Free Republic

In February 2004, U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, sent a fund-raising letter with the "alarming news" that "right-wing politicians" had passed a law stopping doctors from stabbing half-born babies in the neck with scissors, suctioning out their brains and crushing their skulls. Michelle called partial-birth abortion "a legitimate medical procedure," and wouldn't supporters please pay $150 to attend a luncheon for her husband, who would fight against "cynical ploy[s]" to stop it? But that's not why Obama's opponent Alan Keyes said Jesus Christ wouldn't vote for him. Obama recalled Keyes' statement in a recent USA Today opinion piece...

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...

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...

Veteran Democrat David Carlin knows what he’s going to do if Illinois Sen. Barack Obama becomes his party’s presidential nominee He’s going to vote for the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain. “Any Catholic who takes the abortion issue seriously will not vote for Obama,” said Carlin, who served as majority leader of the Rhode Island Senate in 1989-90. Pro-life leaders describe Obama — who is now the heavy favorite to defeat New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination — as the most pro-abortion presidential candidate in American history. “Based on his record he appears to...

As Israel enters its 61st year, Israelis may look back with pride. Yet, the realists among them must also look forward with foreboding. Israel is a modern democracy with the highest standard of living in the Middle East. In the high-tech industries of the future, she is in the first rank. From a nation of fewer than a million in 1948, Israel's population has grown to 7 million. In seven wars -- the 1948 War of Independence, the Sinai invasion of 1956, the Six-Day War of 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the Lebanon wars of 1982 and...

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...

Someone sent the link above to my attention and I've been trying to figure out what message this is conveying. No need to click the link, it says,"ABORshun." Aside from the ebonics, what's with this? Pro-life? Pro-choice? Who'd wear this?

Des Moines, IA (LifeNews.com) -- Iowa-based St. Ambrose University, a Catholic college, is under fire from pro-life advocates in the Midwestern state for honoring an abortion advocate. The school awarded what one pro-life group called "one of Iowa’s most notorious abortion activists" with an honorary degree. At the St. Ambrose graduation ceremony on Sunday, school officials handed an honorary degree to Margaret (“Maggie”) Tinsman, a former state senator in Iowa from 1989-2006. Tinsman received an “Honorary Doctor of Public Services” by the St. Ambrose Board of Directors. That came despite a strongly pro-abortion voting record, including opposing a measure that...

Four white students at Central York Middle School were charged with harrassing and using racial slurs against a black student on a school bus Friday. The 13 year-old boys were charged Wednesday with harrassment, ethnic intimidation and disorderly conduct by Springettsbury Township Police. One of the boys was also charged with terroristic threats and open lewdness, police said. The boy simulated an inappropriate gesture involving his genitals and made vulgar comments, Lt. Scott Laird said. The boys "verbally and physically harrassed and intimidated" the 13 year-old victim on the ride home, police said. Laird declined to discuss specifics because the...

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...

There is no political affiliation in history that has been, or is at present, as full of cowardice and fear as the left wing. Being leftist means never wanting to take any kind of responsibility whatsoever. A leftist, typically toting the label of "liberal", will not accept the basic facts of life, and cringes at life. Liberals don't want to pay for their own health care. They want government to do it. Liberals don't want competition to determine who gets a job or a fully funded college education. They want the government to do it. Liberals don't want businesses to...

Aberdeen, SD, May 14, 2008 / 01:08 am (CNA).- Presentation College in Aberdeen, South Dakota has withdrawn an invitation to a commencement speaker because of her views on legalized abortion.State Senator Nancy Turbak-Berry was scheduled to deliver the commencement address at the college on Saturday.  According to the Associated Press, she said she was told on Friday that she could not speak there because of her views on abortion.  She had accepted the invitation to speak in January.College officials reportedly said they had made an “administrative decision” to withdraw the invitation because her pro-abortion views were incompatible with Catholic...

Obama and his Kentucky cross TRIBUNE-REVIEW By Salena Zito Chris Brody, the senior national correspondent for Christian Broadcast Network (CBN), is reporting Sen. Barack Obama has a flier for next week’s primary contest in Kentucky that shows Obama standing with a substantial-sized cross to his left. Brody writes that Obama “is making a direct appeal to evangelicals with fliers that mention his conversion experience and they highlight a big old cross. Remember (Gov.) Mike Huckabee’s supposed subliminal cross in his Christmas campaign ad? Well, Obama campaign ditches

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...

St. Petersburg, FL -- Terri Schiavo's mother Mary Schindler has uncovered a note that Terri wrote back in 1984 when she married her husband Michael. Now remarried to someone with whom he had an affair before Terri's death, Michael won a court order to take her live despite pleas from her family. Terri's brother Bobby Schindler tells LifeNews.com about the note. Complete story at: http://www.LifeNews.com/bio2440.html

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...

"ORLANDO, Fla. -- A central Florida man has been sentenced to death for murdering his ex-girlfriend by setting her on fire. Orange County Circuit Judge Lisa Munyon followed a jury's recommendation when she sentenced 21-year-old Dane Abdool on Monday. The jury convicted Abdool of first-degree murder in December for the 2006 death of 17-year-old Amelia Sookdeo of Winter Garden."

No details yet but word is out that Hanoi Jane will be in Orlando Thursday for some Planned Parenthood Meeting. Time for a FReep. Watch this space for details. Ping to get word. Vēnī, Vīdī, FRīcī We came. We saw. We FReeped

Planned Parenthood, the U.S. abortion industry's biggest presence, is using Mother's Day to promote its conferences and raise funds, triggering a jaw-dropping reaction among those who battle its agenda. "You have to admire the utter chutzpah of the people at Planned Parenthood," said statement on the American Life League website, which has a specific STOPP program to reveal Planned Parenthood's activities. "You would think that of all the holidays of the year, this organization that kills the babies of more than 255,000 mothers a year, would find little to celebrate on Mother's Day. But you would be wrong," the group...

Here's an update from the folks at Pro-Life Corner about the odd behavior at the abortuary in Rockford, Illinos, specifically dealing with this anti-Christian display in one of the windows: Note that the button reads "Jesus says this clinic stays open." Interestingly, this display has some things in common with voodoo altars, (see the Pro-Life Corner article for full details) but Father Euteneuer of Human Life International says, “It's not voodoo nor mockery--it is blasphemy from a demonic industry.” Not included in the article is this pic they forwarded to us of the "Condom Monster" greeting pro-life protestors at 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...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — It's a happy Mother's Day for an Arkansas woman — she's pregnant with her 18th child. Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year's Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers. There are two sets of twins. "We've had three in January, three in December. Those two months are a busy time for us," she said, laughing. The Duggars' oldest child, Josh, is 20, and the youngest, Jennifer, is nine months old.

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...

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...

Pop culture asks, “What would Jesus do?” Regarding today's NAACP, I ask, “What would MLK do?” With catastrophic school dropout rates among blacks, the NAACP has chosen to defend black youths wearing their pants low with their underwear showing. The racist and America hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright will be the keynote speaker for the 2008 NAACP Detroit branch's 53rd annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner. The NAACP supports gay marriage. Despite the fact that Black women are three times more likely than white women to have an abortion and 1452 black children are aborted every day, the NAACP supports abortion....

Memo to Arch-Tame Wuerl: Yes, sir, it can be done! Kansas, May. 9, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has announced that Governor Kathleen Sebelius should not receive Communion because of her support for legal abortion. In a column appearing on May 9 in the archdiocesan newspaper, The Leaven, the archbishop said that Governor Sebelius has sent a "spiritually lethal message" by implying that she could remain a Catholic in good standing while supporting abortion on demand. The archbishop's column cited in particular the governor's veto of the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, which would have required abortionists...

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...

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...

Despite a 2004 order from the future Pope Benedict XVI barring pro-choice Catholic politicians from the Communion table, a quintet of elected officials flouted his wishes twice during his recent six-day visit here by partaking of the sacrament right before his eyes. The bishops whose job it is to enforce the pope's wishes have been all over the map in responding. While New York Cardinal Edward Egan publicly chastised former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani for taking Communion during an April 19 Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, the bishops of Washington, Boston and Norwalk, Conn., have not disciplined members...

Washington, DC -- A leading pro-life Catholic is feuding with supporters of Barack Obama who claim to be Catholic but join the candidate in violating the Church's teachings by strongly supporting abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Catholic League President Bill Donahue says true Catholics would oppose Obama. Donahue began the exchange last week by issuing a press release calling on Obama to dissolve his National Advisory Council because the members of the panel and pro-abortion.

'Might our religion be killing us?' That's what a Baptist minister was asking recently in an editorial in USA Today. Rev. Oliver "Buzz" Thomas writes: Be fruitful and multiply," says the book of Genesis, and Lord knows we have. To the tune of more than 300 million at home and more than 6 billion abroad. But as we go about the heavenly task of multiplying, a poignant question arises: Might our religion be killing us? Insert the deep dark foreboding music. We all remember the Aztecs. Some say their religion, with its penchant for violence and human sacrifice, played a...

LITTLE ROCK - It’s a happy Mother’s Day for an Arkansas woman — she’s pregnant with her 18th child. Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year’s Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers. There are two sets of twins. "We’ve had three in January, three in December. Those two months are a busy time for us," she said, laughing.

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.

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 University of Wisconsin Stevens Point student government leader is coming under fire for allegedly trashing a pro-life display on campus. Student senator Roderick King is said to have vandalized a display featuring crosses erected by the campus pro-life group to memorialize those babies killed in abortions. The UWSP pro-life group Pointers for Life put up the Cemetery of the Innocents display and spent the morning last Thursday repairing the damage someone caused in an apparent vandalizism. That's when they were trashed a second time. As students repaired the earlier damage, King led a group of angry students by walking...

Madison, WI -- A University of Wisconsin Stevens Point student government leader is coming under fire for allegedly trashing a pro-life display on campus. Student senator Roderick King is said to have vandalized a display featuring crosses erected by the campus pro-life group to memorialize those babies killed in abortions. Full story at: http://www.lifenews.com/state3207.html

On April 24, Kansas pro-life U.S. Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts issued a press release endorsing Steve Howe for Johnson County district attorney.... Phill Kline is currently the appointed district attorney and has been urged to reconsider his decision not to run to retain his seat in November. Why? Kline is the only DA in the country with a pending criminal case against a Planned Parenthood and is likely the only DA in the country with the intestinal fortitude to stick with such an investigation.... Brownback knows pro-lifers are encouraging Kline to stay. He knows because many influential pro-lifers...

I met John McCain for the first time on Wednesday at a luncheon here in the Lehigh Valley. To test his sense of humor, I wore a black baseball cap from West Point with gold letters: U.S.M.A. 1958. As I shook his hand, I said, ''John, we were the same class, but you went to the wrong academy!'' He laughed and said, ''Nice cap!'' We were that same 1958 class, he at Annapolis, and I at West Point. And, we are the same age, but all similarities end there. McCain is eminently qualified to be president for a host of...

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...