Ruth Institute Blog

by  Jennifer Roback Morse

by Marcus Roberts

…So a brief blogpost today on one of the more utilitarian reasons that I have heard for abortion/contraception – it saves money. As Keith Riler in First Things blogs:

“As states seek to balance budgets, population planning groups are touting abortion and contraception as money-saving measures. According to their crude calculus, Medicaid-paid births to poor mothers strain the social safety net and must be reduced. Read more…

by Marcus Roberts

from Helen Alvare

I’ve been working on several projects that have occupied all my little brain cells, including at the United Nations and around the U.S.

Rather than recount individual developments, I want to remark upon a few trends I have noticed. Perhaps these remarks might provide “talking points” when you are confronting arguments nowadays equating liberty for women with women’s (and girls!) sexual license. Read more…

by  Patrick Fagan

This article was first published at The Public Discourse on March 11, 2013.

This year, the Supreme Court will render judgment on the institution of marriage. Though most of us don’t realize it, the Court first did so forty-one years ago in Eisenstadt v. Baird, a decision that gravely wounded marriage and set the nation on a course of gradual debilitation by ruling that states could not restrict the sale of contraceptives to unmarried people. Read more…

by Carson Holloway

January 29th, 2013 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/01/7749/

If the HHS mandate is enforced, our government may provoke a schism in the American Catholic Church and will reduce faithful Catholics to second-class citizenship.

For more than a year, Americans have been lauding or protesting the HHS mandate that requires employers to cover contraceptives, including abortifacients, in their insurance policies. Since many employers don’t object to such a policy, the debate has focused on Catholic employers, who have a moral objection to contraception, and therefore to any requirement that they directly subsidize it. These employers argue, quite plausibly, that the free exercise clause of the Constitution (“Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]“) entitles them to a religious exemption from the mandate. Read more…

by Elizabeth Crnkovich

This article was first published December 10, 2012, at the Population Research Institute.

A recent Family in America conference in D.C. lays out the problem, and speaker Jennifer Roback Morse provides a solution.

Past generations of American pioneers, known for their openness to life, would not have believed it. They would be astonished to learn that, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, a woman’s fertility is not celebrated but discouraged. Women who marry early, leave the workforce, and devote themselves to the birthing and raising of children are not the norm. On the contrary, a woman is expected to pass her most fertile years acting like a man, building up a strong career, and making a lot of money. Only after she is thus “established” and has “enough money” is she allowed to start thinking about having children. Read more…