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Planned Parenthood and other promoters of abortion are on or near college campuses preaching their message of death. But a student pro-life group is moving to counter that.In response to the campus prominence of Planned Parenthood, Students for Life of America is hiring field agents who will have the responsibility of forming chapters on campuses in their region. The organization will help to make sure counseling and services are available to women that will convince them to have their babies. "We send field agents out every semester to college campuses identifying pro-life students and helping [those students] start pro-life groups...

The Ohio branch of the leading player in the nation's abortion industry, Planned Parenthood, is blaming the callers for a fiasco in which a local official was caught on tape agreeing to take a donation designated to eliminate blacks.WND has reported previously on the work of Lila Rose, editor of the Los Angeles-based Advocate, who has conducted several undercover investigations of Planned Parenthood.In one taped interview, an Idaho official for Planned Parenthood said it was "understandable" that a donor would want to contribute to abortions targeting blacks so that his own, presumably white, child would have less competition in...

TORONTO, Ontario, May 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Ontario’s health insurance plan will pay for “sex-change” operations for the first time in a decade, Health Minister George Smitherman confirmed yesterday"(It would) probably affect between eight and 10 people in Ontario, who after having very, very sustained psychological evaluations would be deemed by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health as appropriate candidates to receive a surgical intervention," Smitherman speculated.Ontario began covering the bill for “sex-change” operations in 1971, but ceased doing so in 1998 under the Progressive Conservative government.In 2006, the Ontario Human Rights Commission required compensation for three patients midway...

BARRYS BAY, ON, May 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - With 90 students - two full buses - Madawaska Valley District High School had the largest number of public high school students to participate in the National March for Life on May 8.  LifeSiteNews.com spoke with the chaplain involved in the success and received feedback on the March from some of the students. 14-year-old Alyssa Rogers reflected, "When I went on the March for Life I was amazed at how much emotion was in their voices while they chanted against abortions. In the beginning I only wanted to go to get...

Human Dignity & the Sanctity of Life Overturning Roe v. Wade John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench. Constitutional balance would be restored by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, returning the abortion question to the individual states. The difficult issue of abortion should not be decided by judicial fiat. However, the reversal of Roe v. Wade represents only one step in the long path toward ending abortion. Once the...

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa hailed the California Supreme Court decision today, saying he would officiate over as many same-sex weddings as possible. The mayor stood by leaders of the gay and lesbian community today, calling the high-court's decision a victory for California.

It’s not really about gay marriage. It’s about the balance of power. It’s about popular sovereignty. It’s about those very fundamental things that the Founding Fathers understood so well, but which have been omitted from the public consciousness and the school curricula for more than a generation. It’s about who, in our Republic, makes the rules. Yesterday, in California, by a 5-4 vote, a panel of judges redefined marriage. The fundamental relationship of society, a bedrock manifestation of culture and public sensibilities, was changed. And the people had no voice. In fact, the ruling specifically voided a 2000 vote of...

Minnesota, MN (LifeNews.com) -- Minnesota taxpayers have been forced to pay for more abortions than ever before, according to new figures from the Minnesota Department of Human Services. State residents were required to pay $1.6 million for more than 3,900 abortions in 2006.In addition, Minnesota residents paid for medical care for women who suffered from botched legal abortions.“There is no end in sight for taxpayer funded abortions in Minnesota,” Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life director Scott Fischbach told LifeNews.com.“Just last month pro-lifers sought to ban taxpayer funding of needless sex-selection abortions and gruesome saline abortions, but the legislature’s pro-abortion...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new poll finds a majority of Americans would support their own state following Oregon's lead and legalizing assisted suicide. The results, if accurate, should be a concern for pro-life advocates who are working hard to stop Washington and other states from following suit.Knowledge Networks conducted the survey online and about 66 percent of the 1,100 people polled said they would favor legalizing assisted suicide.Other results from the survey showed more than 80 percent of Americans believe neither the government, the church nor a third party should decide when people should have a right to...

SAN FRANCISCO - A deeply divided California Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in an opinion issued Thursday morning. Wild cheers echoed throughout City Hall and other spots where proponents had gathered Thursday morning awaiting the opinion, which came on a 4-3 vote. The case stems from challenges to state law by gay couples who were married in ceremonies at San Francisco City Hall in 2004, when Mayor Gavin Newsom began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Legal challenges to those marriages eventually led to the high court invalidating them six months later. California voters already had approved by a wide...

Denver, CO (LifeNews.com) -- The Colorado pro-life group supporting an amendment to the state constitution that would define unborn children as persons under law submitted almost twice as many signatures as necessary. Supporters needed 76,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot but turned in 131,245.Colorado for Equal Rights, led by 20-year-old Kristi Burton, was behind the signature-gathering effort."The main thing the constitution is supposed to do is to protect us," the 20-year-old Burton said Tuesday at a press conference after submitting the signatures to the Secretary of State. "But who is that 'us'? There is currently no definition...

Rita L. Marker is an attorney and executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Deadly Compassion, that has been called a compelling, persuasive, well-written and revealing discussion of both the personal and public sides of the euthanasia debate.No matter the event, the venue or the audience – in the United States or in another country – assisted-suicide activists portray assisted suicide as the exercise of personal autonomy that is used to end unbearable suffering. Conversely, opponents raise concerns that transforming assisted suicide from a crime...

LifeNews.com Note: Colin Mason is the director of media production for the Population Research Institute, an organization that tracks population issues and monitors abortion and demographics on an international scale. As the very first line of Steven Mosher's latest book reads, we have all grown up "on a poisonous diet of overpopulation propaganda."Mosher's book, Population Control-Real Costs, Illusory Benefits, is, first and foremost, an answer to the allegation that the human race is inexorably multiplying, hell-bent toward a giant demographic cliff like so many lemmings. The numbers show that the world is not, has never been, nor ever shall...

HALIFAX, May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Aggressive pro-abortion demonstrators made physical attempts to shut down Nova Scotia's first annual "March for Life" Thusday.  Beginning with an evening candle-lit prayer vigil on Wednesday May 7th, 2008 followed by a demonstration on Thursday the event was organized and co-sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic Women's League and the Campaign Life Coalition.  The roughly 90 March for Life participants were infiltrated on both occasions by several pro-abortion activists. In the coverage following the event, a reporter with the Chronicle Herald (local Halifax paper) wrote erroneously that the rally was in promotion...

School Survey Asks: Who'll Get Pregnant? Parent Wants 6th-Grade Teacher Fired POSTED: 4:32 pm EDT May 13, 2008 UPDATED: 5:49 pm EDT May 13, 2008 JACKSON, Miss. -- The father of a sixth-grader in Jackson, Miss., said he wants a teacher fired following a survey students completed that said his daughter will likely get pregnant before graduating high school, local station WAPT reported. Curtis Lyons said that when his daughter came home from Chastain Middle School Monday she told him what had happened. "She was humiliated," Lyons said. "She's an honor student." Lyons said his daughter told him that the...

How to Commit Marriage by: Malcolm A. Kline, May 13, 2008 A couple of professors from the University of Chicago think they have found a way out of what they see as a national impasse over state marriage laws. “To respect the liberty of religious groups while protecting individual freedom in general, we propose that marriage, as such, should be completely privatized,” Richard A. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein write in Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness. “Under our proposal, the word marriage would no longer appear in any laws, and marriage licenses would no longer be offered...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Each year, half of American women who would rather not get pregnant will have an unplanned pregnancy, often because they failed to use their contraceptive properly or forgot to use it at all, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. As a result, 28 million women in the United States are at risk for an unintended pregnancy, according to the study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute in New York. They found one in four women are very likely to become pregnant because of inconsistent contraception use. Some of this gap is due to lack of access to health care,...

Columbus, OH (LifeNews.com) -- Officials with Planned Parenthood in Ohio are finally responding to allegations a UCLA student newspaper made in February that they gladly accepted donations from a caller who said he wanted it used for racist purposes. The Advocate magazine called Planned Parenthood centers in several states.The pro-life publication told LifeNews.com at the time that an actor posing as a racist donor called Planned Parenthood and asked that his donation be used to abort African American babies in order to "lower the number of black people."The magazine said an Ohio Planned Parenthood representative, Lisa Hutton, told the...

An estimated 300 motorists and a hearse took part Saturday morning in a symbolic funeral procession through downtown Knoxville to commemorate abortions performed in Knox County last year. The procession started at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum and wound down Gay Street before ending at Depot Avenue. It drew fewer participants than originally expected. Officials had estimated 15 area funeral homes would provide hearses for the event, held the day before Mother's Day. Gentry-Griffey Funeral Chapel provided the hearse. "You know, we're still thankful for the one hearse we had," said Aaron Jones, associate pastor with Knoxville's Trinity Chapel. "I really...

Abortion is back in the news yet, understandably, many women still find it difficult to talk about. Here Lucy Cavendish – who has been through it twice – offers a candid view Virtually every woman I know of my generation has had an abortion. The problem is that no one talks about it. It is hidden away as if it were a dirty secret. This week, however, every time I've opened a newspaper or turned on the radio, abortion has been the topic du jour. First, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries called for the legal limit for terminations to be...

A Pennsylvania elementary school has angered parents by giving them one-day's notice of planned counseling sessions with 100 third-grade students to explain that one of their male classmates would soon begin wearing girls' clothing and taking a female name and to ask that they accept him as a girl and not make unkind remarks. The exercise in "social transition" was initiated by the boy's parents who approached the administration at Chatham Park Elementary School in Haverford Township asking that the school help in having their child's female identity find acceptance among his peers. After consulting experts on transgender children, the...

MOUNTLAKE TERRACE -- Former Gov. Booth Gardner no longer runs the state, but now he'd like to be in control in a different way. He wants to be able to die on his own terms if his quality of life becomes seriously diminished, he said at a meeting of the Lynnwood Rotary Club on Thursday. Gardner, 72, has Parkinson's disease. For the past year, he has been promoting the controversial cause of physician-assisted suicide. "I recognize there are people here who won't like what I'm about to say, and others who will be with me implicitly," he said. "I respect...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The chances are good that your health insurance plan covers elective abortions since 46 percent of all health insurance plans in the United States do so. A leading researcher urges pro-life advocates to investigate their plans to find out whether they are unknowingly supporting abortion. During the Reagan administration, Dr. Robert Moffitt was the deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. He recently gave a speech at the Family Research Council warning that, because most health insurance plans are controlled by secular companies or government officials, many of them pay for abortions. The...

A video posted on YouTube.com is causing a lot of concern among Memphis City School parents. Now were trying to find solutions. The clip labeled, "Mitchell High School Memphis ... Rape Dat Ho," was posted last month. It was flagged as offensive then taken down, but not before News Channel 3 recorded the clip on tape. The images are disturbing. They are graphic and hard to watch. It shows young men and women engaging in what one parent described as "sex with clothes on." We knew the video would get a strong reaction. We aired the video Monday to expose...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A leading post-abortion women's group is upset that Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards exploited Mother's Day for fundraising for the nation's largest abortion business. Planned Parenthood also came under fire for saying promoting abortion is more important than civil rights.As LifeNews.com reported this week, Richards honored Mother's Day by sharing part of an editorial her daughter wrote saying she got her pro-abortion views from her mother and grandmother, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards.Richard couldn't wait until the third paragraph of her Mother's Day letter to PPFA supporters to ask them to open their wallets."This Mother's...

Pro-life advocates are launching an e-mail campaign in an attempt to save the life of a young woman injured by a drug overdose who now is facing the possibility of a court-ordered death by dehydration and starvation.WND previously has reported on the case involve Randy Richardson, who is fighting his ex-wife, the medical establishment and the court system for the life of his 23-year-old daughter, Lauren Marie Richardson."She's committed no crime and doesn't deserve to have this death imposed on her," he told the Wilmington, Del., News Journal earlier, citing the case that carries striking parallels to the 2005...

LifeNews.com Note: Roeten is a very conservative Catholic who likes the facts over readily displayed emotions. He is an editorial columnist who has frequently been published in numerous Internet and newspaper forums.It’s been discovered. Nobody thought having “safe sex” was possible in every case. Each year 2.6 million teenagers become sexually active—a rate of 7000/day. With high school, nearly half report having engaged in sexual activity and 1/3 are currently active (Kim/Rector//Heritage Foundation).As it turns out, teen sexual activity is extremely costly for teens and for society as a whole. From 1985-1990 alone, the federal government spent $120 billion...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Actresses Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow are at it again, asking abortion advocates across the country to donate money to the nation's largest abortion business. In an email Friday prior to Mother's Day, the mother and daughter Hollywood stars primped the pump for more donations for Planned Parenthood. "We are Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow, and this is the third time we've written a Mother's Day letter to people like you who support Planned Parenthood," they wrote in the email LifeNews.com received. The pair apparently believe promoting abortion is the best way to honor mothers. "We...

In an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC, practicing Homosexual controversialist Bishop Gene Robinson announced plans to enter into a ‘Civil Union’ with his Male Paramour. He told the interviewer it was “what God is telling me to do” Just as the splintering Anglican Communion was preparing for its International Lambeth Conference. Just as the controversy surrounding the actions of some orthodox Anglicans planning an alternative Conference seemed to be out of the limelight. Right at this time,a controversialist Bishop named Gene Robinson once again enters the limelight to make himself the center of attention.

Rockford, IL, May 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Rockford abortuary has made the demonic side of the abortion industry readily apparent to the public by decorating its facility with a nun in a coffin, a crucified rubber chicken, and a set of sacred images arranged in a voodoo-style altar.Kevin Rilott, an Illinois pro-life activist who has often prayerfully protested in front of the Rockford Northern Illinois Women's Center (NIWC) abortuary that features the sacrilegious display, hopes that images of the offensive exhibition will expose the evil carried out at the facility."This clinic affects the lives of thousands of Rockford...

Livonia, MI -- Local pro-life advocates in the Detroit area have found the bodies of babies killed in abortions and patient medical records in another Michigan abortion center's dumpster. The finding comes on the hells of one abortion facility that ran afoul of illegal dumping laws and was investigated by the state. This time, members of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society found the bodies, biohazard waste and medical records at the Women's Advisory abortion business in Livonia.

ST. ANTHONY, Idaho — A suspected illegal immigrant has been charged with raping a 10-year-old girl who later gave birth in eastern Idaho.

A student senate leader at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point has told pro-life display supporters they have no right to express their opinion on the volatile issue of abortion. "It's not your responsibility," Roderick King, a sophomore at the school and member of its student senate, shouted at those who had assembled a display of white crosses in the campus lawn – with university permission. "This [abortion] is a right. You don't have the right to challenge it. Write a paper. Do NOT! Do NOT put this in front of all of us. This is not your right," he hollered,...

LAUREN RICHARDSON - YOU CAN HELP!By Judie BrownIt has been a source of ongoing sadness to read of the difficulties Lauren Richardson’s father has had over the course of the past several months. For those of you who are not familiar with her case, Lauren overdosed on heroin on August 28, 2006. She suffered oxygen deprivation and, as a result of the overdose, is now in a coma and unable to speak out for herself. At the time of the overdose, Lauren was expecting a baby. Her parents honored what they knew would have been her wish and did all they could to...

Dover, DE (LifeNews.com) -- The family of Lauren Richardson continues to press her case and is now calling on the governor of Delaware for help to save her life. Richardson has become the next Terri Schiavo as her parents engage in a massive legal and philosophical debate about whether she should live or die.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...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- With Mother's Day coming up this weekend, Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion business, has a message for moms: send us more money. Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, sent out a fund-raising request this week one pro-life advocate says is grotesque. Richards honored mother's day by sharing part of an editorial her daughter wrote saying she got her pro-abortion views from her mother and grandmother, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards. "It's true that I have had lots of rewarding moments in my career. So did my mother," Cecile wrote in the...

A special interest program assembled by the Human Rights Campaign to promote homosexuality has been launched in the 91-school Minneapolis district, even as opponents are urging school officials to keep sexuality out of the social culture. "The government should promote and encourage strong families," said Austin R. Nimocks, a senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. "When school officials have to choose between protecting children in those families or furthering the homosexual agenda, the choice is obvious: protecting our children comes first." The issue is the "Welcoming Schools" program assembled by the HRC, which advocates for and promotes homosexuality. District...

"We're here, we're queer, get used to it!" Dozens of lesbian activists at Smith College climbed in through windows and stormed the podium in a riot scene shortly after Ryan Sorba began a speech on his upcoming book, The Born Gay Hoax. The melee forced an end to the speech before a packed hall in the library on the Northhampton campus. Uniformed police officers and a plainclothes security guard were in the room but mostly just stood and watched. Rather than take action against the rioters, the officers and a university official walked to the podium and ordered Sorba to...

Call it censored, call it buried, call it lost—the search term “abortion” was all of the above for approximately a month on POPLINE—a publicly-funded database that its administrators describe as “Your connection to the world’s reproductive health literature.”Last week, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, uncovered this ironic situation while trying to “connect” to “reproductive health literature.” Health care providers, researchers, and advocates around the country were alarmed to learn that POPLINE (POPulation information onLINE), had rendered the search term “abortion” a stopword—which directs the database to ignore the term when used in a search. UCSF librarians discovered...

May 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Ben Stein has suffered extensive media criticism for drawing the connection between Darwin, Hitler, and the modern eugenics movements in a powerful 10-minute section of his film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed".In an MSNBC.com review, Arthur Caplan calls the connection Stein draws between Darwin's theory and the Holocaust "despicable".  Neo-Darwinians on the whole have unleashed a barrage of insults at Stein and his work. They have also, however, completely failed to address the intimidating body of evidence Stein presents to support his claims.  While Stein has explicitly asserted that not every neo-Darwinist is a eugenicist, an examination of the historic...

Plan for long life, without pandemic NANCY STANCILL Should doctors let people older than 85 die in a flu pandemic? A Monday news story saying a U.S. task force recommends denying lifesaving care in a pandemic or other disaster to some folks -- including healthy people above 85 -- was unsettling. They're talking about my mother, soon to be 86. My friend Karen's father, who is 92. Another friend's grandmother, 102. These people live life joyfully, with their minds and hearts intact. My mother relishes foreign travel. Karen's father loves bird watching. The 102-year-old grandmother plays a mean hand of...

LONDON, May 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In the May 2 installment of his regular health feature in The Times, Dr. Thomas Stuttaford responded to a reader who complained of a loss of interest in sex following an abortion. "Though my boyfriend and I agreed it was the right thing to do, I feel guilty and I've gone off sex," wrote the questioner. Dr. Stuttaford responded by saying that loss of libido after an abortion is "so common that it can almost be said to be expected". Asked if the feelings would pass, Stuttaford wrote, "It is possible, but by no...

LifeNews.com Note: Maria Vitale is a LifeNews.com Opinion Columnist and the Education Director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. Vitale has written and reported for various broadcast and print media outlets, including National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and AP Radio. Mother's Day will be bittersweet in some segments of our nation this year.For some women, there will be no flowers, no chocolates—just the painful memory of a child lost forever to abortion.It may seem incongruous to talk about abortion in connection with Mother's Day. After all, this is a holiday meant to celebrate the amazing, life-affirming gift of motherhood. Yet,...

Sacramento, CA (LifeNews.com) -- Undaunted by their repeated failure to get the California legislature to approve a bill legalizing assisted suicide, the sponsors of the bill are moving forward with a new measure that promotes euthanasia in limited circumstances. Pro-life groups are asking for phone calls to defeat the bill. Last Tuesday, on a straight party line vote, the Assembly Judiciary Committee sent AB 2747 to the Assembly floor.Assemblymembers Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine, the authors of the pro-assisted suicide bill, are behind the bill.Brian Johnston, the head of the California Pro-Life Council and the author of a seminal...

On April 7 an article appeared on the Opinion page, "Terri Schiavo's lifesaving legacy" by Nat Hentoff. When Terri's story first appeared in the paper and on the news, I considered responding to the decisions that were made regarding her care and her future. I feel that God gave us life and only he has the right to take it away and we are charged with caring for one another until that time. In 1984 I was told to put my son in a nursing home because "he will never get better." Had we followed that advice we may have...

Grand Theft Auto IV hit the stores last week like a tsunami, and is expected to become one of the biggest sellers in video game history. Commentators agree that the game, with its sophisticated graphics, sets a new standard for realistic violence and sex. News reports and game-related websites give the flavor of what avid gamers are getting for their 60 bucks. GTA IV opens with an S&M sex scene. Players can gun down ordinary citizens, beat up prostitutes, murder cops and enjoy lap dances from strippers. This mayhem is accompanied by what the Associated Press called a "nearly constant...

A panel discussion on one of society's most controversial issues -- abortion -- took place Thursday at Princeton University. Seven panelists -- including Princeton's own professors Peter Singer, Don Marquis, Elizabeth Harman and Robert George -- offered wide-ranging views on the topic "Is It Wrong To End Early Human Life?" Still, as panelist Jeff McMahan of Rutgers University pointed out, the debate over whether it is wrong to end early human rights could be simplified dramatically. "I've only heard two answers to the question thus far," McMahan said midway through the discussion. "Yes, and no." McMahan presented his own "threshold...

OTTAWA, May 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Thousands of students and adults are gearing up for the much anticipated March for Life 2008, set to rock the national capital next Thursday, May 8.  Meanwhile, March for Life activities have already begun around the nation.  In Regina Saskatchewan the pro-life March is underway today and the March in Edmonton and Winnipeg are set for Sunday. African-Americans have brought a new vitality to the pro-life movement in the United States as they have seen the fight for the right to life as the greatest human rights struggle of the 21st century.  Alveda...

Contact: Loralei Coyle, 202-905-6852 cell, lcoyle@TheIRD.org; Radio Interviews: Jeff Walton, 202-413-5639 cell, jwalton@TheIRD.org; both with the Institute on Religion and Democracy FT. WORTH, Texas, May 3 /Christian Newswire/ -- The United Methodist General Conference, the Church's governing body that meets every 4 years, overwhelmingly adopted several petitions affirming the sanctity of life during its quadrennial meeting in Fort Worth. Conference delegates voted to: "Affirm and encourage the Church to assist the ministry of crisis pregnancy centers and pregnancy resource centers that compassionately help women find feasible alternatives to abortion." "Respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother...

To the Astonishment of Some Parents, Colleges Allow Coed Dorm Rooms Saturday , May 03, 2008 AP Erik Youngdahl and Michelle Garcia share a dorm room at Connecticut's Wesleyan University. But they say there's no funny business going on. Really. They mean it. They have set up their beds side-by-side like Lucy and Ricky in "I Love Lucy," and avert their eyes when one of them is changing clothes. "People are shocked to hear that it's happening and even that it's possible," said Youngdahl, a 20-year-old sophomore. But "once you actually live in it, it doesn't actually turn into a...