Free Republic

A contentious battle over a law that gives hospitals the power of life or death over patients A contentious battle is taking place at this courthouse in downtown Houston, Texas over a law that gives hospitals virtually unlimited power to decide the fate of patients. Oral arguments took place centering on the question whether the law, called the Texas Advance Directives Act — or TADA for short — violates patients' constitutional rights by depriving them of due process. Texas Right to Life has led the vanguard in opposing this law. Incredibly enough, their main opposition is none other than the Texas Catholic bishops, who argue the...

In the latest abortion-related legal battle to hit the state, a federal judge has temporarily blocked Kentucky officials from implementing their newly-enacted law banning abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Signed Friday by Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, the law requires abortionists to check for a fetal heartbeat before aborting. If a heartbeat is found, committing the abortion would be a Class D felony (punishable by up to five years in prison) except in cases of medical emergencies, which would also have to be documented. The same day Bevin signed the law, Judge David J. Hale of the Western...

Seattle Is Dying. It's a harsh title. Someone on social media even called it a "hopeless" title. I'll admit to you that I wrestled with the name for some time. Too dramatic, I wondered? Too dark? In the end I went with it because I believe it to be true. I believe that Seattle is dying. Rotting from within.

Georgia's “Heartbeat Bill” has cleared a senate panel to chants of “shame” and “no safe seats” from abortion supporters. Capitol police had to escort Republican legislators to a waiting elevator through the throng of protestors. We know where this is going. The “Heartbeat Bill” is HB 481, which considers any unborn human with a heart beat as a person, with the rights of a person, to be added to the population of the state as a person, and therefore entitled to the protection of the state. Its effect would be to make most abortions illegal, with the narrow exceptions of...

The Afternoon Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) By now, most of you have heard that, in her town hall event on the Collaboration News Network (CNN), Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren endorsed the idea of completely eliminating the Electoral College, because of course she did. “Every vote matters and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College,” Warren told the audience, “I believe we need a constitutional amendment that protects the right to vote for every American citizen and makes sure that vote gets...

(preceded by a bunch bull) Even though McCain died nearly seven months ago, Trump cannot put their acrimony — which caused the late Arizona senator to plan his funeral as an extended rebuke to the President, to rest. He explained to reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday why he is still taking shots at the Vietnam war hero, including in a recent Twitter rant. “I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be,” Trump said, citing his foe’s vote against a GOP effort to repeal Obamacare. “I think that’s disgraceful, plus there are other things,” he...

Pro-abortion activists faced an unexpected defeat in New Mexico Thursday as the state Senate voted down legislation that would have forced doctors and nurses to participate in abortions. New Mexico is home to one of the country’s most notorious late-term abortion facilities, Southwestern Women’s Options. It commits abortions through the third trimester of pregnancy. The late-term abortions its abortionists perform have caused numerous medical emergencies and even the death of a 23-year-old woman. Last month, the New Mexico House of Representatives voted 40-29 to pass House Bill 51, which would repeal multiple old, unenforced sections of the law that criminalized...

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ongoing tease of a presidential run didn’t exactly pull in the crowds during a campaign-esque event in the Granite State. Only 20 people showed up Sunday to hear the leader of America’s largest city hold a roundtable on mental health — including the 14 people on the panel and just six in the audience. There were also about six reporters on hand to make the room at the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center look a bit less empty.

White House officials, Republican members of Congress and evangelical leaders gathered Thursday for “Making Families Great Again,” a conference on family policy hosted by the Hungarian Embassy at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.Led by President Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz Party, Hungary has become a poster child for passing nationalist pro-family policies over the last several years.With nearly a decade-worth of data, Hungarian officials claimed Thursday that policies instituted over the last several decades that have incentivized marriage and childbirth have helped boost marriage and birth rates in Hungary at a time many countries struggle with those issues.“I...

Beto O'Rourke acknowledges 'privileges' afforded to him because of race and gender On an Iowa presidential campaign swing, O'Rourke praised the diversity of the large Democratic field. March 17, 2019, 9:41 AM EDT By Ben Kamisar WASHINGTON — Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke said that he’s been afforded “privileges” in his life because of his race and gender but insisted that his presidential bid can be used as a way to level the playing field for all Americans. “As a white man who has had privileges that others could not depend on, or take for granted, I've clearly had advantages over...

Watching the Jeep Super Bowl commercial several times, it suddenly became clear, President Trump is on his way to a 45 state landslide.You are way out over your skis, some will say. Get this guy some smelling salts!What about the nonstop investigations? What about Stormy Daniels and Robert Mueller? What about the angry Left and their apologists in the national media? What about Mr. Trump’s prickly, in your face persona? What about the feckless Congressional Republicans and the never Trumpers? What if the trade talks with the Communist Chinese come up empty? Watching the Jeep ad, it became crystal clear. None...

Charlotte Riley, who teaches history at the University of Southampton, penned an interesting op-ed in the New Statesmen last month where she literally suggested standing in the way of busy males on their morning commute to help resist perceived patriarchy in society. According to Riley, such tactics are necessary because males have naturally been raised to believe they have a “right to occupy space.” “The point is that men have been socialised, for their entire lives, to take up space. Men who would never express these thoughts out loud have nevertheless been brought up to believe that their right to...

“A public debate on the merits of a measure can reveal its flaws,” the Bismarck Tribune calmly and reasonably editorialized recently, adding, “and then we have to trust voters to do the right thing.”“Why are some legislators so afraid to allow North Dakota voters to decide what is in their constitution?” asked an earlier editorial in the Fargo Forum. Legislation to make citizen petitions far more difficult abounds in North Dakota, this being the winter of legislators’ discontent, because the mighty solons did not like an ethics measure that voters nevertheless passed in a close contest last fall. Personally, I would have...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand officially entered the ever-growing pool of Democratic presidential hopefuls Sunday, ending the two-month-long exploratory phase of her campaign saying she’s running for the White House to make “big, bold, brave choices.” “Our anthem asks a question, forcing every generation to make a choice,” Gillibrand says in a video released Sunday morning. “Will brave win? Let’s answer for ours." **SNIP** After Sunday’s video announcement, Gillibrand heads to Michigan on Monday for an MSNBC town hall with Chris Hayes; to Iowa on Tuesday and Wednesday; and to Nevada on Thursday. She’ll then cap off...

This is what the Democrats want for the nation to radically change and destroy it. Can you think of others? 1. Implementing Socialism 2. Slave reparations - the tax payer gets the bill 3. Post partum and late term abortions - tax payer forced to pay 4. Forced medicare for all 5. Open borders - no wall - 80% from Islamic nations, unlimited Latino migration... 6. Taking away all legally owned firearms in nationwide gun grab 7. Allowing 16 year olds to vote 8. Green New Deal - no air travel, no hamburgers... 9. Rising taxes 70 to 90 per...

Much of the narrative about aid and Africa is about the need for “reproductive health services”, especially “safe abortion” across the continent. However, Ugandan MPs were left shocked at what Marie Stopes International is doing to women across Africa in the name of reproductive rights. Members of the Uganda Pro-Life Parliamentary Caucus invited Obianuju Ekeocha, the founder and president of Culture of Life Africa to put on a screening of her groundbreaking documentary, Strings Attached Tracing foreign aid money Strings Attached, which had its UK premiere at an event in the House of Commons hosted by the Society for the...

The president of Ministers Taking a Stand – a national organization of Pastors and Christian leaders addressing moral and spiritual issues in American culture – is calling on the black community to sever its relationship with the “anti-Christian” Democrat Party. Bishop E.W. Jackson says that black Christians should not continue its relationship with a Democrat Party that is increasingly hostile to Christianity. “Years ago I released a video called EXODUS NOW, calling black Christians to come out of the Democrat Party,” Jackson says in the video. “When I did that video there was no gay marriage. Now we have it,...

Dear Fr. _______, I find the re-theming of Lent by Climate Crisis this year-- apparently a "wholesale" international push (Global Catholic Climate Movement, Catholic Climate Covenant, etc. etc.) with local "retail" distributors --- deeply misplaced. It's hard for me to know how to express this. Getting a reasonable and godly perspective is a struggle, but let me give you my best. I write as a spokes-person (ha) for my little circle of Church Ladies at this point. Several -- I won't name names -- have started this conversation with me, and what we all agree on is this: Nobody here...

LANSING, Michigan, March 13, 2019 — Republican state legislators in Michigan introduced bills to ban the dismemberment of unborn babies and restrict late-term abortion. House Bills 4320 and 4321 would amend Michigan’s ban on partial-birth abortions by including the dismemberment abortion procedure, also known as a dilation and evacuation abortion (D&E). The ban has stood since 2011. In a press release, Right to Life of Michigan president Barbara Listing said, “These bills are Michigan’s response to New York’s abortion law and other states seeking to explicitly allow abortions through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason.” HB 4321 was...

In the April print edition of The Atlantic, David Frum has an article about immigration. His basic take is simple: because progressives have gone crazy and stopped exercising responsible management of immigration, fascists (his word, not mine) have taken over.The solution, Frum suggests, is to cut immigration by even more than the Trump administration suggests. We can reasonably debate the correct amount of immigration. Americans are about evenly divided between people who want more, less, or about current levels of immigration, so I wonÂ’t try to solve that debate here. ItÂ’s far from clear how Frum thinks his argument...