Free Republic

Family meetings have long been a practice for wealthy families like the Rockefellers (who hold them twice a year). But with more complex issues facing families that affect family members’ time, money, and wishes, it is a good practice for every family to undertake, regardless of their wealth. Spending a great deal of my time helping individuals and loved ones prepare for future challenges, as well as having personally been through the deaths of parents and caring for an aging father-in-law, I know firsthand how important it is to talk through these issues with your family. Here are three topics...

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 31 (C-Fam) Last November at a summit in Nairobi, the UN Population Fund announced that it would take $264 billion to reduce global maternal deaths and protect women and girls from violence. The agency just released a publication outlining the details of how the billions would be spent—and the fine print includes abortion. One of the enduring legacies of ICPD in 1994 is the compromise that was struck among nations: that the legal status of abortion was for national governments to determine, and that where legal, it should be “safe.” In the past quarter century, the same...

Reflections on the 47th anniversary of Roe V. Wade: What is “family planning?” Most of us think of the term as referring to logical, traditional advice: Don’t have sexual relations until marriage; try to time things so that you don’t have more kids, more quickly, then you can handle; agree on which denomination to raise your children in, early on, so you don’t have fights later… things like that. But since the 1960s and 1970s, Planned Parenthood’s definition of “family planning” has taken over. Planned Parenthood, in fact, basically owns the term. They market themselves as “a family planning organization…”...

By Garrett Fahy & Sara J. FahyOslo, Norway - They’re everywhere, they’re handling everything, and they’re loving it. Pushing the strollers. Carrying the kids on their shoulders. Taking the daughters to brunch. Shepherding a gaggle of excited little ones down a parade route on an unseasonably hot May 17th Norwegian Constitution Day. We’re talking about Oslo’s fathers. They’re on daddy daycare and fashionably making it look easy. But two obvious questions occur: where are the mothers? And, what is Norway doing to convince and prepare its fathers to run the kid show? On the first question, the mothers are around,...

In July 2018, Natural Womanhood CEO Gerard Migeon published an article called “When Men Resent Natural Family Planning,” which included an anecdote from a male friend who told him “I hate NFP.” I can totally identify with that perspective. At the end of the article discussing other possible factors influencing his friend’s challenging love life outside of NFP, Gerard opened up the floor to hear other men’s experiences with NFP in an anonymous online survey. Here is my experience. I agree 100% there is a huge need for us men to have a space to talk about difficulties with Natural...

June 5, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Using contraception is an “intrinsic evil” in all circumstances because it “cuts off one of the goals of marriage which is an openness to life,” Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann told LifeSiteNews. Any question on this issue lies on the level of moral culpability for those who do use it, he added. “Circumstances can affect the culpability, [but] it doesn't affect the rightness or wrongness of the act,” he said. Speaking exclusively with LifeSiteNews, the incoming chair for the U.S. Bishops’ pro-life committee said further that following the Church’s teaching on contraception is an attainable...

The Trump administration is set to announce a new regulation Friday afternoon that will prohibit abortion providers, as well as organizations that refer women to those providers, from accessing Title X family planning funds, the New York Times reports. The policy represents a return to a similar Reagan-era rule that required organizations that received federal family planning dollars to maintain a “physical separation” and “separate personnel” dividing their abortion centers from other services. Critics allege the Trump administration’s rule is actually more burdensome than its predecessor because it targets organizations that refer women seeking abortions to providers, as well as...

Only an hour ago we had been lamenting yet another incredibly bad road. Here in the Ugandan outback, it is as pointless to complain about the roads as it is to complain about politicians in America, but railing against the unchangeable can lighten the mood. But on the way out of a small village in the Bukedea region of Uganda, we didn’t feel the bumps. That was when our team’s defenses failed, and when the gravity of the assault on women—perpetrated by the champions of “women’s health” and “empowerment”—really hit home. It may have been just me, but my guess...

How A Baby Boom of Hispanic, Asian and Black Children Is Going To Reshape The Country And Make Whites A Minority By 2050 White birth rates are falling while immigrants and other minorities are having more children. The population surge comes from immigrants having children in the US - not directly from immigration. Minorities are also moving to the suburbs at faster rates, ensuring they are getting more diverse. The population of mixed race Americans will grow dramatically in the next 50 years - nearly tripling By MICHAEL ZENNIE 17 November A new baby boom of Hispanic, Asian and black...

Pro Familia, Germany’s leading family planning group, published articles years ago that appeared to advocate for pedophilia, university researchers say. The findings by researchers at Gottingen University were published Wednesday by the newspaper Tagesspiegel, The Local.de reported. An institute at the university has been involved since May in finding past statements by politicians and others that seem to make light of sexual relations between children and adults. …

“Where’s the Controversy in Saving Lives?” asks Melinda Gates, in a blog post defending her $560 million campaign to spread “family planning,” in all its forms, throughout the Third World. She invited visitors to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website to “watch this video and let me know what you think.” So I watched her video and this is what I think: Mrs. Gates has deliberately ignored the link between “family planning” and sexual promiscuity and abortion. She says the aim of her campaign is “simply giving a woman the opportunity to decide when to become a mother.” She...

The blind Chinese human-rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who escaped from house arrest on April 22 and may be under the protection of the U.S. Embassy, was initially detained for exposing the massive abuse of Chinese women under China’s one-child policy. His documentation of forced sterilizations and abortions landed him in jail for four years, followed by a year and a half of house arrest. His daring escape has now triggered renewed attacks on organizations engaged in helping Chinese women keep and feed their infants. Since April 28, the Family Planning Commission of Susong County in China’s Anhui province has been...

To President Barack Obama and many other Democrats, Europe continues to exercise something of a fatal attraction. The “European dream” embraced by these politicians — as well as by many pundits, academics and policy analysts — usually consists of an America governed by an expanded bureaucracy, connected by high-speed trains and following a tough green energy policy. One hopes that the current crisis gripping the E.U. will give even the most devoted Europhiles pause about the wisdom of such mimicry. Yet the deadliest European disease the U.S. must avoid is that of persistent demographic decline. The gravity of Europe’s demographic...

The United Nations recently published its two-yearly update of world population projections. These suggest that Nigeria could rise to 725 million people by 2100. Western media are shrilly calling for Nigeria to put a check on her population growth. No way, sorry. We Nigerians are rejoicing. Africans love children. First for financial security. In the past children helped in the farms and the more of them the better. Today, with little or no social security, children are needed to support their parents in old age. Their contributions constitute an informal pension scheme. And having more children means a better pension....

Montana lawmakers cut Planned Parenthood, family planning funding by Peter Smith Fri Mar 18 4:45 PM EST HELENA, Montana, March 18, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Lawmakers in the Montana House of Representatives have moved to cut family planning money entirely from the state budget, denying local Planned Parenthood clinics a sizable chunk of state and federal funds. The Missoulian reports that the GOP-run Montana House voted 53-47 last Friday to stop receiving $4.7 million per year in federal Title X family planning funds for the next two years. The cut would be added to another $1 million in state family-planning...

FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, September 2, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) -  Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro-Carambula, Interim President of Human Life International (HLI), yesterday denounced comments made recently by British Professor David Marsland in which Marsland called for certain "unfit" members of society to be forcibly sterilized. "Professor Marsland's comments only go to show that no evil is ever fully buried in the past," said Monsignor Barreiro. "Every time we think we've seen the last of the Sangerian calls to forcibly sterilize and otherwise do away with the disabled, we are aghast at their return." Monsignor Barreiro was referring to Margaret Sanger, founder of...

Tuesday August 17, 2010 Reports Reveal $3M in Federal Funds Misappropriated by New Jersey Family Planning, Planned Parenthood By Kathleen GilbertTRENTON, New Jersey, August 17, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Audits by the United States Inspector General have uncovered that family planning clinics, including Planned Parenthood, have improperly taken Medicaid reimbursement for family planning services.The audits were released by New Jersey Right to Life as pro-abortion state lawmakers lobby not only to restore $7.5 million in state family planning funds, but to acquire a federal waiver that would permanently secure the 90% Medicaid reimbursement rate for family planning clinics. Pro-life Governor...

The average number of Filipino women who die yearly due to childbirth and pregnancy complications has doubled in the last four years, but this doesn’t seem to alarm lawmakers who continue to oppose the reproductive health bill, according to health and women’s groups. A study by the international reproductive health research group Guttmacher Institute presented Tuesday showed that 3,500 pregnancy-related deaths were recorded in the Philippines in 2008.... Dr. Junice Melgar, executive director of women’s health organization Likhaan, said pregnancy-related deaths could be prevented if pregnant women, especially those who are from the poorest families and living in the rural...

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) received $50 million from the United States government this year, despite its involvement in China, where the government's population program, according to the U.S. State Department, includes a "coercive birth limitation policy" that in some cases results "in forced abortion or forced sterilization."

At United Nations headquarters this week, the Obama administration continued its push for ever increasing access to legal abortion around the world. The Obama team has introduced language that has thrown a high level negotiation into a roil. The US proposal calls for “universal access” to “sexual and reproductive health services including universal access to family planning.” The document under consideration will culminate in the 2009 Annual Ministerial Review, which convenes next week in Geneva.