Free Republic

Gone But Not Forgotten Melissa Barnhart, April 5, 2010 The Family Research Council commemorated the fifth anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo by hosting a panel discussion, “Terri Schiavo and a Culture of Life: Looking Forward on the Anniversary of Terri’s Death,” in Washington, D.C. on Monday, March 29. Terri died from dehydration at age 41, on March 31, 2005, 13 days after Judge George W. Greer of the Sixth Judicial Court in Pinellas County, Fla., ordered that her feeding tube be removed. FRC’s four-person panel included David Gibbs III, lead attorney in Terri’s case and author of the...

....Terri was not dying. She was not receiving any "extraordinary medical treatment." She was being fed and given water, as many disabled people are at this very moment, with assistance. She had trouble swallowing because she was disabled by damage to her brain. She would have lived for many, many years, bringing great joy to her family and changing the world. But she was killed by the complete abject failure of a system that has lost its soul. The Greek word for "witness" is "martyrion". In our use of the word over centuries of Christian history, we have emphasized those...

This is the time to speak the truth for life, frankly and boldly. If our nation is to endure, then those who value the gift of life must work to make certain that organizations like Ohio Right to Life (O-RTL) and Michigan Right to Life (M-RTL) are supported in their efforts to defend the life of the unborn. Members of these groups who pray, attend legislative hearings, circulate legislative updates and support candidates who will not bend to political will and pressure need your help now and should continue to support Sarah Palin and her culture of life principles. Coming...

n an interview with TPM, state Del. Bob Marshall (R-VA) disputed the full accuracy and context of a local news article that quoted him as saying that an increase of disabled children was a punishment from nature for abortion. "I don't believe that disabled kids are God's punishments, period, end of discussion," said Marshall. "I have defended disabled kids. I was almost kicked out of the Republican caucus because I forced a vote on a bill, because autism parents did not get a vote in a subcommittee." Marshall insisted that his comments had been taken out of context. (Here's the...

Next Sunday, when millions of people tune in to watch Super Bowl XLIV, they'll see a football star off the field, too. Tim Tebow, the University of Florida's Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, is set to appear with his mother in a 30-second advertisement to be aired during the game. The spot, which has not been released, is said to feature Tebow, by all reports a humble young man who takes his faith seriously, and his mother telling the story of her decision 23 years ago to ignore medical advice and continue a risky pregnancy. snip... Women's and choice groups responding to...

Poll: Youngest Americans More Pro-Life on Abortion Than Baby Boomers Washington, DC -- As hundreds of thousands of pro-life Americans young and old participate in the March for Life in Washington today, a new poll finds most marchers will likely be from the millennial generation or Generation X. The most recent Marist survey finds them the most pro-life on abortion. http://www.LifeNews.com/nat5914.html

Bioethics: Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research, there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress. So supporters are embracing research they once opposed. California's Proposition 71 was intended to create a $3 billion West Coast counterpart to the National Institutes of Health, empowered to go where the NIH could not — either because of federal policy or funding restraints on biomedical research centered on human embryonic stem cells. Supporters of the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, passed in 2004, held out hopes of imminent medical miracles that were...

In March of 1993, a Gallup poll determined that about a third of respondents (32%) wanted abortion to be “legal under any circumstances.” In the same year, Mark Donald of the Dallas Observer (5/18/1995) wrote this: “On June 28, 1993, Charlotte [Taft, then director of the Routh Street Women’s Clinic in Dallas] publicly aired her evolving views about abortion. ‘We have learned a great deal from the movement that calls itself pro-life,’ Charlotte told the Dallas Morning News. ‘We (the pro-choice movement) were hiding from women some of the pieces of the truth about abortion that were threatening.... It is...

Washington, DC -- Millions of Americans will be reminded of the pro-woman, pro-life perspective when they take to the streets on Sunday, October 4. That's because thousands of pro-life advocates in cities and towns across the country will be there to share the message with them.

An exceptionally touching 9 minute video of a courageous, loving couple who show what it means to be pro-life, give life and reject the life-demeaning advise of professionals. You Tube Link

The cost of caring for patients who are near death accounts for a big piece of the government's medical spending. But a furor over a provision for government-paid counseling to plan for end-of-life care is steering lawmakers away from the issue. Tucked inside a sweeping House bill to overhaul the health system is a provision that would require Medicare to pay physicians to counsel patients once every five years. During those sessions, doctors could discuss how patients can plan for such end-of-life decisions as setting up a living will, obtaining hospice care or establishing a proxy to make their health...

Ricardo and Mayra Sadoval with Fr. John Gregory Denver, Colo., Jul 24, 2009 / 03:19 pm (CNA).- Though Mayra Sandoval died of cancer on July 8, her son Samuel is alive and healthy thanks to her insistence on choosing life, against the advice of doctors who urged her to abort. Now, Mayra’s husband and friends remember her as a powerful witness to the immeasurable value of life. In an interview with the Denver Catholic Register, Mayra’s husband, Ricardo Flores, recalled the battle of faith and trust that the couple underwent in the months leading up to her death.Both Ricardo...

ROME, JULY 19, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The idea that some people are genetically inferior, and need to be eliminated or prevented from reproducing, is a mentality that still persists, despite the battering it took after the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. In a revealing interview published July 12 in the New York Times Magazine Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States was asked about abortion, among other topics. Referring to the Supreme Court decision that opened the doors to abortion, Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions about abortion funding, Ginsburg commented: "Frankly I had thought...

Nearly 50 years ago Democratic presidential hopeful John F. Kennedy went before a group of Protestant ministers in Houston to reassure them, and the rest of America, that if elected president he, as a Roman Catholic, would not set policy on orders from the Vatican. "I am not the Catholic candidate for president," the Massachusetts senator said that night in September 1960. "I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters — and the church does not speak for me." Given the evolution of...

In the late afternoon of July 1o, President Obama met privately with Pope Benedict XVI for just over 30 minutes. According to official Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi, S.J., "The president explicitly expressed his commitment to reducing the numbers of abortions and to listen to the church's concern on moral issues." On July 13 in a Senate committee hearing, Sen. Barbara Mikulski was forced to admit under persistent questioning by Sen. Orrin Hatch that the new health-care bill includes abortion coverage. Planned Parenthood's Guttmacher Institute estimates government funding of abortion increases abortion by 20 to 35 percent. There were 1,206,200...

Bioethics: The former director of the National Institutes of Health, once an enthusiast for embryonic stem cells, now says their future has "dimmed." So why is the administration bailing out research into such therapies while troubled states like California have committed billions?Aside from creating or saving a few research jobs, the administration's decision to federally fund embryonic stem cell research is, as we've noted, a bailout of bad science. It throws money at an avenue of research that time and adult stem cell progress have passed by. Applauding the administration's move was Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., who echoed the claims...

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that she considered Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, to be “settled law”...Dr. Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, said Roe is “anything but settled law.”“This question of Roe as settled law goes to a central point in the testimony we’ll be providing on Thursday morning: Roe is not settled law,” Yoest said in a statement

In his first week in office, President Obama issued an executive order overturning the Reagan-era Mexico City regulations, which had prohibited American foreign aid from going to organizations that finance overseas abortions. Just a few weeks later, the Gallup organization revealed that the executive order was the single most unpopular action taken by the president during his honeymoon period. At a time when American families had experienced an average 25 percent decline in their net worth, it would appear that increasing the net worth of foreign abortionists was not high on their to-do list.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI stressed the church's opposition to abortion and stem cell research in his first meeting with President Barack Obama on Friday, pressing the Vatican's case with the U.S. leader who is already under fire on those issues from some conservative Catholics and bishops back home...Afterward, the Vatican said the leaders discussed immigration, the Middle East peace process and aid to developing nations. But the Vatican's statement also underscored the pair's deep disagreement on abortion. "In the course of their cordial exchanges, the conversation turned first of all to questions which are in the interest of...

The most overturned appellate court has teed up another case for the Supreme Court to consider — and likely soon. The 9th Circuit overturned an injunction in a district court case, allowing the state of Washington to force a pharmacy to stock and dispense morning-after pills, which causes the abortion of an embryo in the early days of a pregnancy. The pharmacy owners had objected, claiming that the law violated their religious practice: