Free Republic

Combat judicial activism by utilizing checks on judicial power Constitutionally available to the elected branches of government. (Read an extended white paper on restoring the proper role of the judicial branch here.)

... According to her mother,Amelia was denied a life-saving transplant because she was "considered mentally retarded." The statements attributable to her denying doctor are explicit and, if true, leave no doubt that the girl'slife was discounted because she has a neurological syndrome. The hospital is wisely reconsidering, but... Thirty-ninepercent of programs stated that they "rarely" or "never" considerNDD[neurodevelopmental delays] in their decisions, whereas 43percent of programs "always" or "usually" do. [SNIP] PeterSinger,...has argued..."[W]e should not see all human lives as of equal worth but recognise that some are more valuable than others. Such judgments should be made on the basis...

<p>Mod update: SANTORUM VOTES IN SENATE FOR Sotomayor WHILE NOT A SENATOR!!!</p> <p>Santorum joined every Democrat in the Senate and 24 other Republicans in voting yes. Sotomayor was confirmed by a vote of 67 to 29. It does not appear that Santorum talked publicly about his decision to vote in favor of Sotomayor’s confirmation. As many conservatives predicted, she was eventually nominated to the Supreme Court — but not until a decade later.</p>

The pro-life movement has long argued the inextricable link between the right to life and the other two rights affirmed in our Declaration of Independence.  There is a reason, we have argued, the Founding Fathers intentionally wed “life� to “liberty� and “the pursuit of happiness.�  The “unalienable rights� of the Declaration are derived from our being “created equal� by a “Creator� who “endowed� us with “certain unalienable rights.� Without the first of these rights, there is no basis for the second and third.  Our liberty as Americans is based upon our identity as human persons.  We have been given...

Some thoughts on the occasion of President Ronald Wilson Reagan’s 101st birthday Ronald Reagan began his political life as a Democrat. Later, as we all know, he became a Republican, famously saying that he didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left him. And, of course, he was elected to two terms as California Governor, and served two terms as President, as a Republican. Because of that, his name will always be associated with that party. But I think his legacy transcends, and will outlive, that once-grand old party as well, as that party moves inexorably away from morally-conservative...

A potentially habitable alien planet — one that scientists say is the best candidate yet to harbor water, and possibly even life, on its surface — has been found around a nearby star. The planet is located in the habitable zone of its host star, which is a narrow circumstellar region where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on the planet's surface.

"This is the third [pro-life] event that he has declined to attend," says Mason. "It seems he is not interested in engaging with social conservatives, not interested in defending his apparent pro-life conversions, and not interested in courting those who are pro-life or pro-marriage -- both." [snip] Personhood USA is hosting the third conservative presidential forum in Florida on Saturday...but Newt Gingrich may be the only candidate to speak. The forum, called "Florida Awake," is co-sponsored with Liberty Counsel. Personhood USA president Keith Mason says Mitt Romney will be a no-show again. On Friday, a spokesperson for Personhood USA reported...

WASHINGTON, DC - The March for Life on Monday, January 23 saw half a million people take to the streets of the nation’s capital to share their pro-life convictions and join together for the common cause of stopping abortion. According to LifeNews, an estimated 500 thousand people attended the 2012 March for Life once again breaking the record for the largest human rights demonstration of its kind. This year the majority of marchers were under the age of 25. They were touring the Capitol, enjoying the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall, pushing strollers around the monuments, singing, and holding...

Earlier this week, abortion and pro-life advocates observed the 39th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, which, along with its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, recognized abortion to be a constitutionally protected right while giving states some leeway in restricting its availability. Roe dominates America's abortion debate. If you had asked any of the scores of thousands of pro-lifers who poured into Washington, D.C., on Monday for the annual March for Life to name their most urgent priority, most would have said overturning Roe. Abortion advocates, meanwhile, talk about Roe as if it were the only thing...

There are times in one’s life that a person is inspired to write down recollections, experiences and events in their lives, when someone who was behind a lot of your recollections, experiences and events passes away… My grandmother, Gertrude Payne Williams passed away this afternoon in Tyler, Texas after almost 97 years on this earth…I was the first of 9 grandchildren who was to be rightfully subjected to a realistic and conservative counsel, that is now complete…We will not have her wit, her drive and her wisdom to counsel us anymore…What we have is what we take for the rest...

Should American voters ask Romney and the other candidates what their philosophy of life is and what in their beliefs shapes their worldview? Also, should American voters ask the candidates about the degradation of the American culture especially among young people? I know we all have past sins, ie. Newt. However, Newt Gingrich has openly talked about his conversion to Catholicism and his reconciliation with God for his past sins. Rick Santorum openly talks about his devout Catholicism. Rick Perry is very open about his strong Christian beliefs. However, we do not hear much from Mitt Romney about his Mormon...

The taxpayer funded abortion factory Planned Parenthood making millions in profits by preying on women, specifically minorities and teenagers, seems to think a woman seeing her baby before making the ultimate decision to end her pregnancy is an "abhorrent" standard. The classification comes after a federal appeals court upheld a law that requires doctors to give women considering an abortion an ultrasound and full information before performing the procedure. Writing for the court, Chief Judge Edith Jones was frank about the other side’s failure “to demonstrate constitutional flaws with the law,� which requires women to have a sonogram 24 hours...

As Mark Steyn notes on the homepage, certain pundits who praise liberal politicians for their purported empathy have derided the Santorums for taking home their infant son Gabriel, who had died two hours after birth. Eugene Robinson, for example, said Rick Santorum is “not a little weird, he’s really weird.” I don’t recall these pundits making any similar comments about Barack Obama’s opposition to the Illinois state version of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA). The act was introduced in the Illinois state legislature to require that babies who survived botched abortions would be provided care in the same...

Of the 60 million Christians in the United States, only about half vote in any given election or are even registered to vote. The mission of Be My Vote is to engage young people in the process of getting pro-life Christians registered to vote for the purpose of increasing the number of pro-life voters who cast their ballots on Election Day. We believe that young people who are passionately pro-life but are too young to vote can influence their elders to register and vote according to Biblical principles. Be My Vote is an initiative of United in Purpose (www.unitedinpurpose.org) and...

SAN CLEMENTE, CALIF.—For most of her 100 years, Minka Disbrow tried to find out what became of the precious baby girl she gave up for adoption after being raped as a teen. She hoped, but never imagined, she’d see her Betty Jane again. The cruel act of violence bore in Disbrow an enduring love for the child. She kept a black and white photograph of the baby bundled in blankets and tucked inside a basket. It was the last she saw of the girl — until the phone rang in her California apartment in 2006 with the voice of an...

There are some things worth paying a premium price: Good car battery Good bed Good work boots Good jeans Good whiskey to celebrate, when your mother-in-law moves out of town

A freshman lawmaker is proposing to change Wisconsin's Constitution to grant equal rights to the unborn as part of a national push to reframe the abortion debate, a strategy that has failed in at least two states and has divided abortion opponents in Wisconsin and elsewhere. State Rep. Andre Jacque (R-Bellevue) introduced the so-called personhood amendment in November. He says it's needed to protect the state's decades-old abortion ban still on the books - one of just a few around the country - in the event of legal challenges if Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision nullifying such statutes, is...

This story tears the heart out. Jenni Lake gave birth to her son, Chad Michael Lake, on November 9, 2011, in Pocatello, Idaho. She won’t make it to his first birthday. She didn’t make it to her 18th birthday. She died 12 days after he was born, from the brain cancer that doctors told her she had more than a year earlier. Rather than accept treatment which may have endangered her baby, Jenni Lake decided against treating her cancer. I am sure that she died happy because she followed God’s plan. Her father recalled when Jenni Lake, then 16, was...

...What brought about the change? Perry said he was moved by a woman he met who appeared in former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's movie, "The Gift of Life," which he screened in Des Moines on Dec. 14. The woman has been conceived during a rape, and Perry said she told him, "My life has worth." He described the moment as "powerful." The next day, he signed the Personhood USA pledge. ….”Verwers asked Perry about his signature on a pledge from the anti-abortion group Personhood USA that requires candidates to oppose abortion for any reason. Verwers said Perry told him at...

To those who've declared European civilization dead due to demographics, I've often replied that in Europe, there are ents. In J.R.R. Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings" series, ents were extremely long-lived tree-like creatures who thought in terms of centuries, not years. They were painfully slow to act, but amazingly forceful when they do. What we're witnessing in Europe is a rebound of birth rates that is slow and incomplete, yet highly significant and growing. These rebounding birth rates are not due to Islamic and African immigrants. In many nations, the number of Islamic immigrants is much lower than perceived...

Finally, one day that December, I had to tell her. Medically, we were beaten. The decision lay with God. She took it quietly, lying there, wasting away, only 23 and the mother of a year-old child. Eleanor Munro (her name has been disguised) was a devout, courageous woman. She had red hair and had probably been rather pretty, but it was hard to tell anymore, she was so near to death from tuberculosis. She knew it now, she accepted it, and she asked for just one thing. “If I’m still alive on Christmas Eve,” she said slowly, “I would like...

Ron Paul wants to be pro-life but is officially pro-choice state by state, and so contradicts himself and wrongly assumes that states' rights supersede human rights, concluding that a state like California has the right to permit abortion. But the right to life is God-given so there can be no 'right' to decriminalize child killing. Ron Paul is Pro-Choice state by state with all of these observations fully documented below: - opposes a national ban on the dismembering of unborn children - claims the states may decide if they want to permit the killing of children - has not acknowledged...

Gov. Rick Perry began his 42-city bus tour on a rather populist note Wednesday, saying a diagram of the country’s problems would be a straight line between Washington, D.C. and Wall Street. Perry has been struggling in the polls for months but hopes a tour of Iowa’s small towns in the three weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 can lift him back to the front of the pack. “I hope some of you are taking a second look,” Perry said. Perry is trying to sell himself as the true Washington outsider in the Republican race, and...

The federal government's rejection this week of a state request to exclude certain providers — namely Planned Parenthood — from the Medicaid Women's Health Program came as a victory to some family planning advocates, and a travesty to others. Sandie Haverlah, an Austin lobbyist for Planned Parenthood, said it's a great outcome because it buys advocates time and forces the state to re-evaluate its stance on trying to force Planned Parenthood out of business. "It means the state is probably considering their position,” she said. But Fran Hagerty, chief executive of the Women’s Health and Family Planning Association of Texas,...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry picked up an endorsement yesterday from Kurt Wuelper, the president of New Hampshire Right to Life. "I know that Gov. Perry unequivocally believes that life begins at conception and does not waver in his protection of the unborn, unlike some self-professed pro-life candidates," Wuelper said in a campaign release. "But more than just talking the talk, Rick Perry has shown he is a man of strong faith and strong action." Wuelper added, "He doesn't just fight against abortion, Gov. Perry fights for life. His dedication to providing assistance to pregnant women and encouraging them to choose...

News today that presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich believes that life begins at implantation does not come as a great surprise. Other pro-life denizens of Capitol Hill, such as elected officials Connie Mack and Orin Hatch have also stated that the embryo is not human until it’s in the womb. Having recently covered this topic on when a human life begins, I’d like to probe deeper into the thoughts of Mr. Gingrich and extend to him an invitation to a cordial dialogue on this issue. A telling remark made by Mr. Gingrich sheds light on...

TO,ALL!! PLEASE PRAY, READ, and PLEASE ANSWER THE QUESTION AT YOUR LEISURE!!

An artist's rendering of the unborn child at 32-weeks gestation. MELBOURNE, Australia, November 23, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A 32-week set of twins were both aborted after staff at an Australian hospital initially killed the healthy twin by accident, and then also aborted the sick sibling after realizing their mistake, reports the Herald Sun. The paper reports that the mother of the children was told that one of her twin children had a congenital heart defect that would require years of surgery, and that the child may not survive. After she decided to have the child aborted, doctors then gave...

Hoping to garner an endorsement from Bob Vander Plaats and his Family Leader organization, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry decided to sign the group’s controversial “Marriage Vow” pledge. Perry is only the third candidate to sign the pledge, which is a prerequisite for The Family Leader’s support. Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum quickly took the oath when it was unveiled in early July. However, controversy with some of the wording in the document quickly arose. The preamble to the vow seemed to indicate that children born into slavery were better off than they are today. The backlash was fierce, eventually...

A day after Michele Bachmann’s campaign attacks Newt Gingrich’s record on abortion, the Gingrich campaign e-mails this account of Gingrich’s record: Newt Gingrich has consistently upheld a pro-life standard. He had a consistent pro-life voting record throughout his twenty years in Congress, including his four years as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Gingrich pledges to uphold this consistent pro-life standard as president. Gingrich’s consistent pro-life standard is reflected by the following: 1. 98.6% Lifetime Pro-Life Rating from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). For the 20 years that Gingrich served in Congress (1979-1999), Gingrich supported the pro-life position...

DES MOINES, Iowa – Texas Gov. Rick Perry Saturday participated in the Presidential Thanksgiving Family Forum, hosted by the Family Leader, where he reiterated his principled and longstanding commitment to conservative values. “I am a faithful, fiscal and social conservative of conviction, not of convenience,” said Gov. Perry. “As Governor of the State of Texas, I have signed more pro-life legislation than any governor in my state’s history and championed and signed the Texas Defense of Marriage Act. Traditional family values are important to me, to the people of Iowa and to citizens and future of our nation. America needs...

The morning after this month's relatively quiet (for most of us) Election Day, story after story arrived celebrating a pro-life defeat. "Mississippi Wins for Women!" The Daily Beast exclaimed. "Birth Control Remains Legal: Mississippi Voters Reject Draconian 'Personhood' Initiative," the National Organization for Women declared. "Our victory in Mississippi has already sent a strong message to extremists who will stop at nothing to outlaw abortion," the American Civil Liberties Union explained. Mississippi's personhood amendment, seeking to amend the state constitution's legal definition of a "person" to "include every human being from the moment of fertilization," lost at the ballot box....

California EBT: Life is good in California if you don't like to work!

by Sheri UrbanReal FeministWhat is Bob Scheiffer’s Solution to “Epidemic of out of wedlock black babies”? Planned Parenthood! Herman Cain hits it out of the park on Big Abortion's history and founder. Bob Scheiffer plays gotcha with Cain and gets schooled... He asks Cain if he has “proof” that abortion clinics were placed in black neighborhoods to “curb the negro population”. Did this “seasoned journalist” really ask that? Mr. Schieffer, Google is your friend. The racist roots of Planned Parenthood have been out there for years, but only now is it coming to light for most Americans, as the media...

The Discovery Channel is running a documentary next week asking "When Does Life Begin?" The fear of showing babies in the womb has caused some fear in the pro-abort community. One commenter at a website said: With all the anti-choice legislation this year already we really don't need Discovery channel parading fetuses around and showing how cool and realistic they are in utero. We can't stand a parade of fetuses, can we? But here's the thing. The Discovery Channel website shows why pro-aborts have something to fear from any kind of actual scientific talk concerning human life and its beginnings....

Presidential candidate Rick Perry praised the legislators working to overturn New Hampshire's same-sex marriage law last night in Manchester. "As conservatives we believe in the sanctity of life. We believe in the sanctity of traditional marriage," Perry said. "And I applaud those legislators in New Hampshire who are working to defend marriage as an institution between one man and one woman, realizing that children need to be raised in a loving home by a mother and a father. As he spoke at the annual banquet for Cornerstone Action, a conservative advocacy group, Perry sought to set himself apart from others...

Republican presidential candidate Cain hadn’t been in the state for two months, but he was able to connect with a majority of about 800 conservatives at the Des Moines event and reassure them that he was pro-life. “In terms of preventing abortion on demand, I would not sign any legislation for government-funded abortion,” Bloomberg quoted the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO as telling the audience, as he sought to defend his Oct. 19 statement to CNN that although he opposed abortion,“it’s not the government’s role or anybody else’s role to make that decision.” “I would not sign any legislation that in...

...A half-dozen GOP contenders flocked to Iowa on Saturday in hopes of gaining any edge with this influential group barely 10 weeks before the state’s Jan. 3 caucuses. These voters have yet to rally around any single candidate aggressively courting them, seeking the kind of lift that carried former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to victory in the leadoff caucuses in 2008. In fact, with 1,000 social conservatives expected to hear from six candidates late Saturday in Des Moines, there are deep divisions among these voters about where to throw their support. ...The forum didn’t draw Romney, the former Massachusetts governor...

Scientists in Britain face being barred from developing life-saving treatments after a court ruled it is ‘immoral’ to use embryos to produce stem cells. The European Court of Justice has decreed that patenting any treatment using the cells is ‘commercial exploitation’ and ‘contrary to morality’. Scientists warned the ‘devastating decision’ will stop pioneering treatments for degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s being developed in the UK, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the multi-million pound biotechnology industry. But pro-life groups, who argue it is immoral to experiment with embryos to advance medicine, welcomed the ruling. The decision, made unanimously by...

The UK Telegraph has a photo essay of Obama's life. Some you've seen but it includes pictures of him as a child, in college, lecturing, and of course politics.

......"It's a "pattern time and time again," said senior campaign strategist David Axelrod. "It’s consistent with a guy who ran for the governorship and the Senate in Massachusetts as a pro-choice moderate who supported civil unions and environmental protections to the guy you see today hard after the Tea Party vote who has thrown all his positions over.” If "you are willing to change positions on fundamental issues of principle, how can we know what you would do as president?" asked Axelrod. The Democratic National Committee has already established a YouTube channel called "Which Mitt" which highlights his Mitt-flops."..................

This is my favorite story of the day because on the one hand it's wonderfully pro-life and Catholic but on the other hand it annoys the heck out of all the right people and that always gives me such tingly good feelings. Is that bad? A small Catholic elementary school in Canada has announced that students who take part in anti-abortion vigils outside abortion clinics will receive community service credit. How awesome is that? I literally think I just heard heads exploding up in Canada. It's a brilliant and wonderful way to exhibit the school's Catholic identity. What is more...

Today, the Susan B. Anthony list and National Organization for marriage released a joint scorecard for the Republican candidates for President at the annual Values Voters Summit. Ordinarily, a release like this carries few surprises, and in this election cycle so dominated by fiscal issues, a scorecard devoted to gay marriage and abortion is unlikely to carry the same weight it would have in the past. However, what may surprise those perusing the score card this time around is the fact that one candidate – the one widely interpreted as the most conservative in the race – actually falls to...

Since this is Respect Life Sunday, and the beginning of Respect Life month, I wanted to talk about one woman who did respect life – and her choice has made a difference in the life of virtually every person in this church. Her name is Joanne Schiebel. In 1954, she was a young unmarried college student who discovered that she was pregnant. In the 1950s, her options were limited. She could have had an abortion – but the procedure was both dangerous and illegal. She could have gotten married, but she wasn’t ready and didn’t want to interrupt her education....

Since this is Respect Life Sunday, and the beginning of Respect Life month, I wanted to talk about one woman who did respect life – and her choice has made a difference in the life of virtually every person in this church. Her name is Joanne Schiebel. In 1954, she was a young unmarried college student who discovered that she was pregnant. In the 1950s, her options were limited. She could have had an abortion – but the procedure was both dangerous and illegal. She could have gotten married, but she wasn’t ready and didn’t want to interrupt her education....

A source on the Rick Perry campaign tells Hot Air that the Texas governor conducted some Texas-size fundraising in the third quarter. Coming in just a little over halfway through, Perry raised $17.1 million. That number would put Perry somewhere between $4-6 million ahead of Mitt Romney’s rumored total for Q3, according to this report last week from the Boston Globe. It’s also likely to far outpace Herman Cain’s fundraising or that of the other Republicans currently in the race. The pace is even more impressive. Perry had 49 days in which to raise funds, rather than the full 92...

Dartmouth College theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser has an interesting essay this week which deals with the possibility of life around the universe and, more to the point, what such life might be like. It was spurred by the recent discovery of one of the most promising possible Earth-like worlds yet, orbiting in the “Goldilocks zone� of its parent star, where water could exist in liquid form. As more and more of these planets are identified, scientists will be focusing their search for possible forms of intelligent life in those regions of the galaxy.But if life exists, Gleiser wonders, would it...

Thanks mommy..now I can wear these funny ears.

I have been digging into global warming. The science, well, there are points on both sides, and I have no real interest in the debate. If the scientists in favor are right, I will be a century dead before it is a real problem. If they are not right, well it doesn't impact me apart from a miniscule amount on my taxes to pay for scientists to play with their slide rules. What I do want to talk about is how the MSM's global warming hysteria actually plays into Conservative hands, and why we should take this on and make...