Free Republic

Surveillance video caught a man entering a Phoenix phone store Saturday and brutally beating a female employee working alone behind the counter — punching and stomping on her 25 times in an unprovoked attack. Even when she screamed she was pregnant as a possible way of getting him to stop, the attacker kept beating her. The 22-year-old victim asked the man, "How can I help you?" as he approached the counter of the Cricket Wireless store near 43rd Avenue and Bethany Home Road around 5 p.m., KSAZ-TV reported. The man began to answer and then suddenly punched the woman, landing...

The controversy over three-parent embryos could soon be old hat. Writing in one of the world’s leading journals, one of Britain’s best-known bioethicists has outlined a strategy for creating children with four or more genetic parents. He calls it “multiplex parenting”.John Harris, of the University of Manchester, and two colleagues, César Palacios-González and Giuseppe Testa contend in the Journal of Medical Ethics (free online) that this is one of many exciting consequences of using stem cells to create synthetic eggs and sperm. (Or as they prefer to call them, in vitro generated gametes (IVG).)After the discovery of induced pluripotent stem...

In fact, Australian law now recognises polygamous unions contracted in other jurisdictions for many purposes. “The social institution of marriage differs from country to country. It is not now possible (if it ever was) to confine attention to jurisdictions whose law of marriage provides only for unions between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life. Marriage law is and must be recognised now to be more complex. Some jurisdictions outside Australia permit polygamy. Some jurisdictions outside Australia, in a variety of constitutional settings, now permit marriage between same sex couples. “These...