Scrolling around...April 21, 2013

Muslim Persecution of Christians: February, 2013
Half of the Victims Were under the Age of Six

Boy Scouts propose motion to allow gay scouts, maintain adult ban
“The proposal says, in essence, that homosexuality is morally acceptable until a boy turns 18 - then, when he comes of age, he's removed from the Scouts,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “The policy is incoherent and, sadly, an affront to the notion that Scouts are brave, reverent, and 'morally straight.'” 

The Human Egg Rush
...There’s also no reason to think these morally and ethically dubious practices will be confined to consenting adults in first-world countries. If enough eggs cannot be obtained locally, look for egg harvesting companies to be formed to acquire ova from impoverished women in the developing world.

Such biological colonialism is already occurring. For example, destitute Indian women are paid to gestate babies and supply eggs—practices that occasionally result in their deaths. In 2010, a seventeen-year-old Indian girl died after undergoing her third paid egg extraction in eighteen months.

The growing demand for eggs also opens up the possibility of abortion becoming a remunerative activity. In order to increase the egg supply, Dutch and Israeli scientists are experimenting with ovaries taken from later-term aborted female fetuses. The ovaries are kept alive after the abortion and the fetus’s immature eggs extracted. If the eggs can ever be matured, the scientists theorize, they could be used in infertility treatments and biotechnological experiments.

The Huffington Post’s resident bioethicist, Jacob Appel, has already argued that women who want to abort should be paid to gestate longer in their term before undergoing termination. “If a woman has the fundamental right to terminate a pregnancy,” he asks, “why not the right to use the products of that terminated pregnancy as she sees fit? Many women would likely use the proceeds of such sales to finance college educations or to help raise their children.”...

“Family Meltdown and Economic Decline”
...It’s hard to overstate the breakdown of marriage and the rise of single-parent families. Consider out-of-wedlock births. In 1980, about 18 percent of births were to unmarried women; by 2009, the proportion was 41 percent. Among whites, the increase was from 11 percent to 36 percent; among African Americans, from 56 percent to 72 percent; among Hispanics, from 37 percent (1990) to 53 percent...