planet. That type of negativity offers no solution to the inexorable horrors which human activity is causing. Rather, The...

The number of euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands rose significantly in 2009 compared with 2008. There were reportedly 200 more deaths under the law, but pro-life advocates say those numbers are likely lowball estimates given the underreporting in the Dutch system. The Dutch News indicates approximately 2,500 people died via euthanasia in 2009, but the actual number is unknown because the government estimates about 20 percent of cases are not reported. The new government figures also include six registered cases of euthanasia on elderly patients with senile dementia, all of whom were supposedly in the early stages and able to...