abortion

If Trump wanted to "solve" abortion, he'd want people like Mia Love around.

A look at a red-state senator’s difficult dance to the center.

Concluding her Senate floor speech in behalf of Judge Brett Kava­naugh—her vote for him was the decisive one—Republican Susan Collins expressed “her fervent hope” that he “will work to lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court so that we have fewer 5-4 decisions and so that public confidence in our…

Sorry, liberal activists

She was only off by hundreds of thousands.

Tony Evers also says the Democrats need pro-life voters in the party.

Jason Kessler, organizer of last year’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, has announced that he will be holding an anniversary rally in Washington, D.C. on August 12. In a recent video, Kessler expressed his intent for this year’s rally to be about white advocacy and white rights—but not…

With the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy and nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to take his place, liberal academics and commentators are panicked, so sure are they that a more conservative Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade. Believing as we do that Roe was a moral and constitutional…

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

One of the last laws in Europe banning abortion, Ireland’s eighth amendment, was decisively rejected by voters on May 25. The plebiscite’s result allows the amendment to be struck from the country’s constitution. Once that happens later this year, Irish women will no longer have to smuggle in…

Into the light—or back to the shadows?

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

On May 25, the people of Ireland are set to vote on repealing the eighth amendment of their constitution, which recognizes that children in the womb have a right to life. As you can imagine, this has sent a country long riven by passionate disputes over religion into a frenzied debate. Naturally,…

The executive action is based on a 1988 Reagan regulation, but can't eliminate most of Planned Parenthood's federal funding.

The organization that says it’s disinterested in its clients’ reproductive choices has almost no information on its website about adoption, for some reason.

I wasn’t going to write anything about Matt Schlapp this week but I think it’s never a good idea pass up the opportunity to use the word “oleaginous.”

I wasn’t going to write anything about Matt Schlapp this week but I think it’s never a good idea pass up the opportunity to use the word “oleaginous.”

I wish Ruth Marcus had come to the birthday party Wednesday night.

American liberals love the First Amendment’s “freedom of speech” clause. They remember their brave forerunners—muckraking journalists, civil rights activists, religious and political dissidents—and venerate the constitutional right that enabled their eventual vindication. Yet it’s striking how…

Congressman Dan Lipinski beat back a primary challenge Tuesday night from liberal activists who targeted the Illinois Democrat mainly because of his anti-abortion views and votes.

Liberals love the First Amendment’s “freedom of speech” clause. They rightly remember their forerunners—liberal journalists, civil rights activists, religious and political dissidents—and venerate the constitutional right that eventually vindicated these brave citizens. Yet it’s striking how often…

At oral arguments Tuesday for the case NIFLA v. Becerra, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court seemed skeptical about the constitutionality of a California law that requires pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to advertise for "free or low-cost" government-funded abortions.

"Forcing a pro-life group to advertise for abortion has to be unconstitutional.” That’s the beginning (emphasis added) of the opening brief in NIFLA v. Becerra, now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. Thirty strong amicus briefs have been filed—by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the…

A court in Ontario, Canada, has ruled that a patient’s desire to be euthanized trumps a doctor’s conscientious objection. Doctors there now face the cruel choice between complicity in what they consider a grievous wrong—killing a sick or disabled patient—and the very real prospect of legal or…

CALLERY, Pa.

Florida senator Marco Rubio was grilled about his views on gun control before a stadium-sized live audience on CNN on Wednesday night. Some of the questions and comments were tough and smart; others were viciously ad hominem and stupid. But Rubio stood there and articulated why he opposed the…

Facebook users marked an article published last month by Deep State Nation as potentially containing false information.

A bill to restrict abortion will come to the Senate floor for a procedural vote Monday night.

In the spring of 2017, the Democratic party kicked off a debate about whether pro-life Democratic candidates should be tolerated anywhere in the country. The controversy began in the middle of middle America: Bernie Sanders and Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez attended a “unity…

Two days after tweeting a link to an uplifting story in the New York Times about experimental prenatal surgery to treat a baby boy for spina bifida, Planned Parenthood of Maryland deleted the tweet. The article about the "small person who had surgery before he was even born" was a follow up on an…

Considering they were protesting what they call “the greatest human rights violation of our time,” the crowd that gathered on the National Mall Friday morning for the March for Life was oddly upbeat. Church and school groups who had traveled across the country to show their opposition to 45 years…

Today is the March for Life, the annual pro-life demonstration that takes place around the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. In a first, President Trump addressed the rally via satellite from the Rose Garden. (George W. Bush addressed the group over the phone.) It's worth considering Trump's…

The 45th annual March for Life in Washington arrives on the heels of one more Pew survey about declining faith—this latest indicating that only 4-in-10 Millennials think of Christmas as a religious holiday. All of which raises a new question for those gathering on the Mall in what P.J. O’Rourke has…

Senate Republicans announced Wednesday afternoon that they would not attach measures providing additional funding to Obamacare in a year-end spending bill to keep the government open.

As Republicans prepare to celebrate their tax reform victory, a potential disaster lurks right around the corner.

The other day my pals at the Federalist ran a piece by Tully Borland, an associate professor of philosophy at Ouachita Baptist University, titled “Why Alabamans Should Vote for Roy Moore.” Mind you, that’s not “Why an Alabaman Might Vote for Moore”—this was not an explainer, or a reported piece.…

On Monday Washington Post columnist Christine Emba wrote a piece headlined “Let's Rethink Sex.” It's a commendable essay in a lot of ways, but the headline is a bit misleading in the sense that it advocates rethinking a view of sexuality that much of the country never signed on to in the first…

Detroit

Detroit

The Substandard is LIVE. Are you a fan of our pop culture podcast, the Substandard? If so, you might be interested to know that they do a Facebook livestream of their podcast (in part) each week. Here is the latest.

Mark Herring, Virginia’s attorney general, wanted to run for governor this fall. But Terry McAuliffe, the current governor, thought otherwise. And his endorsement of lieutenant governor Ralph Northam for the Democratic nomination for governor sent a blunt message to Herring: forget it.

Mark Herring, Virginia’s attorney general, wanted to run for governor this fall. But Terry McAuliffe, the current governor, thought otherwise. And his endorsement of lieutenant governor Ralph Northam for the Democratic nomination for governor sent a blunt message to Herring: forget it.

On Tuesday morning, Patrick S. Tomlinson, an author of science fiction and fantasy novels and contributor to the New York Times, tweeted out a challenge to the “pro-life crowd,” a challenge that, to Tomlinson’s satisfaction, demonstrates that these people pay mere lip-service to the idea that life…

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 237 to 189 on Tuesday to ban most abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy, when infants are old enough to feel pain and survive if born prematurely. Only three Democrats supported the bill, while just two Republicans voted against it.

In a crisis pregnancy center in the heart of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, a counselor receives an online message. The sender says that she’s pregnant and scared and that she has no one to talk to. She has an appointment scheduled at an abortion clinic that very day. After a brief exchange with the…

Fred Barnes writes in the Wall Street Journal:

We now live in an era when news cycles are lucky to last a full 24 hours, so please take a moment to clear your mind as we travel back in time to two long years ago.

We now live in an era when news cycles are lucky to last a full 24 hours, so please take a moment to clear your mind as we travel back in time to two long years ago.

In The New York Times on Thursday, Lindy West has an op-ed on the recent announcement by Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee campaign chairman Ben Ray Luján that the group would not impose a litmus test for Democratic candidates requiring them to be pro-abortion. West is a fairly radical…

Some of the Senate's rules governing what legislation can be passed with a simple majority, rather than 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster, are vague and confusing. So it was widely expected that the Senate parliamentarian would say that some provisions in the GOP bill to partially repeal and…

George Delgado, M.D. is a family-practice physician in San Diego, California. His credentials seem quite respectable: He’s a 1988 graduate of the University of California-Davis’s medical school, and he has admitting privileges at Scripps Mercy Hospital, a well-regarded San Diego facility, and the…

Everyone who studied middle-school chemistry recognizes the prominent chart that hangs in classrooms and laboratories around the world: The Periodic Table of Elements contains the “ingredients” that make up the material universe and addresses the scientific question of what we are made of.

More than 60 Republicans and Democrats in Congress are supporting a bill—the Federal Accountability in Chemical Testing (FACT) Act (HR 816)—that would improve disclosure by federal agencies about hundreds of expensive, slow, and outdated animal tests. Which is good news. Because if taxpayers and…

Even in famously abortion-friendly California there is justice for abortion foes. On June 21, the San Francisco County Superior Court threw out 14 of the 15 felony counts that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra had brought against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, the anti-abortion…

David Edelstein is one of the better-known film critics in the country. He's been a critic for decades and is currently the chief film critic for New York magazine, as well as the film critic for NPR's Fresh Air and CBS's Sunday Morning. Like everyone else in his position, he recently wrote a…

The weirdest thing about Hulu's much-discussed serialization of Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale is the Handmaid's Tale cosplay industry.

Abortion is back: back in the news, back in the American political scene, back in the fights that rage through a party as it tries to understand itself. Last time we saw this, it was during Donald Trump's campaign for the Republican nomination, when three months in a row—February, March, and April…

Soon after President Trump issued his executive order on "Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty," which includes potential "conscience protections" for those with religious objections to certain health insurance mandates, Planned Parenthood issued a press release noting that some "faith…

Abortion is back: back in the news, back in the American political scene, back in the fights that rage through a party as it tries to understand itself. Last time we saw this, it was during Donald Trump's campaign for the Republican nomination, when three months in a row—February, March, and April…

Amid a tense Democratic debate over whether pro-lifers have any place inside the party, Nancy Pelosi delivered a blunt message to her fellow Democrats: Trump won because of the party's rigid stance on abortion and other social issues.

It was the teensy Planned Parenthood cactus plants that grabbed my attention. Washingtonian magazine, catering to an upmarket and overwhelmingly liberal D.C.-area readership, recently ran a fawning article about Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington’s six-month-old $20 million headquarters…

On March 28 California attorney general Xavier Becerra threw the book at anti-abortion activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. The penal code book, that is. Becerra's office charged the pair, famous for their undercover Planned Parenthood recordings, with 14 felony violations of California…

On March 28 California attorney general Xavier Becerra threw the book at anti-abortion activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. The penal code book, that is. Becerra’s office charged the pair, famous for their undercover Planned Parenthood recordings, with 14 felony violations of California…

The American Health Care Act lost another vote Wednesday night when Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, an ardent pro-lifer and fiscal moderate, announced his opposition to the bill. "The overriding concern I have is the Medicaid expansion being significantly altered," Smith told the Asbury Park Press.…

What's the best way to get your message to President Trump? Two groups on opposite sides of the abortion debate seem to agree: Target the TV shows he likes to watch and tweet about like Morning Joe and Fox & Friends.

Dozens of pro-life leaders sent a letter to Congress Thursday afternoon urging Republican senators and representatives to honor their commitment to prohibit taxpayer-funding of elective abortion coverage under any health-care bill to replace Obamacare.

House speaker Paul Ryan took note Friday that now is "the first time in a while" Congress and the White House have been like-minded on advancing pro-life causes.

Today, on the day of the annual March for Life, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has reintroduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. LifeNews reports:

An undercover video investigation from the pro-life activist group Live Action appears to show employees at multiple Planned Parenthood clinics turning away clients asking for prenatal care. Prenatal care is a benefit the organization touts as one of the many services they offer women beyond…

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which bars federal funds from going to overseas organizations that perform or promote abortions.

There are some myths that just won't die, and one of those myths was perpetuated in a Washington Post article on Wednesday. In a story on GOP efforts to redirect taxpayer funding from Planned Parenthood to community health centers, the Post reports:

Planned Parenthood honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today with a tweet saying "On Martin Luther King, Jr. day, we celebrate the man who dedicated his life to ending oppression."

Ilyse Hogue, the president of the pro-abortion group NARAL, had been mulling a run for Democratic National Committee chair, but she announced Wednesday she will not seek the Democratic party's top post.

Donald Trump issued a "Dear Pro-Life Leader" letter in September. "As we head into the final stretch of the campaign, the help of leaders like you is essential to ensure that pro-life voters know where I stand," he said. And he was specific about what "I am committed to."

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on Trump's pro-life campaign promises, and his courting of pro-life leaders.

Donald Trump issued a “Dear Pro-Life Leader" letter in September. "As we head into the final stretch of the campaign, the help of leaders like you is essential to ensure that pro-life voters know where I stand," he said. And he was specific about what "I am committed to."

George Will writes:

The Scrapbook has long suspected that the first rash of antipathy toward Sarah Palin—the immediate, vituperative, sputtering hatred that was manifested within hours of her announcement as John McCain's vice presidential pick—was triggered not by her politics but by her family. Palin has a gaggle of…

During Wednesday's presidential debate, Chris Wallace asked Hillary Clinton about the extent of her abortion support.

For the first time ever, the Democratic platform is explicitly calling for a repeal of the Hyde amendment, a longstanding budget measure that prohibits federal funding of abortion except in very rare cases.

In Tuesday's vice presidential debate, one of the closing questions for Senator Tim Kaine and Governor Mike Pence was about their personal faith and potential conflicts with their roles as elected officials.

And the King of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives . . . Shifra and Puah . . . If it be a son, then ye shall kill him . . . But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. – Exodus I, 15. Forcing women to undergo abortions against…

Speaking in Illinois Monday, Hillary Clinton touted her relationship with the Roman Catholic Church's newest saint, Teresa of Calcutta, even though the two had opposing views. "I was fortunate enough to know Mother Teresa. I was fortunate enough to even work with her," Clinton said, according to…

Democrats changed their party platform this year to call explicitly for repealing the Hyde amendment, a longstanding and popular budget measure that prohibits federal funding of abortion for Medicaid recipients except in rare circumstances. Taxpayer-funding of abortion is so unpopular that even…

In the wake of the Democratic convention, some foot-in-mouth comments by Donald Trump, and a poll bounce for Hillary Clinton, much of the political class has decided that the presidential race is all but over. But across most of America, voters are at least as apt to be swayed by issues as by a…

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine has created some confusion about his position on the Hyde amendment, a longstanding budget measure that bans federal funding of abortion except in extreme cases.

While campaigning in Florida Tuesday, Tim Kaine blamed Republicans for Congress's failure to pass a bill to do more to combat the disease. The Miami-Herald reports:

Tim Kaine has moved sharply to the left on the issue of abortion over the last 10 years, but there remains some confusion over where the Democratic vice presidential nominee stands on the issue of federal funding of abortion.

Philadelphia

A Texas district judge, on Tuesday July 26, tossed out the last remaining charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, the anti-abortion activists whose undercover video last August accused Planned Parenthood of trafficking in fetal tissue.

When news broke that Hillary Clinton had chosen Virginia senator Tim Kaine to be her running mate, NARAL (the group formerly known as the National Abortion Rights Action League) showered praise on Kaine for maintaining a "100% pro-choice voting record in the U.S. Senate." Despite saying that he's a…

The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that aims to prevent the federal government from discriminating against healthcare providers that do not provide abortions.

NBC News's First Read has the list of those "in the hunt" to be Donald Trump's vice-presidential pick down to five names, the same number that Trump gave Monday morning to the Washington Post. Both lists include one name that would likely doom Trump's candidacy: retired Army general Michael Flynn.…

For decades, the Democratic party has supported the right to abortion in its very platform. One group, however, is trying to change that by placing a pro-life billboard advertisement in Philadelphia ahead of the Democratic National Convention.

The Supreme Court announced Tuesday morning it would refuse to hear Stormans v. Wiesman, a case from the state of Washington where a family-owned pharmacy was objecting to a state regulation that forced them to prescribe the morning after pill, also known as "Plan B." Unlike traditional…

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer used logic frequently employed by pro-gun advocates to help justify his majority opinion in the Texas abortion clinic case decided Monday.

In a set back for the pro-life movement, the Supreme Court released a 5-3 ruling Monday that safety regulations passed into law by the state of Texas represented "a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions, and constitutes an 'undue burden' on their constitutional right to do so."

Now that Marco Rubio is vying to keep his Senate seat, he has one serious challenger in the primary: Carlos Beruff.

In March, Donald Trump said that women who have abortions should be “punished." He quickly backtracked on the comment, but pro-lifers were incredibly frustrated and angered because his callous remark flew in the face of decades of carefully crafted messaging about how ending abortion is really…

At an April 14 MSNBC town hall, Ted Cruz was asked about abortion. The senator and presidential candidate made a point of mentioning last year’s Center for Medical Progress undercover investigation showing Planned Parenthood striking illegal deals to sell fetal body parts for profit. "I will say…

It has received an appalling, but unsurprising, lack of media coverage, but a congressional hearing this week has rolled out quite a bit of evidence indicating that Planned Parenthood was selling—and profiting from—fetal body parts. Congressional investigators produced evidence of websites where…

If you are pro-life, you cannot vote for Donald Trump. The point is simple and unavoidable: If the man is not a covert supporter of legalized abortion, he has at least thought about the issue so rarely and so incompletely that he cannot articulate a coherent sentence about it. Forget walking the…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on Donald Trump's abortion gaffe at a MSNBC townhall.

Back in November, the New York Times reported that Right to Rise, the super PAC that Jeb Bush established, had produced a video casting Marco Rubio as "ultimately unelectable because of his hard-line stand against abortion."

On Thursday, New Jersey governor Chris Christie attacked Florida senator Marco Rubio from the left on the issue of abortion.

Harmony Daws was recently appointed president of the Oregon Right to Life board of directors. She works at a cleaning business in Portland, and informed her boss of her new position. Her boss did not take it well:

A Houston grand jury investigating undercover videos of Planned Parenthood issued a surprise decision Monday, indicting the founder of the organization behind the footage and another anti-abortion activist.

In December, Donald Trump ducked a question about whether he would seek to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade in order to allow legislators to pass laws protecting the lives of human beings who haven't been born yet. "You're gonna need a lot of Supreme Court justices, but…

A federal judge has ruled that the state of Utah can cut off funds to Planned Parenthood, reversing an earlier decision requiring the state to keep funding the abortion provider.

The New York Times reports that the "cash-rich group aiding Jeb Bush’s White House run has filmed a provocative video casting his rival Marco Rubio as ultimately unelectable because of his hard-line stand against abortion." 

The super PAC supporting former Florida governor Jeb Bush for president told the New York Times that it plans on using its resources to hit Florida senator Marco Rubio over his pro-life record as well as missed votes in the Senate. The Times reported Tuesday that Right to Rise, which has raised…

The continuing controversy over Planned Parenthood’s sale of tissue and organs from aborted fetuses for research is eerily reminiscent of a Soviet disinformation campaign during the 1980s that accused the United States of kidnapping and killing babies and children in the Third World in order to…

The buying and selling of fetal body parts—a longtime problem highlighted by the July release of an undercover video of the medical Director of Planned Parenthood—has ignited a political uproar. Since Planned Parenthood is the country’s largest abortion provider, the trade in infant body parts…

The Washington Post fact checker looks at "repeated, misleading claim that Planned Parenthood ‘provides’ mammograms." Michelle Ye Hee Lee's conclusion is spot-on:

The controversy over Carly Fiorina's comments at the last GOP debate about seeing a video of an aborted fetus with its legs kicking is still raging. Earlier today, David Daleiden, the journalist behind the Center for Medical Progress's undercover Planned Parenthood investigation that produced the…

At the beginning of a five-hour committee hearing on Tuesday with Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards as the sole witness, Chairman Jason Chaffetz made a surprising announcement. The Utah congressman and oversight committee chairman said he wouldn't focus on the undercover investigation…

When running for Senate in 2012, Democrat Heidi Heitkamp portrayed herself as something of a moderate on the issue of abortion, saying: "I do not support public funding of abortions, and believe that late term abortions should be illegal except when necessary to save the life of the mother."

Senate Democrats blocked House-passed legislation on Tuesday that would prohibit almost all abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy, a point when human infants can feel pain and survive if born prematurely.

As the Senate prepares to vote tomorrow on a bill banning abortion after the fifth month of pregnancy, the point at which human infants can feel pain and survive if born prematurely, Hillary Clinton has expressed opposition to legal limits on abortion at any stage of pregnancy.

Yesterday on Face the Nation, Hillary Clinton said she opposed federal bans on late-term abortions, as such abortions take place because of "medical necessity." The question from John Dickerson was specifically in reference to the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which does include the…

Jeffrey Drazen, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, recently penned a scathing editorial about Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of fetal tissues. No, Drazen and his two coauthors (one a volunteer for Planned Parenthood) didn’t criticize the abortionists for killing fetuses in a “less…

Over at the Free Beacon, our old colleague Matthew Continetti is already up with his thoughts about the debate. He's reached the conclusion that "debates basically serve to propel second-tier candidates to the top. That’s what happened with Ben Carson last time. And it’s what’s going to happen to…

As Republicans in the Senate bring forward a bill next week that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks of gestation—when babies are capable of feeling pain and can survive outside the womb—Senate minority leader Harry Reid declined to say whether he supports any limits on abortion during any…

The Center for Medical Progress is out with another horrifying video exposing Planned Parenthood's practice of harvesting the organs from aborted fetuses for money. One of the people that appears in this latest video is Cate Dyer, the CEO of StemExpress, whose sister was the health policy advisor…

Jeb Bush has said Donald Trump "should be treated like the frontrunner" for the Republican nomination. On Tuesday, the Bush campaign continues to do just that with a short web video aimed squarely at the leading GOP contender's past "liberal" views on taxes, health care, and abortion as well as…

StemExpress is the bio-medical company featured in a number of the undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress in connection with its Planned Parenthood exposé on fetal organ and tissue harvesting. StemExpress made several changes to its website last week, some cosmetic but others…

In apparent retaliation for Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush's statements critical of Planned Parenthood, the Democratic party has launched an attack on crisis pregnancy centers. A blog post on Democrats.org said that crisis pregnancy centers "have zero understanding of what women’s…

If you want a good idea of how much water the media is willing to carry for Planned Parenthood, go ahead and check out this Politico story. It seems Planned Parenthood commissioned a "forensic report" to analyze the undercover videos that have got the organization in trouble for harvesting and…

Hillary Clinton compared Republican views on federal funding for abortion and elective contraception to the views of terrorists. Speaking in Cleveland Thursday, Clinton criticized Republicans who want to limit federal funding for abortions as wanting to deny "access to health care."

PolitiFact, which has really been outdoing itself with its coverage of the Planned Parenthood scandal, has come up with another doozy. Here is the statement PolitiFact chose to evaluate:

The latest undercover Planned Parenthood video is an interview with Cate Dyer, CEO of an organization called StemExpress that buys aborted baby body parts from Planned Parenthood and sells them to researchers. 

Republican presidential candidate John Kasich told a voter in New Hampshire Wednesday that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in the United States is the "law of the land."

The New York Times may still be known as the “paper of ­record,” but the paper’s unresponsiveness in correcting the record is not something that is going to burnish its reputation. On July 20, the Times published a story about the first of a ­recent spate of undercover videos showing ­affiliates of…

Santiago, Chile

The Center for Medical Progress has released another video highlighting the questionable and possibly illegal conduct of Planned Parenthood. This time, Holly O’Donnell, a former procurement technician for medical research firm StemExpress, reports that Planned Parenthood would take fetal organs…

As our friend Mollie Hemingway explains in The Federalist, Marco Rubio mopped the floor with Chris Cuomo on CNN Friday morning, finally establishing that a very young human embryo, while not self-sustaining or visibly human, is in fact human life: It is not dead, so it has to be living, and it’s…

In the wake of the undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood’s involvement in the trafficking of aborted baby tissue and body parts, the U.S. Senate has scheduled a vote to defund Planned Parenthood. It’s a fine first step by Congress in response to the horror revealed by the Center for Medical…

The country has been roiled in recent weeks by videos showing two Planned Parenthood executives chirpily telling pro-life undercover investigators that fetal organs could be had for a price. The executives—both themselves abortionists—explained that their techniques could be adapted to “crush”…

Two Republican candidates for president have approached the politics of the controversy over Planned Parenthood in different and revealing ways.

Planned Parenthood now finds itself being heavily criticized after being caught on tape brokering fetal body parts. Fortunately for them, they have no shortage of allies in the media, including PolitiFact.

A few weeks ago, the Center For Medical Progress started releasing undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood selling parts of aborted fetuses.

The battle in Washington to stop Planned Parenthood from using public funds is heating up. Yesterday, even Democratic Senator Joe Manchin came out in favor of defunding the organization on the heels of undercover videos showing the organization selling fetal body parts, possibly in violation of the…

On July 20, The New York Times published a story about the recent spate of undercover videos that show Planned Parenthood affiliates unethically and possibly illegally brokering fetal parts to medical researchers. The story, headlined "Planned Parenthood Tells Congress More Videos of Clinics Might…

While liberals have expressed their outrage at the cruel killing of Cecil the Lion while mostly ignoring the grisly Planned Parenthood videos, the response from conservative pundits has largely been to emphasize the moral hierarchy of the two crimes. Conservatives have argued that what Planned…

Planned Parenthood emailed Hillary Clinton on her private email address. The revelation comes in the most recently released trove of Clinton's emails. 

Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood recently gained notoriety when the Center for Medical Progress released a video of people at the abortion clinic picking through a dish of aborted baby parts in order to sell them. Now the Planned Parenthood affiliate is facing accusations of serious wrongdoing:

It may sound too ghoulish to be true, but it is. In a video released on July 14, a top official at Planned Parenthood was caught discussing how the billion-dollar nonprofit harvests and sells the organs of aborted babies to for-profit biotech companies.

The president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, dismissed recent videos showing Planned Parenthood doctors preparing to harvest and sell parts of aborted babies. Richards claimed this morning in interview with George Stephanopoulos that the videos had been edited, and besides, she said, "the…

Rick Santorum is keeping expectations low for his second presidential campaign. Asked if he would need to win the Iowa caucuses to stay in the race, the former senator said it “depends.”

Planned Parenthood’s response to the infamous video revealing its senior director for medical services Deborah Nucatola discussing the sale of fetal organs with undercover reporters demonstrates, once again, the logical fallacies upon which the nation’s largest abortion provider is based.

Planned Parenthood’s response to Tuesday’s video revealing their senior director for medical services Deborah Nucatola frankly discussing the sale of fetal organs with undercover reporters demonstrates, once again, the logical fallacies upon which the nation’s largest abortion provider is based.

The Washington Post appears to be struggling a bit to cover today's blockbuster story about the undercover video of Planned Parenthood harvesting and selling organs from aborted fetuses. First, they changed the headline to something that's far more friendly to Planned Parenthood without noting the…

Carly Fiorina has a message for Democrats who oppose a ban on late-term abortions: You don't represent most women. The Republican presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO said she backs a bill, passed by the House of Representatives and just introduced in the Senate, that limits…

Earlier this week, Harvard professor Robert Putnam did a Q&A with Washington Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein, headlined "Have faith groups been too absent in the fight on poverty?" Here is Putnam's answer to that question:

The House of Representatives will vote on a bill next week that would ban nearly all late-term abortions, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The legislation would establish a national limit on abortion at 20 weeks after conception—five months into pregnancy—which is the…

The Daily Caller's Kerry Picket reports that likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said in a speech on Thursday in New York that religious beliefs about abortion "have to be changed."

American entrepreneurship is a wonderful thing, with its emphasis on the new and exciting, so it was no surprise that the Washington Post gave a spot on page one to a creative new enterprise: an abortion clinic that seeks to present a pleasant and even soothing experience, one that looks and…

Pennsylvania's Democratic governor Tom Wolf is just shy of a month into the new job, but one his cabinet nominations has raised eyebrows in Harrisburg and across the state. Wolf has nominated Pedro Cortes to be secretary of state, a job Cortes held in the last Democratic administration, two-term…

Louisiana governor and potential presidential candidate Bobby Jindal said it was a "shame" that House Republican leaders had to put aside a bill banning abortions occuring after the 20th week of pregnancy. Speaking on Fox News Thursday night, the Republican said, "it shouldn't take a lot of…

 Late Thursday, the White House released via Twitter President Obama's annual statement commemorating the anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. As he has in several previous statements, the president cast the decision as critical in "ensuring that our daughters have the same…

According to a statement issued by the White House on Tuesday, President Obama would veto a bill banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the point at which infants are capable of feeling pain and surviving long-term if born.

"Abortion stops a beating heart" has long been a poignant rallying cry for the pro-life movement. Abortion rights advocates often characterize the unborn as an impersonal "clump of cells" that a woman may choose to do with whatever she wants. But even as the House of Representatives plans a January…

North Carolina senator Kay Hagan's position on abortion is the target of a new $620,000 TV ad campaign that is being launched today by the Women Speak Out PAC:

For months, Senate candidate Cory Gardner has been attacked as an extremist on the issues of abortion and Obamacare's contraception mandate. His response has been to disavow his support for a 2010 personhood amendment in Colorado and to support over-the-counter access to birth control. But a few…

Lucy Flores is the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in Nevada. And as Benjy Sarlin reports for MSNBC, she's known in part for taking an unconventional approach to abortion--she talks openly about her own decision to have an abortion at the age of 16.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with frequent contributor Adam White on today's Supreme Court rulings.

Democratic senator Mark Udall of Colorado appears in a new TV ad targeting Republican congressman Cory Gardner for his opponent's "beyond troubling" record on birth control and abortion. "Because this really matters, it's important you hear this directly from me," says the Colorado Democrat at the…

Kristen Day has just sent an email thanking a Democratic state representative in Michigan for supporting a bill banning abortion funding in Obamacare. He’s grateful for her note—she’s only the second person to thank him. “It’s a really lonely road, to be a pro-life Democrat,” she remarks.

Edinburg, Texas

Three crusading filmmakers intent on doing stories that no one else will touch have moved on from a truth-telling documentary about natural-gas extraction to a planned TV movie about the man they’ve dubbed “America’s worst serial killer.” By the looks of it, plenty of people want the movie to be…

It’s being called the “GOP Lawmaker Principle.” Here’s how it works:

Liberal media bias is such a fact of life The Scrapbook can’t get exercised about it every day. But there are two subjects in the news a lot in which the fourth estate’s inability to play fair is never less than appalling: Senator Ted Cruz and abortion. Last week, the Associated Press tried to…

On May 18, Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, will be Barnard College's commencement speaker and will receive the Barnard medal of distinction, the college’s highest honor.

Gimme Shelter, the movie starring Vanessa Hudgens, Rosario Dawson, Brendan Fraser, and Anne Dowd, is a straightforward and unpretentious film about an unmarried pregnant teenage girl who chooses to have her baby rather than an abortion. Written and directed by Ronald Krauss, the film is both…

At the 1992 Democratic National Convention, the pro-life Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, was barred from speaking. The message was if you are pro-life, you have no place in the Democratic party.

The House voted Tuesday night to pass Congressman Chris Smith’s (R-N.J.) No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which expands bans on federal funding of abortions and requires that the Obamacare insurance exchanges clearly describe which plans cover abortion.

Following today's annual March For Life in Washington, D.C., Fox News's Brit Hume appeared on Special Report this evening and delivered some stirring remarks about the ongoing travesty of legalized abortion:

In a statement marking the controversial Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, President Obama says that "this is a country where everyone deserves the same freedom and opportunities to fulfill their dreams."

In 2012, Democrats ran a well-coordinated campaign to demonize and distort pro-life candidates as anti-woman misogynists hell-bent on taking away birth control. The Republican response to this line of attack consisted mostly of pivoting away to focus on “jobs” and the “economy.” With rare…

Lifesitenews.com reports:

What does Ken Cuccinelli’s narrow loss in the Virginia governor’s race tell us about the future of the GOP?

In a bid to confuse and/or deliberately mislead voters in her native Texas, gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis announced today that she is “pro-life.”

Abortion advocate Wendy Davis has a strange claim. She now says that she's "pro-life," a term usually associated with those who are against abortion.

When the cops finally raided the now-convicted killer’s house, he wasn’t particularly disturbed by the intrusion. In fact, he warned police not to go in the basement. Eventually, one of them put on a Tyvek jumpsuit and descended downstairs. The basement was mostly empty, but the flea infestation…

Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate and frontrunner in Virginia's gubernatorial race, has been painting his Republican opponent Ken Cuccinelli as a crusader on social issues. But McAuliffe has repeatedly refused to answer questions from the press about whether he himself holds extreme…

It’s easy to become inured to the state of abortion in the United States, but every so often someone sends a shock to the system.

The campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe of Virginia has emailed its supporters likening Republican opponent Ken Cuccinelli to failed 2012 Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin.

Texas state senator Wendy Davis spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Monday afternoon, talking about her 13-hour filibuster of a bill limiting late-term abortion and establishing higher safety standards at abortion clinics.

The national limit on late-term abortion passed by the House of Representatives in June is a losing issue for Republicans, according to the conventional wisdom in the press and the Republican donor class. But there are two compelling reasons why the conventional wisdom is wrong.

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards held a small rally outside the U.S. Capitol Thursday joined by Minnesota senator Al Franken, Connecticut congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, and a crowd of 200 Planned Parenthood activists. Richards warned that new state and federal bills--including measures…

The American left loves Western European democracies for their cultural sensibilities and for their policies on everything from crime to health care. One policy area where you won’t hear American liberals cite the European example, though, is abortion.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) today agreed to be the lead sponsor of a Senate bill to ban abortion after an unborn child is 20 weeks old.  A similar measure passed the House last month and a state version is now being debated in the Texas legislature, where it is likely to be approved.

Many Republican insiders continue to push the narrative that the GOP lost in 2012 because of the Hispanic vote and social issues, rather than because a badly broken Republican nomination process produced a candidate who didn’t emphasize Obamacare and didn’t motivate downscale rural white Americans…

David Freddoso writes:

Texas state senator Wendy Davis has been on a whirlwind media tour since her filibuster (and a screaming mob) blocked a vote on a bill that would ban most abortions during the final four months of pregnancy and improve safety standards at abortion facilities.

Mollie Hemingway writes: 

At a press conference Thursday afternoon, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi ripped Republicans for not spending enough money on food stamps. "They're taking food out of the mouths of babies," Pelosi said of her Republican colleagues following the defeat of the farm bill in a floor vote. "Two…

Kathleen Parker writes:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with staff writer John McCormack on House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's puzzling response to his question about abortion at her press conference today.

The House Subcommittee on the Constitution held a mark-up hearing this week on a bill that would ban abortions during the final four months of pregnancy with exceptions for when the life and physical health of the mother is at risk. To the “millions of women who value their personal autonomy,” said…