Congress and the Gosnell Case

The trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who is being prosecuted for killing babies and at least one woman at his Philadelphia clinic, has drawn attention to the shocking failure of the Pennsylvania government to protect the basic rights of some of its most vulnerable citizens. As the grand-jury report explains, state governments (beginning with the administration of “pro-choice” Republican governor Tom Ridge) made a deliberate decision not to monitor these clinics.

What has gone unnoticed and unmentioned in coverage of the trial are the federal government’s responsibilities. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution requires all states to afford the equal protection of the laws to “all persons.” The Supreme Court has ruled — wrongly, in our view — that unborn children in the early stages of pregnancy do not count as “persons” entitled to that protection. There is no debate, however, that infants have a right to the law’s protection.

Well, almost no debate: President Obama, as a state senator in Illinois, argued against protecting those infants who had not reached the stage of “viability.” He claimed that such protection was incompatible with the Court’s abortion rulings. The Court itself has never said so. Instead it has ruled that as soon as a child is even partially out of the womb it may be protected. It has never even suggested that infants fully outside the womb are anything other than persons whom states are constitutionally obligated to protect.

Read more at the National Review.

Sperm cells created from Female Embryo

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

7:08AM GMT 31 Jan 2008

Sperm cells have been created from a female human embryo in a remarkable breakthrough that suggests it may be possible for lesbian couples to have their own biological children.

British scientists who had already coaxed male bone marrow cells to develop into primitive sperm cells have now repeated the feat with female embryonic stem cells.

The University of Newcastle team that has achieved the feat is now applying for permission to turn the bone marrow of a woman into sperm which, if successful, would make the method more practical than with embryonic cells.

It raises the possibility of lesbian couples one day having children who share both their genes as sperm created from the bone marrow of one woman could be used to fertilise an egg from her partner.

Men and women differ because of what are called sex chromosomes. Both have an X chromosome. But only men possess a Y chromosome that carries several genes thought to be essential to make sperm, so there has been scepticism that female stem cells could ever be used to make sperm.

Read more at the Telegraph.

Gosnell, Law, and Modest First Steps

The Gosnell case shows us that a society’s laws teach, and if they teach a lesson of injustice they will corrupt its people over time. Indeed, contemporary abortion jurisprudence undermines the very notion of natural rights and constitutional government.

Imagine a society, all of whose laws were just, and in which no law essential to the protection of the natural rights of its citizens was absent or deficient. In this society the law is also fairly and efficiently administered.

Then imagine the very opposite sort of society, one whose laws systematically favor some over others, allow unjust discrimination, even to the point of unjust killing, rape, or enslavement of some disenfranchised class of persons, and in which even good laws are unfairly or only occasionally enforced.

And imagine both societies not just at one time, but as they exist over several generations, as children are born and raised under such legal regimes, coming to accept and internalize the demands made or not made, the values recognized or not recognized, by the legal fabric of their society.

Such thought experiments make clear that the law does not simply create a stable pattern of behavior—just or unjust—over time, although it does do that. Rather, the law also creates a culture, and it does this precisely insofar as it instructs citizens about the moral code that will govern them and therefore constitute its cultural outlook and framework. The law, that is to say, teaches.

A legal regime that permits the killing of innocent human life, then, does morethan simply permit an injustice against some class of persons: As we have seen in the case of Kermit Gosnell, now awaiting a verdict in Philadelphia on multiple charges of murder and illegal abortion, the law teaches the legitimacy of this injustice, and thus erodes its citizens’ understanding of the nature of justice.

In the Gosnell case, of course, the primary “lesson learned” concerns the denial of the moral claims that all human beings are equal, and are not to be treated as things. Thus, the wrongness of the law is not simply a matter of its practical consequences; a permissive abortion law that—somehow—resulted in fewer abortions would still express precisely the wrong lesson to a nation’s citizens. And a citizenry whose culture is founded on a radical misunderstanding of justice is, to that extent, a weakened, and even, for reasons that I will explore shortly, an unfree people.

Read more at Public Discourse.

A Texas Mother Remembers How Doctors Struggled to Save Her Premature Twin Daughters

With the media full of the horror of Kermit Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion mill, we might forget how hard parents fight to make sure that their children survive. This is one mother’s story.

My story begins in mid-December 2001. I was newly married, healthy, excited and shocked to be carrying twins! All had been going along in the pregnancy just fine until one Saturday morning.

I noticed something was not quite right so I called my doctor, hoping he would say, "Don't worry. Everything will be just fine.” I had just been at his office the day before for a routine check-up. He told me that from this point forward, even though I was only 26 weeks along in my pregnancy, to call if I sensed anything out of the ordinary. That’s called precaution, not paranoia, he told me.

When I described what I felt and saw, he told me to hang up the phone and immediately go to the hospital. He would meet me there.

At this point my husband Jason and I were still not concerned, but we obediently went to the hospital, naively thinking that I would just be placed under some monitoring and that we could carry on with our Christmas shopping.

The nurses immediately checked me and found that I was in labor! I was already dilated to seven centimetres! The contractions had been so small that I did not even feel them. They tried to stop the labor process by elevating my feet and so on. Nothing worked. The twins were on their way.

Fifteen minutes after we arrived, the doctor came. I was now dilated to ten centimetres. At this point, he whispered in my ear, "If you are a woman of faith, pray! You are having these babies right now." I started to cry. My husband was in shock.

Read more at Mercator.Net.

The Media’s “Sea of Fire”

Conservative economic historian and media star Niall Ferguson (pictured above) touched a raw nerve this week with the gay lobby. He was addressing a gabfest of millionaire investors in California when he made an unscripted remark. It ransomething like this:

“Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of ‘poetry’ rather than procreated.”

This is about 40 words.

The response was as immediate and impassioned as North Korea’s threats to turn its southern neighbour into “a sea of flames”.

The media artillery barrage moved in stages from simple outrage at the implication that gays were indifferent to future generations, to repudiations of Ferguson’s immediate and forthright apology, to sneers at his economic competence (the tail end of his “awesome arc of insanity”, according to Paul Krugman in the New York Times).

It culminated in the full Monty, a 7,800 word review by a professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City of Ferguson’s degeneracy, his dishonesty, his economic incompetence, his political conservatism, his documented homophobia dating back to 1995, and so much, much more.

Read more at Mercator.net.

Feminazis and the War on Women: Why They’re Wrong

May 2 by Lindsey Kolb

Throughout my life I’ve been an extremely motivated and driven young individual, but not because of my gender. In the past year that I’ve been in college, I’ve been contacted to join certain groups that promote “feminism” and “freedom from the unjust men.” Students set up tables in the student union of my university and beg people to come hear their two cents about why women need to have their rights respected. One day, I decided to take a walk over to one of the tables to see what one of the organizations that were trying to promote women to support a Pro-Choice position on abortion. As they started talking to me they immediately asked my political affiliation and whether or not I was Pro-Life or Pro-Choice. I simply told them that I was a Conservative Republican and that I am 100% Pro-Life. Now, the boy and the girl sitting at the table immediately stood up and started screaming at me. Yes, in the middle of the student union with hundreds of other students around. They wagged their finger in my face and told me that because I was a Conservative and because I was Pro-Life, that I immediately was against women’s rights. The boy even told me that I wasn’t doing my duty as a woman because I was for women not being able to do with their bodies what they want to.

I sort-of just stood there for a while and let them have their 30 seconds of anger. Then I simply told them that it was my right as a free and independent American that I could choose whether I advocated to be Pro-Life.  Then they continued to argue with me illogically saying that because I’m a woman I HAVE TO advocate for more women’s rights. Personally, I’m tired of the women’s rights debate. I was tired of it before I talked to these radicals and I’m still tired of it now. Why? Because there shouldn’t even be a debate about “women’s rights,” or a “war on women,” or even why “more women should run for public office.”

These debates need to let up because all they are doing is making women seem even more inferior than they felt to begin with. Now, I don’t identify with the feminist movement, nor the radical feminists that I like to call “feminazis” that are extremely adamant about promoting feminism 24/7. With my Christian beliefs I believe that God ordained the man to be the head of the house with women right beside him. There are obviously different associations with each of the genders—men usually being the more dominant, athletic, and strong natured—women being the more nurturing and motherly nature. However, men and women don’t always have to hold to their typical “gender roles” as society seems to make them adhere to.

Read more at College Conservative.

Cher’s mom changed mind about aborting famous daughter while sitting in clinic

May 8, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – This past weekend during an appearance on a Lifetime show called Dear Mom, Love Cher, the famous singer’s mother confessed that she came within minutes of aborting her now-famous daughter.

Georgia Holt was 20 and recently separated from her husband when she found herself pregnant with Cher. She had moved back in with her own mother, who, when she found out that Georgia was expecting, gave her daughter an ultimatum: reunite with her husband or get an abortion.

Holt at first opted for the abortion, to the point that she even went to the clinic for the scheduled abortion.

"I can remember the chairs were chrome [in the clinic], and I was sweating,” she recounted. “The sweat was just coming off of me on this chrome and when the door opened and it was my turn, I said, 'Mother, I can't do it.' So, that's how she's here." 

Read more at Life Site News.

Pro-choice reporter covering Gosnell trial changes mind on abortion

May 8, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A pro-choice reporter who has been present in the courtroom listening to testimony in the Gosnell trial has changed his mind on abortion, according to one of his fellow reporters.

“That's the power of the Gosnell trial,” reporter JD Mullane told former Gov. Mike Huckabee during a recent appearance on the Huckabee Show.

Mullane, a pro-life columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times, has been present in the courtroom from the very beginning of the Gosnell trial. His regularly-updated Twitter account has become the go-to place for breaking updates on the case.

“There is one journalist sitting in that courtroom who writes for a local publication who has told me that he is very liberal, very pro-choice,” Mullane told Huckabee, “but after sitting through the testimony in the Gosnell trial, he's reconsidered. He's changed his mind.”

Testimony in the case has featured former employees of Gosnell describing how “hundreds” of babies, many of them past viability, were born alive in the clinic only to have their spinal cords snipped by Gosnell or one of his assistants. Employees described babies moving, breathing, screaming, and even "swimming" in a toilet after being born alive.

“For 40 years abortion in this country has been waged in the court of public opinion. This is a court of law. And the testimony that comes out of there is under oath,” said Mullane. “None of the evidence is doctored. It's for real. It's a capital case. And the testimony of one witness is far heavier than all the pro-choice editorials and op-eds that have ever appeared in, say, the New York Times.”

Pro-life activists have charged the mainstream media with ignoring the Gosnell trial over fears that publicity will hurt the cause of legal abortion. Mullane suggested that their fears are well-founded. 

Read more at Life Site News.

Redefining Marriage: A Battle Hundreds of Years in the Making

The attainment of the truth about marriage was not easy to come by. To give one example, various theories of “primitive promiscuity” have enlivened academic debates now for over 100 years. A bit further in time we are met with some of the fundamental challenges to a developed understanding of marriage both in biblical and classical sources: polygamy, fornication, divorce, adultery, contraception, homosexual activity, inadequate theories of consent. All of these have characterized humanity from the start, and all did their part in slowing the correct discernment of what marriage actually is.

That did not stop the peoples of the pre-modern world from making an effort. Through the progressive revelation of the Old Testament we see unequivocal condemnations of a series of threats to the marital union, as well as a progressive development away from polygamy to monogamy. It went further than that bare evolution, though. That polygamous history was replaced with an elevated and exalted idea of unique spousal love, one that gradually became manifested in God’s covenant relationship with his people, and is explored in such stunning texts as Hosea and the Song of Songs.

We see similar progress in the societies of the ancient world. Ritualized prostitution began to be marginalized, while homosexual and pederastic activity was relegated to recreation in Greek society, and altogether to the margins of the Roman Republic. Aristotle recognized fruitful monogamous unions as the source of all society and civilization.

Read more at Truth and Charity.

Department of Education to Eliminate Terms ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ for ‘Gender Inclusive Language’

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has announced it will replace “gender specific terms like ‘mother’ and father’” in the 2014-2015 federal student aid form with neutral language.

The terms "mother" and "father" will no longer be used on the Federal Application for Student Aid.

The new language, “parent one” and “parent two,” is aimed at accommodating students who have grown up in gay households and have either two mothers or two fathers, according to a statement released by the DOE late last month.

“All students should be able to apply for federal student aid within a system that incorporates their unique family dynamics,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in the press release.

The new language will “provide an inclusive form that reflects the diversity of American families,” he added.  

Read more at Campus Reform.

Review: What is Marriage? by Robert P. George, Sherif Girgis, and Ryan T. Anderson

With the Supreme Court set to hear arguments against the Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA), the issue of “same-sex marriage” has grown in its relevance. Leading Republican
figures are calling for a shift in the party’s line on the issue, with former Utah governor Jon
Huntsman writing recently in the American Conservative, “the marketplace of ideas will render
us irrelevant, and soon, if we are not honest about our time and place in history.” Governor
Huntsman may have a point. In the last fifteen years, support for the legal recognition of “same-
sex marriage” has gone from roughly a quarter of Americans after the passing of DOMA, to
roughly half of all Americans today. Young conservatives, in particular, increasingly differ from
their older ideological comrades on the issue of “same-sex marriage.” The issue has reached a
fever pitch, and the next few years will likely provide a decisive moment, whether in its
affirmation or its rejection.
Expanding on their 2010 article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public
Policy, Robert P.George, Sherif Girgis, and Ryan T. Anderson attempt to give a precise
definition of marriage. Separating the views about the definition of marriage into two categories,
conjugal and revisionist, the authors critique the revisionist definition, claiming that it only
defines marriage in terms of its emotional bond. This poses problems, as friendship and
marriage so defined are distinguishable only in the degree of the relationship, and not by their
essential natures. The traditional and more accurate definition, the authors write, is the conjugal
view.
“Marriage is of its essence, a comprehensive union: a union of will (by consent)
and body (by sexual union; inherently ordered to procreation and thus the broad
sharing of family life; and calling for permanent and exclusive commitment,
whatever the spouses’ preferences.”
Defined this way, marriage brings value to society, by helping to produce “healthy, upright, and
productive citizens.” Since laws contribute to our social and cultural norms, the authors argue,
the legal recognition of traditional marriage strengthens the institution by making it costlier for
individuals to break these norms. They write, “Marriage is not just about private problems and
rewards, for which private solutions are enough. At stake are rights, and costs and benefits
(externalities) for all society.”

Read more at Princeton Tory.

Cleveland Abduction Victims’ Lives Changed Forever

Over the last couple of days, the news has been dominated by the story of thethree women abducted in Cleveland between 2002 and 2004. And what a story! While their discovery is definitely a cause for celebration, I can’t help but think about how it would have been for their families.

The grief of having a missing person in your family is hard to imagine. There wouldn’t be any closure, not knowing whether your loved one was dead or alive. It would feel so bizarre to go on with everyday activities after such an event!

According to reports, Amanda Berry was abducted on the way to her own 17th birthday party. Gina DeJesus was just on her way home from school, and Michelle Knight was last seen at her cousin’s house. Such normal activities, that ended up having such a huge unforeseen cost.

I can’t even try to comprehend what their families went through. Berry’s mother died in the years afterwards, from heart failure. There is the most heart-wrenching photo in news reports of DeJesus’ father holding a massive photo print of her after she went missing. It’s impossible that life could ever be the same.

As for the women, that’s up to 11 years of their lives gone, in which it seems that they were treated pretty badly. Their education was brought to a standstill, and it appears that two of the women even bore children during that time – what a situation to bring a child into! But at the same time, those kids would have given so much comfort and a degree of happiness to the women’s lives.

Read more at Mercator.net.

There’s Courage, and then there’s Courage

May 8, 2013 (Breakpoint.org) - Unless you’ve been completely unplugged recently, you likely saw the flood of news stories concerning Jason Collins, the NBA player who recently announced his homosexuality. Collins was called “brave” and “courageous” for the step he took, as the first active male player in a major sport to come out as homosexual.

Now, I’m not interested in questioning Collins’s courage. It’s likely that this announcement wasn’t easy for him. I do think it’s worth noting, however, how many pundits and other public figures were tripping over each other to shower him with encouragement, support, and praise. When you get a call from the President of the United States to congratulate you on the step you’ve just taken, it’s a safe guess you really didn’t have much to fear in taking it.

Chris Broussard

But what about the other sports figure who said something bold and controversial? That would be Chris Broussard, the ESPN analyst who was asked to comment on Collins announcement that he was not only gay but a Christian who focused on the “tolerant” words of Jesus. Broussard called homosexuality a sin, and then added, “If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever that may be,” including heterosexual sex outside of marriage, you are “walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ.”

Broussard went on to say that he knew many in his field would disagree with him, but that he hoped they could discuss the subject like “mature adults.”

Well, no such luck. Broussard’s boldness didn’t receive the same response as Collins. Broussard has been called a “bigot,” “intolerant,” “homophobic,” “irrelevant,” and even worse.

Former basketball player Kenny Smith claimed that as a black man, Broussard should be more dedicated to “inclusion.” (Smith and Collins are both black as well.) The hashtag #FireChrisBroussard quickly became popular on Twitter. ESPN hurried to assure everyone that it was “fully committed to diversity.”

Read more at Life Site News.

The Impossibility of Gay Marriage and the Threat of Biopolitical Control

In the first place, it [same-sex 'marriage'] would end public recognition of the importance of marriage as a union of sexual difference. But the joining together and harmonisation of the asymmetrical perspectives of the two sexes are crucial both to kinship relations over time and to social peace. Where the reality of sexual difference is denied, then it gets reinvented in perverse ways - just as the over-sexualisation of women and the confinement of men to a marginalised machismo.

Secondly, it would end the public legal recognition of a social reality defined in terms of the natural link between sex and procreation. In direct consequence, the natural children of heterosexual couples would then be only legally their children if the state decided that they might be legally "adopted" by them.

And this, I argue, reveals what is really at issue here. There was no demand for "gay marriage" and this has nothing to do with gay rights. Instead, it is a strategic move in the modern state's drive to assume direct control over the reproduction of the population, bypassing our interpersonal encounters. This is not about natural justice, but the desire on the part of biopolitical tyranny to destroy marriage and the family as the most fundamental mediating social institution.

Heterosexual exchange and reproduction has always been the very "grammar" of social relating as such. The abandonment of this grammar would thus imply a society no longer primarily constituted by extended kinship, but rather by state control and merely monetary exchange and reproduction.

Read more at ABC.net

Even Candy Land Isn't Safe From Sexy

Candy Land isn't the only classic that has, without our notice, gotten a hot makeover. (And I'm not the only one who finds this evolution alarming.) The Disney Princesses have grown gradually more skinny and coy over time. And,check out Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite, Trolls (now called "Trollz"). Even Care Bears and My Little Pony have been put on a diet.

When our kids play with toys that we played with, we assume that they are the same as they were when we were younger. But they aren't. Not at all. Our girls (and our boys) are now bombarded from the get-go with images of women whose bodies range from unattainable to implausible (Disney Princesses, anyone?).

Toymakers say they are reflecting the changing taste of their demographic. Maybe, but then it's the change that's so disturbing. Consider a recent study on body image among elementary school-aged girls. Psychologists at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois used paper dolls to assess self-sexualization in 60 girls ages six to nine recruited largely from public schools. The girls were shown two dolls: One was dressed in tight, revealing "sexy" clothes and the other in a trendy but covered-up loose outfit. Both dolls, as you can see, were skinny and would be considered "pretty" by little girls.

Read more at the Atlantic.

Abercrombie & Fitch Refuses To Make Clothes For Large Women

Teen retailer Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't stock XL or XXL sizes in women's clothing because they don't want overweight women wearing their brand. 

They want the "cool kids," and they don't consider plus-sized women as being a part of that group. 

Abercrombie is sticking to its guns of conventional beauty, even as that standard becomes outdated. 

Contrast Abercrombie with H&M, another favorite with the teen set, who just subtly introduced a plus-sized model in its latest swimwear collection. 

H&M has a plus-sized line. American Eagle, Abercrombie's biggest competitor, offers up to size XXL for men and women. 

Abercrombie doesn't even list women's XL or XXL on its size chart. Its largest women's pants are a size 10, while H&M's standard line goes up to a size 16, and American Eagle offers up to 18. 

It's not surprising that Abercrombie excludes plus-sized women considering the attitude of CEO Mike Jeffries, said Robin Lewis, co-author of The New Rules of Retail and CEO of newsletter The Robin Report.

He doesn't want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people," Lewis told Business Insider. "He doesn't want his core customers to see people who aren't as hot as them wearing his clothing. People who wear his clothing should feel like they're one of the 'cool kids.'" 

The only reason Abercrombie offers XL and XXL men's sizes is probably to appeal to beefy football players and wrestlers, Lewis said. 

We asked the company why it doesn't offer larger sizes for women. A spokeswoman told us that Abercrombie wasn't available to provide a comment. 

In a 2006 interview with Salon, Jeffries himself said that his business was built around sex appeal. 

“It’s almost everything. That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that,” Jeffries said. 

Read more at Business Insider.

Gosnell Abortion Horrors are only Tip of the Iceberg

Photo: Kermit Gosnell/AP

WASHINGTON D.C., May 6, 2013 — America awaits the verdict in the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. What is still not making the news is that the Gosnell house of horrors is merely an unintended glimpse into the daily reality of the abortion industry.  

What Gosnell was doing is no different than what happens in Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro–Choice and other abortion clinics over 1.2 million times every year. It stems from the same mindset found in any abortuary in any building in any small town community or big city.

He named his house of horrors Women’s Medical Society. It sounded so nice and clean, almost alike a Victorian society of gentile women. That is all the Pennsylvania authorities and “pro-choicers” wanted to see.

In reality, Gosnell happily worked in foul conditions and was cavalier about death to the point of pathology. But, the abortions for which he is on trial, the murders that he committed, in the end are like any abortion—inflicting death on the most innocent for personal profit.

Gosnell just did not bother with fancy window dressing. In that sense, his operations were more honest than most: Abortion is a filthy business, a white-tiled shiny abortion chamber does not change that.

Death, deception and exploitation of women and young girls are standard operating procedure in a field that is in the business of killing preborn human beings for money. Why would abortionists not tell a girl to just flush an untimely birth down the toilet?

Read more at the Washington Times.

Top bioethicists defend killing babies after birth this week in leading medical journal

May 6, 2013 (PJSaunders) - In February 2012 two bioethicists provoked international outrage with an article advocating infanticide.

Writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME), Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva argued in ‘After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?’, that foetuses and newborns ‘do not have the same moral status as actual persons’.

They concluded that ‘after birth abortion (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled’.

The same journal (JME) has this week responded to the crisis with a special issue containing 31 commentaries from a range of ethicists, some of whom have argued for years that infanticide can be a moral action; others who believe that even suggesting it is a vile stain on academic integrity.

Editor Julian Savulescu introduces the issue with these words: 

‘Infanticide is an important issue and one worthy of scholarly attention because it touches on an area of concern that few societies have had the courage to tackle honestly and openly: euthanasia. We hope that the papers in this issue will stimulate ethical reflection on practices of euthanasia that are occurring and its proper justification and limits.’

Savulescu claims to be ‘strongly opposed to the legalisation of infanticide along the lines discussed by Giubilini and Minerva’ but says that they are not alone in advocating it.

Infanticide is already practised openly and legally in the Netherlands under the ‘Groningen Protocol’ which allows doctors to end the life of neonates at the request of their parents if the infant is experiencing ‘hopeless and unbearable suffering’.

In addition some of the world's most famous living philosophers have written about its merits and justification over the last 40 years, including Michael Tooley, Jonathan Glover, Peter Singer, Jeff McMahan and John Harris.

Four of these five have contributed to this issue of JME and the full text of their articles is currently available on line.

McMahan argues that the permissibility of infanticide in some circumstances is not only implied by certain theories, but by beliefs that are widely held and difficult to reject.

Michael Tooley's book is entitled "Abortion and infanticide."

Peter Singer wrote a book in 1985 with Helga Kuhse called "Should the baby live?"

Jonathan Glover's landmark "Causing death and saving lives" notes that ‘Dr Francis Crick (the Nobel Laureate who discovered DNA with Jim Watson in 1956) once proposed a two-day period for detecting abnormalities, after which infanticide would not be permissible’.

Many will be shocked by what these philosophers are saying, but Savulescu argues that the issue throws up a broad range of ethical questions fundamental to medical ethics.

What constitutes a person with rights? Is there a moral difference between killing a baby of the same gestation inside and outside the womb? Is there a moral difference between euthanasia and withdrawal of treatment and/or sedation with the explicit intention that the baby will die? In what circumstance is ‘letting die’ morally different from killing?

Read more at Life Site News.

Stand with the Scouts on Sunday

Join us for our simulcast, "Stand with Scouts Sunday," on Sunday, May 5, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. (ET).  You will learn what you can do to preserve Scouting as its founders envisioned it - as a resource for young men to develop in morally, mentally, and physically healthy ways, free to be boys and teens without the invasion of cultural controversies.

Speakers include:

• Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council
• John Stemberger, President, OnMyHonor.net
• Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas)
• Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.)
• Pastor Robert Hall, Calvary Chapel Rio Rancho

Read more at Stand with Scouts.

Why the Left hates families

How can I be ‘Right-wing’ when I am driven by the desire to make a better world, stand up for right over wrong and look after the most vulnerable in society?

Rather, I fight the Left on its very own purported moral high ground, which I once believed we all shared, but which I came to realise it had most cynically betrayed.

The defining issue for me — the one that launched me on a personal trajectory of confrontation with the Left and with my colleagues and friends — was the persistent undermining of the family as an institution.

By the late Eighties, it was glaringly obvious that families were suffering a chronic crisis of identity and self-confidence.

There were more and more divorces and single parents — along with mounting evidence that family disintegration and the subsequent creation of step-families or households with no father figure at all did incalculable damage to children.

‘Too many children lack a consistent mother or father figure,’ researchers told me.

Poverty, the Left’s habitual excuse, could not be the culprit since middle-class children were also not receiving the parental attention they required.

For me, the traditional family is sacred because it embodies the idea that there is something beyond the selfish individual.

Read more at Mail Online.

Memorial Service Will Give Names to Babies Kermit Gosnell Killed

A pro-life Catholic group will hold a memorial service tomorrow to give names to the babies killed via late-term abortions and infanticides at the Kermit Gosnell abortion clinic.

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, told LifeNews today about his plans. As he mentions, he has requested the actual bodies of the babies victimized in the abortion-infanticides at Gosnell and his staff’s hands.

“As we await the verdict in the trial of Kermit Gosnell, Priests for Life, which has requested from the Medical Examiner the bodies of the babies retrieved from Gosnell’s clinic so that a funeral and burial can be arranged, will take the step this week of giving names to those babies,” Pavone said.

Read more at Life Site News.

The Feminist, Pro-Father, and Pro-Child Case against No-Fault Divorce

How appropriate that Justice Alito brought up cellphones in the recent Supreme Court hearings on the marriage cases. Because these days it seems like it is easier to get out of a marriage than it is to get out of a cellphone contract.

It is no secret that marriage is in a state of severe crisis in America. And while academics, statisticians, and pundits may quarrel about the exact divorce rate or its causes, no one would deny that the widespread legalization of no-fault divorce beginning in the early 1970s saw an explosion of divorce in this country.

Yet as social conservatives, and even many liberals, wring their hands about marital and familial breakdown, few seem to question whether our experiment with treating marriage like a restaurant experience—order what you like and send it back if you change your mind—is worth reconsidering.

Instead, no-fault divorce has become an assumed feature of the landscape of unbridled American freedom. Whereas once freedom in this country meant the right to live a good life, the ability to be a moral agent in the human enterprise, the chance to chase happiness, it now increasingly appears to mean the right to do whatever you want whenever you feel like it, regardless of whom you destroy in the process.

No-fault divorce is destroying women, children, and men. More precisely, divorce destroys marriage, and the destruction of marriage harms every party involved. The legality of no-fault divorce just makes it infinitely easier to hurt people. There are no two ways about it. No one comes out of a divorce a happier and more whole person.

Particularly offensive no-fault divorces are those where one spouse is protesting. In these cases, one spouse is literally abandoning the other (and frequently the children as well), despite having made public vows and having signed a contract before civil and religious officials stating their lifelong commitment to his or her spouse.

In this country you can come home from work and tell your spouse the marriage is over and he or she can do nothing but cry, and fight for the best financial payout possible. Try doing that with Verizon. Or while under contract to buy a home. Or with your gym membership. You’ll get laughed at.

Eighty percent of divorces are unilateral. The legal sanctioning of human abandonment must end.

Read more at Public Discourse.

Truth, Responsibility, and Love

We live in trying times. Horror stories come out of Philadelphia about the abortionist Kermit Gosnell; terrorists strike across the globe, and here at home; unemployment plagues our nation; the Supreme Court may redefine marriage; religious institutions are being coerced into violating their consciences; our entitlement programs put us on the brink of bankruptcy.

Our world, our country, and yes, our churches and our families, are in crisis. And these communities desperately need what Regent University graduates have to offer.

You graduate into a society of widespread individualism and relativism, where man is the measure of all things. You will hear people speak of human rights, but rarely of human nature, or nature’s Author. You will hear people appeal to natural rights, but rarely to natural law, or the Natural Lawgiver.

You will hear some claim a right to do whatever they want, provided it doesn’t harm others, by which they mean others who can complain about it. (Notice where this leaves the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the unborn.) You will hear others claim a right to fulfill their desires without consequence, without judgment, but with subsidies. (Just think of the Life of Julia.)

Many believe that they have no responsibilities to others except those that they choose. But what if you have unchosen obligations? What if you have obligations to others by the sheer fact that you exist—and that you exist alongside neighbors, in the context of community?

What if, in addition to rights, we thought of the other R-word: Responsibilities? What if we spoke of duties and obligations?

Read more at Public Discourse.

Contraceptive Pills kill 20 Women a Year in France

Photo: E-magine art/Flickr

Contraceptive pills cause the deaths of 20 women and lead to around 2,500 cases of blood clots each year in France, according to a report released on Tuesday, which appears to confirm newer generation pills pose a greater risk of causing thrombosis.

According to the report by France’s Medicines Agency (ANSM), which looked at the years from 2000 to 2011, the premature deaths are related to pulmonary embolisms (blocked arteries).

The agency published its report on Tuesday in the light of warnings issued earlier this year on the dangers of taking 3^rd and 4^th generation pills.

The new report appears to confirm fears that newer generation of pills pose a greater risk of causing thrombosis. Of the 20 deaths each year, 14 are due to the these latest generations of contraceptives and 6 are linked to 1^st and 2^ndgeneration pills.

In a statement following the release of the report the ANSM said: "We remind people that there are a large variety of methods of contraception and health professionals are the best placed to inform and help women choose the method of contraception that best suits them."

France have asked the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to change prescription guidelines for so-called 3rd and 4thgeneration oral contraceptives after these drugs were found to carry a higher risk of blood clots compared to earlier versions.

Read more at the Local.

Marriage as Purposeful Institution

By: Ryan T. Anderson (Diary)  

When a baby is born, a mother always is nearby. The question is whether a father will be involved in the life of that child and, if so, for how long.

Marriage increases the odds that a man will be committed to both the children that he helps create and to the woman with whom he does so.

The recent oral arguments at the Supreme Court highlighted this and other key questions about redefining marriage as we’ve always understood it in America. That is, marriage is the union of a man and woman as husband and wife to provide any children of that union with a father and a mother.

A leading argument from liberals is that marriage so understood unjustly excludes same-sex relationships. However, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, during arguments on California’s Proposition 8, resisted any characterization that marriage was about “excluding a particular group.”

As Roberts explained: “When the institution of marriage developed historically, people didn’t get around and say let’s have this institution, but let’s keep out homosexuals. The institution developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, didn’t include homosexual couples.”

What are those purposes? In the book What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, my co-authors and I argue that marriage is based on the anthropological truth that men and women are different and complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the social reality that children need a mother and a father.

Indeed, there is no such thing as “parenting.” There is mothering, and there is fathering, and children do best with both. Although men and women are each capable of providing their children with a good upbringing, we typically see differences in the ways mothers and fathers interact with their children as well as in their functional roles. Dads are particularly important in the formation of sons and daughters.

David Popenoe, a sociologist at Rutgers University, put it this way:  “We should disavow the notion that ‘mommies can make good daddies,’ just as we should disavow the popular notion…that ‘daddies can make good mommies.’… The two sexes are different to the core, and each is necessary—culturally and biologically—for the optimal development of a human being.”

Read more at Red State.

The Big Same-sex Marriage Lie

They do want to change this basic institution

BY RYAN T. ANDERSON / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2013, 4:39 AM

JEWEL SAMAD

Same-sex marriage supporters shout slogans in front of the US Supreme Court on March 26, 2013 in Washington, DC. The US Supreme Court on Tuesday takes up the emotionally charged issue of gay marriage as it considers arguments that it should make history and extend equal rights to same-sex couples. Waving US and rainbow flags, hundreds of gay marriage supporters braved the cold to rally outside the court along with a smaller group of opponents, some pushing strollers. Some slept outside in hopes of witnessing the historic hearing. AFP PHOTO/Jewel Samad (Photo credit should read JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

Same-sex marriage will never be widely accepted in America for a simple reason: It’s based on a lie. But don’t take my word on this; leading LGBT scholars and activists say as much.

Take Masha Gessen, acclaimed author and former Russian director of Radio Liberty. “Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change,” Gessen said last year.

Last month, I was part of a debate at the NYU School of Law at which Judith Stacey, a sociology professor at the university, declared: “Children certainly do not need both a mother and a father.”

Stacey went on to suggest that three parents might be better than two. In fact, while asserting she is in favor of same-sex marriage because of “equal justice,” Stacey admitted she isn’t a fan of marriage. “Why should there be marriage at all?” she asked.

I pointed out that marriage exists, and the government takes an interest in marriage because the sexual union of a man and woman produces children — and children need both a mom and a dad.

I quoted President Obama making a closely related point:

“We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”

Stacey’s response? President Obama “was deeply misled.” Indeed, “Obama was dead wrong.”

But most Americans know that on this point, Obama is right. Children are better off with both a mother and a father. And marriage is the institution that unites a man and a woman as husband and wife to be father and mother to the children their union produces.

Obama is wrong, though, in his “evolved” thinking that we can redefine marriage to make fathers optional while still insisting that they are essential. This inherent contradiction empowers those who want to weaken the foundation of the nuclear family.

Read more at Daily News.