Free Republic

It was just another ho-hum piece by another liberal columnist. Hillary Clinton should get out now because staying in hurts Barack Obama against McCain. Yada yada yada. But in his column of today, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, almost in passing, makes what is, on reflection, a telling disclosure of what is truly the fundamental value, the uniting principle of the Democratic party: abortion. After first fretting that many Hillary supporters will sit on their hands or vote for McCain, Kristof offers this countervailing fact: "It’s true that most of Senator Clinton’s supporters presumably will flinch if they...

An Alaska woman, accused of killing her newborn baby boy at her parents’ Grand Junction home, gave birth at a neighbor’s home, wrapped him in a plastic garbage bag and left him in a tote bag in a closet that her parents found more than two months later, according to her arrest affidavit. Morgan Hite, 22, of Wasilla, Alaska, is in custody on a no-bond warrant, but she refused extradition to Grand Junction during a court hearing Wednesday in Palmer, Alaska. Hite has retained an attorney, and her next court appearance is June 6.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In a Sunday interview, pro-abortion presidential candidate Barack Obama defended his opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortions. Though he wasn't in Congress at the time it voted on the ban, he said he would have supported it had it contained a health exception. However, doctors and medical groups readily acknowledge that the three-day-long abortion procedure -- involving the killing of an unborn baby halfway through the birthing process - never helps women medically. Obama also claimed pro-life advocates only brought the partial-birth abortion ban forward only to "polarize" the abortion debate. Full story at: http://www.lifenews.com/nat3896.html

TORONTO, April 24, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Plummeting birth rates have resulted in the closure of over 300 schools in Ontario and half of the province's school boards have 90,000 fewer students than they did six years ago. 300 schools are slated to be closed in the province simply because there are not enough children to go into them according to a report by People for Education. "Much of the funding that school boards receive is based on numbers of students," the report said. "As a result, fewer students equals less funding, fewer programs and, in many cases, closing schools." The...

England is currently deciding whether or not to legalize the use of embryo selection to produce deaf babies to accommodate deaf couples who want their children to share their soundless world. When Thomas Lifson reported this in AT, he expressed shock that such things could be permitted. I was shocked too---until I realized that this, and much worse, is the logical consequence of our legalization of abortion. Rightly or wrongly, our legal system regards death as the greatest possible injury that one person can inflict on another. Any injury that is not likely to cause death, however degrading or disfiguring to the...

Pope resolution stalled over 'human life' language While Pope Benedict XVI's historic visit to Washington has received wall to wall coverage, Sen. Barbara Boxer briefly held up a Senate resolution welcoming the pontiff because she objected to language about how the pope values "each and every human life." Senators are trying to work out some alternative language to put into this measure, which should be a non-controversial resolution cleared on a voice vote by the Senate. Some Democrats obviously believe the "human life" reference is a reference to the pope's anti-abortion stance. A copy of the resolution can be found...

CORN should be used for food, not motor fuel, and yet the United States is committed to a policy that encourages farmers to turn an increasing amount of their crop into ethanol. This may save the nation a bit of the cost of imported oil, but it increases global-warming gases and contributes to higher food prices. more stories like thisCandidates for president need to tell Americans the truth about ethanol, but they are falling over themselves in pursuit of the farm belt vote. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want more ethanol factories built than even President Bush envisaged when he...

Amid a continued global shortage of food supply because of severe droughts in several countries and with grain being diverted to biofuel production, the world is in the grip of a food crisis, WAM news agency reported Monday citing a UAE daily editorial. "The pressure is visible on the streets already with protests against food prices increasing and governments around the world responding with often counterproductive controls on prices and exports," the Gulf Today wrote on its editorial Sunday. To highlight the gravity of the situation, the paper referred to the World Bank warning that some 33 countries could face...

The Kansas Supreme Court heard arguments today over subpoenaed medical records of notorious abortionist George Tiller, who is accused of performing late-term abortions — which are illegal in Kansas — at his Wichita clinic. In January, the Sedgwick County grand jury subpoenaed about 2,000 late-term abortion records from Tiller’s clinic; the judge reduced that to 250. Tiller is refusing to turn over the records, claiming it would violate his patients’ privacy. However, the grand jury requested that all patient-identifying information be redacted from the subpoenaed records before the jury receives them. Tiller's attorneys argued the grand jury investigation constitutes harassment,...

A school board in Arizona has decided that condoms are among the items that should be given to students attending this year's prom. The school board in the Bisbee District voted 4-1 at a recent meeting to include the condoms in a "prom bag" that will be given to prom-goers this year. A spokeswoman in the office of Supt. Paul McDonald confirmed the condoms would be handed out to the event celebrants, along with other items such as picture frames, balloons and candy. "The governing board approved [this]," she told WND. "They are to have what they call prom bags,...

Obama’s ‘baby’ comment draws fire from conservatives By Sam Youngman Posted: 03/31/08 05:35 PM [ET] Sen. Barack Obama’s (Ill.) campaign on Monday sought to clarify remarks the Democratic front-runner made on teen pregnancies that had drawn criticism from conservatives. Speaking about sex education at an event in Pennsylvania Saturday, Obama said, according to the Christian Broadcasting Network, that he will educate his young daughters but “if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at the age of 16.” Conservative talker Sean Hannity mentioned the quotes on his...

WASHINGTON (BP)--Oregon recorded more deaths by physician-assisted suicide in 2007 than in any year in the decade since the practice was legalized. The Oregon Department of Human Services recently reported 49 people committed suicide last year using lethal doses of drugs prescribed by doctors. The previous yearly high was 46 in 2006. Oregon, the only state to legalize assisted suicide, has recorded 341 such deaths since its Death With Dignity Act took effect in late 1997. "The report shows that the situation in Oregon is not only creepy but creeping," bioethicist C. Ben Mitchell told Baptist Press. "Compassion means providing...

Teenagers should be given the right to medically assisted suicide and the parents of terminally ill younger children should be able to choose euthanasia under proposals from members of Belgium's coalition government. The plans to extend rules allowing doctors to perform euthanasia on terminally ill people suffering "constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain" comes amid heated Belgian debate on the issue. Under existing Belgian laws, in place since 2002, patients, other than newborn babies, must be over 18 to qualify for assisted suicide, a situation that Bart Tommelein, leader of Belgium Liberals, wants changed. Mr Tommelein, whose party is...

A senior Church of Scotland minister has questioned the wisdom of spending large amounts of money keeping older people alive. The Reverend Maxwell Craig, 76, feels funding could be better spent helping the young stay out of trouble.

...Sure enough, that's what Body Worlds is all about. The cadavers, (relatively) whole or in parts, are fascinating, sometimes beautiful and inspiring, and remarkably low in ick factor. They could be plastic or ceramic; when you see them, you have to keep reminding yourself that they're dead people, and then you get to pat yourself on the back for how well you're taking this. A practically skinless man is leaping over a hurdle, though given the lack of clearance, he is perpetually headed toward really hurting his private parts. His aerodynamically sliced brain, however, seems like overkill. There's no apparent...

March 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Dignitas euthanasia "clinic" has reopened its doors in a facility located next to Switzerland's largest brothel. Dignitas, which has repeatedly made international headlines for its unapologetic mission to assist the ill from around the world to kill themselves, was evicted from its previous facility in September of last year after fellow tenants complained of the constant stream of dead bodies leaving the building. Gloria Sonny, 53, a resident in the same building as Dignitas' old clinic, told the Telegraph at the time, "We call it the 'House of Horrors'.""This is meant to be...

Chantal Sebire knows she's forcing people to make an agonizing decision, but agony is something she knows far too much about. The 52- year-old Dijon schoolteacher suffers from a rare disease that has left her disfigured by facial tumors, which will also damage her brain over time and eventually kill her. Her demand that French political leaders loosen laws against euthanasia has been rebuffed, so Sebire now awaits a judge's decision on whether existing legislation allows doctors to assist her in ending her pain-racked life. "I no longer accept this enduring pain, and this protruding eye that nothing can be...

Eckhart Tolle, the New Age guru, who numbers amongst his disciples the wildly influential talk show host, Oprah Winfrey, who, in turn, is herself Barack Obama's most enthusiastic supporter, proclaims that history is at a moment of crisis. According to his theory, if humanity does not collectively achieve a state of "higher consciousness," then the race will soon violently destroy itself and the planet in a final conflagration of "egoic consciousness". It is a little eerie to hear a man who falls so firmly on the left echoing the apocalyptic theories of the religious right, and proposing much the...

The pictures from Jerusalem were horrifying: Dead and injured students being wheeled out of a Jewish religious school after an Arab gunman went on a rampage. Other images were disturbing in a different way: These were the pictures of Palestinians celebrating the massacre. They shouted jubilantly from cars and danced in the streets of Gaza. Men fired bursts of automatic weapons skyward. Some kneeled on the ground to pray. In Lebanon, crowds of Palestinians also rejoiced, with a Reuters photo showing a man holding a startled looking child in one hand and a pistol in the other. We have gotten...

Don Welter’s letter in the Jan. 28 Tribune contains too many errors to respond to in one letter. Although fetal tissue being human and alive is neither enlightening nor controversial, the idea such tissue is a person is an issue of Catholic superstition and not biological fact. That women, however, are persons, is a fact with which even the anti-abortionists must agree. Bernie Nathanson prostituted himself to the Catholic Church. After becoming a toady, he called himself a self-declared liar. Why in the world should we believe him now? Christopher Tietsie, a biostatistician, said the number of women killed annually...

STOCKHOLM,Sweden: A Swedish court of appeal on Tuesday sentenced a 27-year-old man to 18 months in prison for trying to make his girlfriend miscarry by mixing abortion pills in her food. The man, who was not named for legal reasons, had his jail term increased from a previous one-year sentence set by a district court in June. In its ruling, the Court of Appeal for Western Sweden found the man guilty of aggravated assault for attempting to make his girlfriend of eight years miscarry by giving her a yoghurt containing three ground-up pills. The sentence also included a more minor...

“Death has replaced sex as the taboo subject of our times,” said one of the world’s richest men and leading philanthropists, George Soros, when he launched the Project Death in America fund at Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons in 1994. It promotes euthanasia or assisted suicide, and has been succeeded by the Open Society Institute’s International Palliative Care Initiative . Soros’s mother committed suicide, as a member of the Hemlock Society . His father died a lingering death from cancer, and Soros was “disappointed” at the way the old man clung miserably to life.

According to Kathryn Joyce, sneer-and-smear artist for The Nation, those who are concerned about the worldwide decline in birthrates are -- to put it mildly -- racist, neo-Nazis, who have a hidden agenda and (under the guise of demographic winter) are engaged in our age-old quest to control women's bodies. The Nation is this nation's oldest and largest-circulation leftwing journal (outside of The New York Times, of course). Joyce's screed, "Missing: The 'Right' Babies," will appear in the March 3 print edition, but is currently available online. Joyce believes -- with the faith of one immune to facts and logic...

An artist killed herself after aborting her twins when she was eight weeks pregnant, leaving a note saying: "I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum." Emma Beck was found hanging at her home in Helston, Cornwall, on Feb 1 2007. She was declared dead early the following day - her 31st birthday. Her suicide note read: "I told everyone I didn't want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies:...

I didn't see this posted on FR anywhere and I just wanted to bring it to everyone's attention. While pro-lifers were marching in Washington back at the end of January, Barack Obama released the following statement celebrating the 35th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Obama Statement on 35th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade Decision Chicago, IL -- Senator Barack Obama today released the following statement on the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. "Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, it's never been more important to protect a woman's right to choose. Last year, the...

Steve Mosher is telling me about wolves returning to the streets of European towns. Not as part of some Vermont-model wildlife-recovery scenario but as emblems of a harsh comeuppance mankind is due--they're stalking out of the forests like an ancient judgment, coming to claim mankind's ceded land. We're sitting in a sunny Main Street cafe in Front Royal, Virginia--a beautifying ex-industrial town in the Shenandoah Valley that, as the far edge of DC's suburban sprawl, is lately home to a surprising number of conservative Christian ministries. Mosher, president of the Catholic anticontraception lobbyist group Population Research Institute (PRI), describes his...

Initiatives to encourage people to live healthier, longer lives are just creating a different set of problems. A medical friend once told me that if everybody in the UK were to stop smoking, the NHS would collapse. I thought she was offering that old chestnut about smokers and drinkers handing over billions to the state in tax, but it was more subtle argument than that. Her point was that it's much cheaper to treat a 50-year-old who's taking 18 months to die of lung cancer than it is to treat a 90-year-old who's spent the last 20 years slowly fading...

Botched abortions mean that scores of babies are being born alive and left to die, an official report has revealed. A total of 66 infants survived NHS termination attempts in one year alone, it emerged. Rather than dying at birth as was intended, they were able to breathe unaided. About half were alive for an hour, while one survived ten hours. The figures are the first to give a national picture of the number of babies who survive abortion but are left to die. Experts previously believed the phenomenon was limited to a handful of cases a year. The babies...

A Delaware woman has become the next Terri Schiavo as her parents engage in a massive legal and philosophical debate about whether to subject her to euthanasia. Richardson is a 23-year-old woman who overdosed on heroin in August 2006 while she was three months pregnant with a baby girl. Doctors kept Lauren on life support until she delivered her baby in February 2007. Shortly thereafter, her parents began a fight that is reminiscent of the battle over Terri's life and death. As in the Terri Schiavo case, physicians have been quick to label Lauren as having a persistent vegetative state...

BEIJING — A huge state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company that exports to dozens of countries, including the United States, is at the center of a nationwide drug scandal after nearly 200 Chinese cancer patients were paralyzed or otherwise harmed last summer by contaminated leukemia drugs. Chinese drug regulators have accused the manufacturer of the tainted drugs of a cover-up and have closed the factory that produced them. In December, China’s Food and Drug Administration said that the Shanghai police had begun a criminal investigation and that two officials, including the head of the plant, had been detained. The drug maker, Shanghai...

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton criticizes rival Barack Obama's record on abortion rights in a mailing sent to New Hampshire voters. The mailer says that seven times during his time in the Illinois state Senate, Obama declined to take a position on abortion bills, while Clinton has been a defender of abortion rights. During his eight years in the legislature, Obama cast a number of votes on abortion and received a 100 percent rating from the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council for his support of abortion rights, family planning services and health insurance coverage for female contraceptives. He...

Pro-life activists are calling for an investigation into – and possibly prosecution of – police officers who responded to a severely injured abortion clinic sidewalk counselor, but then allowed his suspected attacker to leave the scene. "It is unbelievable that an officer would allow an attacker to go free after inflicting life-threatening injuries on an elderly gentleman, then threaten to arrest the witness to the crime," said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue. "That was not only unprofessional conduct, but it showed a fundamental lack of respect for Mr. Snell's life and beliefs. She should face serious discipline."

Much will be said about Benazir Bhutto's assassination; little will be understood about what it truly means. I'm not speaking here about Pakistan, of course, as important as that country is, but rather the lesson - as if we needed any more - for that broad Middle East which begins in Pakistan and ends on the Atlantic Ocean coast. The following is a true story. Back in 1946, an American diplomat asked an Iranian editor why his newspaper angrily criticized the United States but never the Soviet Union. The Iranian said it was obvious. "The Russians," he said, "they kill...

For some people, ending a pregnancy is the only way to keep on living Yael Mishali Published: 12.26.07, 00:39 / Israel Opinion Abortion is a type of murder; I have no doubt about that. In this context we can debate over questions such as the duration of a pregnancy and when exactly do several cells turn into a person with a soul, but I have no interest in doing that. I accept the universal assumption that as of a certain moment, we are talking about a real person, and “aborting it” is a type of murder. And still, as a...

Christopher Buckley's dark satire Boomsday imagines a Social Security crisis that pits the generations against each other, and a public relations campaign to persuade older Americans to do the "right" thing and check out early. There are even financial incentives and free Botox if you schedule your suicide. But what if, in such a world, it were the women - the always dutiful women - who felt the pull of responsibility most strongly and signed up first? That is exactly what Susan Wolf, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota and an opponent of physician-assisted suicide, fears. Wolf made her...

(From the press release at the link:) Planned Parenthood Announces Return of Annual "Choice on Earth" Holiday Card Greeting Card Is Back, After Last Year's Anti-Choice Flap New York, NY — Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is pleased to announce the release of its annual card, "Choice on Earth," the holiday season's greeting that anti-choice hardliners love to hate. The card, which sparked a controversy last year and garnered attention from conservative commentators like Bill O'Reilly, can be purchased at PPFA store. "Planned Parenthood believes in every individual's right to make choices and live in peace with our planet....

Senior medical figures in Italy are campaigning to scrap the Hippocratic Oath for doctors on the ground that the passages forbidding abortion and euthanasia are outdated. Giorgio Iannetti, a professor of surgery at Rome University, said that the oath, which is read out by medical students when they graduate, must either be abolished or “radically modified”. “There are passages which are no longer relevant to our times and which newly qualified doctors know in advance they will not be able to respect,” Professor Iannetti told a medical conference in Rome. The oath, written by Hippocrates, the Greek father of medicine,...

NEW YORK, DEC. 2, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Doctors told Mary Kellett that her son Peter was not worth the resources it would take to treat the chromosomal abnormality they detected before his birth."Wrap him up in a blanket and let him go," they advised. But Peter's older sister discovered on the Internet that not all babies with trisomy 18 -- the condition affecting her little brother -- died before birth. In fact, she found out, some live two or three decades. Peter's family did not want to abort him. Mary Kellett said the strong discouragement to treat Peter "was and...

In a very close decision, Carrie Tomko has won the 3rd Annual Margaret Sanger at the Klan Rally Art Contest. Congratulations Carrie! Here is Carrie's winning entry: Ms. Margaret and the Klan There once was a woman named Margaret,Who made Negro babies her target.She longed to see less of them,Courted the death of them,Sanger, this woman named Margaret. The wives of the Klansmen who meetDisguised in voluminous sheet,Gave her their attentionAt secret conventionTo learn of her childless technique. Ms. Sanger was poorly impressed.Elementary they are she confessed.So childlike she found them,Dumbed her talk down for them,Sanger their arrogant guest. The...

VATICAN, November 21, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI has again come out with strong statements condemning the culture of death and encouraging scientists, researchers, medical personnel and pastoral workers to respect the value of life in the face of growing demands to euthanize the elderly sick.The Pope expressed his concern to participants of the 22nd international conference promoted by the Pontifical Council for Health Care, held last week, which focused on the pastoral care of elderly sick people.In his address he described "today's mentality of efficiency" which views the elderly infirm as a burden and problem for society,...

Had Toni Vernelli gone ahead with her pregnancy ten years ago, she would know at first hand what it is like to cradle her own baby, to have a pair of innocent eyes gazing up at her with unconditional love, to feel a little hand slipping into hers - and a voice calling her Mummy. But the very thought makes her shudder with horror. Because when Toni terminated her pregnancy, she did so in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet. Incredibly, so determined was she that the terrible "mistake" of pregnancy should never happen again, that...

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss right-to-die group Dignitas wants to set up an organization in Germany to carry out assisted suicides there, Dignitas head Ludwig Minelli was quoted as saying on Saturday. Minelli told Swiss newspaper Landbote that his organization had found someone in Germany who was ready to risk prosecution to offer seriously ill people a chance to get assisted suicides at home rather than having to travel across the border to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal. "It is not right that Germany forces its seriously ill patients to leave their beds instead of us being able to come...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Pat Robertson appeared on the "Hannity & Colmes" show Wednesday and explained his support for pro-abortion Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. Robertson said he believes Giuliani will appoint judges who will overturn Roe even though he backs legal abortion and has supported Planned Parenthood. Robertson said he opposes abortion and believes life begins at conception but that there are "various ways to protect life" -- with appointing judges to the Supreme Court as the top method."And I think Rudy Giuliani has assured the American people that he's going to appoint justices in the likeness of Scalia...

One of the most dangerous political considerations today is that of abortion; it is a most divisive subject. Many in this arena are motivated by religious beliefs. Just in case anyone has forgotten, we are not a theocracy – our founding fathers wanted religion left to the churches and the government left to the most qualified. Those who fanatically oppose the medical procedure of abortion refer to themselves as “pro-life”, implying that those who do not agree with them do not value life as much as they do (a most arrogant state of mind) . To believe so strongly in...

MORE than 30 Britons have written statements confessing to helping friends or relatives to die at a Swiss euthanasia clinic as part of a test case to change the law. Details of the admissions will be submitted to the director of public prosecutions (DPP) as part of a legal challenge by a woman suffering from a progressive form of multiple sclerosis. She wants her husband to be allowed to accompany her to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich without the threat of prosecution and is seeking a statement from the DPP clarifying the law. Debbie Purdy, 44, from Bradford, says that...

Death on wheels: The suicide service that comes to your doorBy ALLAN HALL - More by this author » Last updated at 23:29pm on 8th November 2007 British client: Reg Crew, pictured with his wife Win, died in 2003 The controversial group which assists its clients to commit suicide has launched a service which has been nicknamed "death on wheels".  Dignitas has formed mobile teams which meet those who want to kill themselves at the location of their choice.  An official and a nurse then hand the client a lethal dose of chemicals which is taken intravenously or orally. They...

WASHINGTON, DC, November 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Last week, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, Colorado addressed the 15th Annual Society of Catholic Social Scientists Meeting hosted by St. John's University School of Law in New York.  Chaput addressed the gathering with a talk entitled: "Church and State Today: What Belongs to Caesar and What Does Not." Archbishop Chaput was joined at the conference by other noteworthy scholars including Dr. William Donohue of the Catholic League who gave the keynote address entitled "Uncommon Alliance: Religious Conservatives Unite."  Father Richard Neuhaus of First Things also addressed the attendants in a talk...

On the matter of Terri Schiavo’s right to life, which occupied the attention of the media and Congress in 2005, Thompson called that a family decision, “in consultation with their doctor,” and “the federal government should not be involved.” Thompson added, “the less government the better.” ... In the case of Terri Schiavo, a severely disabled person, there was a family dispute. Her estranged husband wanted her to die and he eventually succeeded in starving her to death. Her parents had wanted her to live. ... There was no moral justification for killing Terri because she had an inherent right...

TRENTON, Nov. 6 — In a stunning defeat for Gov. Jon S. Corzine, New Jersey voters on Tuesday rejected a ballot measure that would have permitted the state to borrow $450 million for stem cell research. The sound defeat, coupled with the failure of another initiative that would have set aside more money for property tax rebates, marked the first time in 17 years that voters in New Jersey had defeated any statewide ballot question. The ballot questions offered a rare surprise on a day in which Democrats maintained their control over both houses in the State Legislature. As of...

Hello, world! I am Emily X. I am Planned Parenthood. (Sign reads PRAY TO END ABORTION, sitting on a chair) Day 13 of 40: "... protesters are holding up signs like the one above. One was even holding a sign that read, 'Planned Parenthood: where money matters and people don't.' Have they seen my paycheck? I don't spend my days here for the money. I spend my days here because the women who are in our waiting room when I walk into the clinic matter to me, and I know they matter to Planned Parenthood." Click here to read more...