A roundup of life and family news from around the interwebs.
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As I noted earlier this year, many of the key abortion battles will be unfolding at the state level over the next year. From an alarmed writer over at Ms. Magazine:
In the first two months of the year, eight abortion restrictions and bans have been enacted:
South Carolina ban on abortion as early as six weeks of pregnancy (this ban has been temporarily blocked in court)
Kentucky law that grants additional authority to the state’s attorney general to penalize and close abortion clinics
Arkansas program with two restrictions—it requires those seeking an abortion to call a state-supported hotline for information on pregnancy resources and services; abortion providers are also required to document the hotline call in the patient’s medical records and with the state
Ohio ban on the use of telemedicine for medication abortion
Kentucky and South Dakota laws that penalize physicians for not taking medically unnecessary actions for a fetus, despite the fact that both states have existing laws providing legal protections for a fetus delivered after an abortion
Kansas initiative for the August 2022 ballot that, if approved by voters, would amend the Kansas constitution to explicitly exclude abortion rights
This is highly unusual: In the past decade, there has been only one year with this level of action so early in state legislative sessions. That was in 2017, when five abortion restrictions were enacted by the end of February.
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Bethany has buckled on whether children should be placed in a home with both a mother and a father. From Religion News Service:
Bethany Christian Services, the country’s largest Protestant adoption and foster care agency, will begin serving LGBTQ couples, a significant change for the evangelical outfit and a sign of the growing cultural shift. Bethany, which is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with offices in 32 states, announced the change in an email to employees on Monday (March 1). Its board of directors approved the policy change back in January after nearly a decade of internal discussion. An agency spokesperson said it has already been working with LGBTQ families in about 12 states.
Apparently, a majority of Christians supports the move—which says more about American Christianity than it says about what is actually best for children.
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On the heels of their “conversion therapy ban” and the expansion of suicide services to the mentally ill, the Trudeau Liberals are now introducing hate crime legislation. Since we know what their definition of hate is, we can be assured that this law will be used against those of us who have become cultural heretics over the past decades.
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Most of you probably saw the new data from Gallup showing a spike in Americans who identify as LGBT (the number is now over 5%); the number of people identifying as trans is up over 800%. Following that, there’s this, from the Daily Mail:
In a sign that attitudes towards expressing sexuality are shifting, a survey of 18 to 24 year-olds in the UK found just over 50 per cent are ‘only attracted to those of the opposite sex’. As the age groups got older, the proportion of people who were only attracted to the opposite sex got higher, The Times reports.
There’s a lot of reasons for these shifting numbers, not the least of which is the fact that alternative sexual lifestyles are no longer stigmatized, but are actually encouraged. Another major factor is digital pornography, which is not only introducing new sexual behaviors to young people at a very early age (these new numbers broke down along generational lines—the older you are, the more likely it is that you’re attracted to the opposite sex) but actually transforming people’s sexuality and attractions. If you have kids, do whatever it takes to keep pornography away from them.
