Free Republic

BOSTON (AP) - A retired Massachusetts judge is defending her decision to order a mentally ill woman to have an abortion and be sterilized against her wishes. Christina Harms is also criticizing Boston University for withdrawing a job offer after her ruling sparked controversy and was overturned by the state Appeals Court. Harms, who retired last month, defended her ruling in a letter she sent Monday to other Massachusetts family court judges, saying she believed the schizophrenic woman would have chosen to have an abortion if she had been mentally competent. The letter was first reported by The Boston Globe....

All 11 active judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in St. Louis recently heard one of the most important abortion cases in the federal courts today. The case, Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, involves a South Dakota statute requiring informed consent before a woman undergoes an abortion. While many in the media have focused on the controversies surrounding President Obama’s health care law, this case actually is one of the most significant events on the life issue today. The hearing focused on what the courts have called “the suicide advisory”: the statute’s requirement that abortion providers...

You would get something that sounds like this… 7 Arguments for Infanticide 1. Abortion costs money, and many poor people do not have the money to spare on abortion, especially in developing countries. Infanticide, on the other hand, is absolutely free. The procedure requires no doctor’s consultation, no medication, and no follow up visit. It requires no special equipment and can be performed with any number of common household items, such as a kitchen knife or even a shoestring. 2. Criminalizing infanticide is dangerous for women. In societies where infanticide is illegal, young women who do not want their child,...

When Barack Obama was campaigning for president in 2008, he declared that marriage is between a man and a woman. For the most part, his position was treated as a nonissue. Now Rick Santorum is campaigning for president. He too says that marriage is between a man and a woman. What a different reaction he gets. There's no mystery why. Mr. Santorum is attacked because everyone understands that he means what he says. President Obama, by contrast, gets a pass because everyone understands—nudge nudge, wink wink—that he's not telling the truth. The press understands that this is just one of...

CHICAGO (AP) - A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics. It's an issue that raises ethical questions, and some experts urge caution in treating children with puberty-blocking drugs and hormones. An 8-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, "I a boy" and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the...

BOSTON (AP) -- A retired Massachusetts judge on Tuesday defended her decision to order a mentally ill woman to have an abortion and be sterilized against her wishes, and she blasted Boston University for rescinding a job offer after her ruling sparked controversy. Christina Harms said she believes the schizophrenic woman would have chosen to have an abortion if she had been mentally competent.

Denise Hunnell February 20, 2012 (HLIAmerica.org) - It is time to do some fact checking about President Obama’s “compromise” on attacking religious liberty. First of all, telling Catholics to just close their eyes and keep paying their insurance premiums that will ultimately cover morally objectionable services is not addressing respect for conscience and religious liberty. No matter how you spin it, Catholic institutions will be paying for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. The end result is no different than the original Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, since insurance companies are not going to just throw these services in for...

A family court judge who ruled that a pregnant woman with schizophrenia should undergo an abortion and be sterilized sharply defended her decision yesterday, while denouncing Boston University for withdrawing what she said was a job offer amid the controversy. In a rare personal defense of the reasoning behind a court ruling, Christina Harms, who retired from the bench last month after 23 years, said she concluded that the woman, a 31-year-old who suffered from delusions, would choose to terminate her pregnancy if she were mentally competent, chiefly so that she could resume antipsychotic medication that would have harmed the...

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Ron Paul (R.-Texas.), who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, told Candy Crowley on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday that social conservatism is "a losing position" for the Republican Party. "Do you--are you uncomfortable--certainly Rick Santorum is the one who has been in the forefront of some of this talk on social issues, but there have been others in the race," Crowley asked Paul. "Are you uncomfortable with this talk about social issues? Do you consider it a winning area for Republicans in November?" "No," said Paul. "I think it's a losing position. "I mean,...

The Slate piece that prompted this controversy is a few days old, but the conservative backlash to it is just picking up steam. Thursday, Supreme Court reporter Dahlia Lithwick (whose name I’ve always envied!) penned a preposterous attack on a proposed law in Virginia that would require women to have an ultrasound before they would be allowed to have an abortion. Ms. Lithwick is convinced – convinced – that an ultrasound amounts to rape. She writes: Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a...

Perhaps no flip flop in his career has caused Mitt Romney more grief among conservatives than his evolution on abortion, from a pro-choice gubernatorial candidate to a pro-life presidential contender. His struggle to convince activists of his conservative bona fides underscores the fact that toeing the pro-life line is a requirement for a Republican presidential candidate. It is a litmus test in the most political sense of the phrase. After decades of avoiding what was once a toxic issue, Democrats are on the verge of establishing a new litmus test, one that will demonstrate just how quickly and dramatically the...

Dear Professor Adams: I appreciated your article on abortion (whether you'd abort Hitler). I read on your page on Facebook that you've gotten hate mails after the article, I know you always get lambasted by the intolerant left. It means you're doing what's right. Anyway I wanted to send you this message, because I appreciate all your efforts. Almost 30 years ago, when I was 19 I was raped. I learned a month later that I was pregnant as a result. Everyone urged me to abort, but what struck me at the time was that that baby was as much...

It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage. Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data. Among mothers of...

CHICAGO—A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics. It's an issue that raises ethical questions, and some experts urge caution in treating children with puberty-blocking drugs and hormones. An 8-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, "I a boy" and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the child as a...

Guess who was a key player in pushing through the birth control mandate in ObamaCare? Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards. According to reports, not only did Obama listen to Richards, but took her word over the suggestions his top advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden, then Chief of Staff Bill Daley and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. According th ABC's Jake Tapper, there was an internal debate about the contraception mandate at the White House.  The debate within the White House on this issue was, sources say, heated, and President Obama was legitimately torn. Panetta wasn’t alone in...

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. – Teenagers in several counties can get condoms in the mail for free under a program launched this week and supported by state public health officials. The Condom Access Project allows youth between the ages of 12 and 19 to order a package of 10 condoms, lube and health brochures online at TeenSource.org, a website run by the nonprofit California Family Health Council. The package will be mailed to them in a nondescript yellow envelope. Supporters say the program -- aimed at reducing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among teens -- will benefit young people who cannot afford...

Some of the most controversial methods of obtaining organs have been endorsed by the British Medical Association in a report released this week. “Building on Progress: what next for organ donation policy in the UK?” laments “the fact that… people are still dying unnecessarily because of a lack of organs”. Among the measures it proposes are: Elective ventilation: keeping patients alive solely so they can become organ donors, Retrieving hearts from newborn disabled babies, Using body parts from high-risk donors including the elderly, people with cancer, drug users and people with high-risk sexual behaviour. making donation after cardiac death a...

As the recent battle for a proper understanding of religious liberty shows, our culture and many of our government leaders and organizations are becoming increasingly secularized and hostile to religion and religious practice.Yet another example of this is a recent rule change in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). According to this program, a person who has been engaged in Public Service employment for ten years, can have the remainder of their Student Loan form the government forgiven, presuming they have faithfully been paying it up till then.However, a recent rule change now excludes those who are involved in any...

LORAIN, Ohio — It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage. Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data....

Yesterday, I bemoaned the latest historical revisionism about the passage of the federal law to protect Terri Schiavo. I am so sick of the pretense that it was a Republican theocratic game–when in reality, it was a very bipartisan bill choreographed through passage by the leaders of both parties–that I decided to become an accurate history writer. From “Obama and Santorum Agreed on Terri Schiavo Law” in the Daily Caller: Newt Gingrich likes to write “alternate history” novels, such as “Gettysburg,” in which the South wins the epochal battle that in the real world saved the Union. Such fantasies are...

The two candidates in France’s presidential election are using euthanasia as one of the defining differences in the campaign. In a wide-ranging interview in Le Figaro, President Nicolas Sarkozy explained why he would not back it: “Legalized euthanasia might lead us to dangerous excesses and would be contrary to our understanding of the dignity of human beings. The Leonetti law is perfectly balanced, establishing a principle, that of respect for life. It leaves room for a dialogue between the patient, his family and his physician. This demonstrates understanding and humanity. We do not have to legislate everything all the time.”His...

Ricky Gervais has hit out at parents who 'put the fear of God' into their children for being gay or threaten them if they ever come out as being homosexual. The outspoken comedian will appear on CNN's Piers Morgan show tonight where he opens up about his atheist views as well as gay marriage and his weight loss. Known for speaking his mind and never shying away from controversy, the 50-year-old had some choice words for people who make homophobic comments to their children. (VIDEO AT LINK) Ricky is an admitted atheist and says although he respects others' beliefs, he...

Fox News segment. A Colorado student who refused to sing a song praising Allah quit the choir this week. This morning FOX and Friends reported that James Harper quit school in Grand Junction after receiving death threats. Harper received the death threats after the story broke this week. The school defended its decision to sing the song to Allah. Hat tip to Gateway Pundit

Rights: The House Minority Leader says self-insurance is no protection against the government's contraceptive mandate, while California's junior senator says people have a right to be insured but no right to practice their faith. Lost in the phony "compromise" on the Health and Human Services mandate on religious institutions being forced to pay for contraceptive services was the fact that many such institutions are self-insured. So making insurance companies pay instead is a distinction without a difference. Sometimes these religious institutions are their own insurance company. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who once complained that her fellow Catholics had this...

WASHINGTON, February 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - What do Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, “father of the sexual revolution” Alfred Kinsey, Lenin, and Hitler have in common? All these pioneers of what some call the culture of death rooted their beliefs and actions in Darwinism - a little-known fact that one conservative leader says shouldn’t be ignored. Hugh Owen of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation told an audience on Capitol Hill before the March for Life last month that the philosophical consequences of Darwinism has “totally destroyed many parts of our society.” Owen pointed to Dr. Josef Mengele,...

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y., Feb. 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Recently Facebook apologized for censoring a post by Dr. Rebecca Gomperts in which she gave instructions for a do-it-yourself chemical abortion. The popular social media site decided it was okay for the international abortion provider to teach women and girls how to do an abortion themselves at home using Misoprostol, even telling them to lie to a pharmacist to get the necessary drugs. But now Facebook has removed a graphic that shows the aftermath of an abortion: An eight-week fetus torn limb from limb and decapitated. This week, Bryan Kemper, Youth...

In the workplace lunchroom, dominated by a Formica table stocked with a condiment cradle that holds four kinds of hot sauce, Nikki furrows her brow as she fishes into her purse and retrieves her driver's license. A resident of Riverside, Nikki is filling out some paperwork for her new job. "There's a lot of stuff they want to know," she says. It's been a busy day for the former administrative assistant. "I flew in and saw the doctor before I even got here," she says. Dressed in "business casual," Nikki is an attractive 24-year-old African-American woman with a retro hairstyle...

CRANSTON, R.I. – A Rhode Island public school district committee on Thursday voted not to appeal a federal court decision ordering the removal of a prayer banner displayed in a high school in a lawsuit brought on behalf of a 16-year-old atheist. The Cranston School Committee voted 5-2 at a public hearing to discuss the suit involving Jessica Ahlquist, a junior at Cranston High School West. After the vote, she said, "I'm thrilled." The hearing lasted more than two hours. The banner, put up in 1963, has been covered since a federal judge last month ruled it was unconstitutional and...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is Foster Friess, and he was on Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, her show at one o'clock eastern yesterday afternoon. FRIESS: Back in my days they used Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly. MITCHELL: Excuse me, I'm just trying to catch my breath from that, Mr. Friess, frankly. RUSH: Uh, excuse me, trying to catch my breath from that, Mr. Frieze, frankly. Folks, it is I guess factual now to say that our culture is obsessed with sex, and the conventional wisdom now is everybody, particularly...

Give him points for cleverness. President Obama’s birth control “accommodation” was as politically successful as it was morally meaningless. It was nothing but an accounting trick that still forces Catholic (and other religious) institutions to provide medical insurance that guarantees free birth control, tubal ligation and morning-after abortifacients — all of which violate church doctrine on the sanctity of life. The trick is that these birth control/abortion services will supposedly be provided independently and free of charge by the religious institution’s insurance company. But this changes none of the moral calculus. Holy Cross Hospital, for example, is still required by...

In an article titled "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda" in the Birth Control Review, Margaret Sanger wrote the following:(Page 43) The eugenic and civilizational value of Birth Control is becoming apparent to the enlightened and the intelligent. In the limited space of the present paper, I have time only to touch upon some of the fundamental convictions that form the basis of our Birth Control propaganda, and which, as I think you must agree, indicate that the campaign for Birth Control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal with the final aims of...

When I was a teenager I was extremely lucky, landing in the middle of a cultural and social revolution. Driving into assembly on the back of a motorbike, having a fling with an unsuspecting English teacher and being desperate to get myself laid at 15 gave me immediate membership to the only club worth joining - the club that was 'the 60s'. Apart from occasional doses of teenage angst, I was what you might call very, ‘alive and kicking’; anything I could kick against, I did. And therein lays the problem - the one about being alive. Consider the figures...

Behind every powerful health care mandate under Obamacare is a power-hungry woman named Kathleen Sebelius. As the Health and Human Services Secretary, she has unprecedented power under Obamacare to control health care decisions, the approval of medical products and the national biomedical research agenda. The Secretary is not only the key player; she is the only one on the field. "The Secretary shall…" is mentioned more than 1000 times in the new health care law. Sebelius is using that power to promote a liberal agenda and Obama's re-election. She pushed the contraception edict. Her staff wrote the rules that decided...

Of all the hubbub rightly surrounding the healthcare mandate handed down from the imperial throne of Barack Obama, one aspect of this issue has not been sufficiently discussed: the disturbing fact that sex has now made its way into nearly all aspects of American life. Many have written of the clash between First Amendment rights and those who would seek to curb them, while others have debated the moral evils of abortion, but few have sought to plumb the cause of it all: our national descent into the sexual gutter. Without doubt or question, sex rules our airwaves, satellites and...

As The Chronicle reported today, Galileo High School celebrated Valentine’s Day with a “Love Fest” that featured same-sex marriage ceremonies and safer-sex games. In one exercise, students puts on goggles “that made their vision slightly blurry, simulating a drunken state.” A teacher told students “to put a condom on a wooden penis. Most of the students left air in the condom tip, which could lead to breakage, and that prompted an instructional rebuke from (teacher Raina) Meyers.”

The Story: After the Obama administration's announced that health insurance coverage would require the inclusion of contraception and abortifacients, several Christian leaders---including Chuck Colson, Richard Land, and Rick Warren---called on evangelicals to stand with Catholics in civil disobedience to this law.The Background: In a special edition of his weekly video segment, Chuck Colson said: We have come to the point---I say this very soberly---when if there isn't a dramatic change is circumstances, we as Christians may well be called upon to stand in civil disobedience against the actions of our own government. That would break my heart as a former...

SANTA ANA, California, February 15, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The young woman staggered out the back door of the abortion clinic. She barely managed to make her way to her car before she collapsed on the curb, sobbing uncontrollably. The year was 1980. Kathleen, in her early 20’s, had recently separated from her husband and had just aborted another man’s baby. In her time of crisis, Kathleen had turned for help to the only organizations she knew, Planned Parenthood and Family Planning Associates. The first gave her a pregnancy test, the other aborted her baby. As Kathleen doubled up from pain...

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, February 13, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – As parishioners gathered for Sunday Mass, a radical group of homosexual activists protested outside Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral, calling Francis Cardinal George the city’s “arch-bigot” for defending marriage. Carrying placards and spouting slogans on the sidewalk as worshipers entered the sanctuary, members of the Gay Liberation Network instructed Catholics to “give up hate for Lent.” David E. Smith, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute told LifeSiteNews.com the Gay Liberation Network is “a tiny group of radical activists who are trying to intimidate and name-call religious leaders like Cardinal George to try to...

On January 7th, at the Republican debate, George Stephanopoulos embarked on a sudden, unexpected, and bizarre series of questions about contraception and birth control. Most of the political pundits who watched this, were somewhat puzzled at the virtual harangue that Stephanopoulos went on, asking candidate after candidate to pin down their views -- even though birth control issues were decidedly not in the forefront. Then, President Obama and his brain trust picked a fight with the Catholic Church, demanding that they fund birth control and abortion services. When the Church rose up in anger, they compromised -- they only needed...

RICHMOND, Va. — A Republican supermajority has muscled two of the most restrictive anti-abortion bills in years through the Virginia House, despite bitter yet futile objections from Democrats, with one GOP delegate deriding most of the procedures as “matters of lifestyle convenience.” Del. Bob Marshall’s House Bill 1 would effectively outlaw all Virginia abortions by declaring that the rights of persons apply from the moment sperm and egg unite. It passed on a 66-32 vote. And on a 63-36 vote, the House passed a bill that requires women to have a “transvaginal ultrasound” before undergoing abortions.

In a move that supporters called a civil rights milestone, New Jersey's state Senate on Monday passed a bill to recognize same-sex marriages, marking the first time state lawmakers officially endorsed the idea -- despite the promise of a veto by Gov. Chris Christie. Monday's vote was 24-16 in favor of the bill, a major swing from January 2010, when the Senate rejected it 20-14. "It means the world isn't changing, it means the world has already changed," Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay rights group Garden State Equality said after the vote. "So wake up and smell the equality."...

RUSH: I want to move on to this Dick Morris business and the attack on the Catholic Church last week by Obama. I want to ask you, if you remember back in January there was a presidential debate, a Republican debate in Manchester. Do you remember -- 'cause this is a setup for what's coming -- do you remember, we were all perplexed here. George Stephanopoulos kept hounding Romney on contraception. It had not come up, nobody had said anything about it, and we were all confused, as was Romney, what the deal was. Well, it is Dick Morris' theorem...

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 13, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Within weeks, the top lawyers in a dozen states may file a federal lawsuit against the Obama administration’s controversial requirement that all insurance plans include access to abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization, the attorney general of Nebraska told LifeSiteNews. Jon Bruning told LifeSiteNews.com that 12 states had signed onto a scathing critique of the mandate and were preparing to take more serious action. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning On Friday, ten state attorneys general addressed a scathing letter to President Obama, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis....

The American bishops have, with alacrity, rejected President Obama's proposed "accommodation" on the contraception mandate in no uncertain terms. Their response came before the sun had set on the very day of his announcement. Noting that the "proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions," the Catholic hierarchy virtually guaranteed more political hemorrhaging for the White House. The bishops indicated that they were not consulted in advance of the President's announcement and had just received information about...

Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire February 13, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington State has signed into law a gay “marriage� bill that will force church-owned facilities to accommodate homosexual ceremonies. Gregoire, a lame-duck Democrat governor who proposed the bill earlier this year, celebrated the end of defining marriage as between a man and a woman as she signed the bill on Monday. “I’m proud our same-sex couples will no longer be treated as separate but equal,� she said. The bill makes Washington the sixth U.S. state to redefine marriage, in addition to the District of Columbia. Click...

President Barack Obama’s right hand man said over the weekend that the revised mandate the administration put into place requiring insurance companies to distribute birth control and abortion-causing drugs to women at no cost is here to stay.The Obama administration has revised its controversial mandate that had forced religious employers to pay for health insurance coverage that includes birth control and drugs like Plan B, the morning after pill, and ella that can cause abortions. The revised Obama mandate will make religious groups contract with insurers to offer birth control and the potentially abortion-causing drugs to women at no cost....

Twenty-five Notre Dame faculty members--led by the university’s top ethics expert, and including some of the school’s most eminent scholars--have signed a statement declaring that President Barack Obama’s latest version of his administration’s mandate that all health insurance plans in the United States must cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions, is “a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand." The statement—put out on the letterhead of the University of Notre Dame Law School--is also signed by leading scholars from other major American colleges and universities, including Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, Brigham Young, Yeshiva and...

Ladies and gentlemen, social issues are back — with a vengeance. Thanks in part to the hubbub over Obama’s plan, the national discourse has shifted sharply to abortion, contraception and religion — particularly Catholicism. Not surprisingly, Republican presidential candidates seized on it, calling the White House policy an assault on religion, liberty and everything else Americans should value. Former Gov. Mitt Romney coined a new phrase, warning of the risk of “abortive pills.” Democrats including Sen. John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden publicly criticized the plan. And in the Bay State, which has one of highest percentages of Catholics...

The owner of a soon-to-be-built strip club in the western suburb of Stone Park has this to say to a group of neighboring nuns who don’t like his plans: Mind your own business. “As a legal, tax-paying citizen of this community, we ask only to be judged fairly by what we have done and not through the recent religious fervor,” Bob Itzkow, the club’s owner, said in statement released Friday. “In reference to our non-tax-paying neighbors, we ask that you treat us as we have treated you, by not trying to unduly disturb us by imposing your religious beliefs on...

Shyness, bereavement and eccentric behavior could be classed as a mental illness under new guidelines, leaving millions of people at risk of being diagnosed as having a psychiatric disorder, experts fear. Under changes planned to the diagnosis handbook used by doctors in the US, common behavioral traits are likely to be listed as a mental illness, it was reported. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders could also include internet addiction and gambling as a medical problem. … "We need to be very careful before further broadening the boundaries of illness and disorder," Simon...