Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, has announced that it will cease performing abortions in December, becoming the first abortion clinic to close in the state in two decades. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that “Regions is the last remaining hospital in the Twin Cities area that performs elective abortions…. Last year it performed 545 abortions, down from 902 a decade earlier.”

The decision by social workers in Cleveland, Ohio, to take a 200-pound third grader away from his mother and place him in foster care is raising concerns about how much power county and state social service agencies have to interfere in the lives of families.

A month after a similar amendment was rejected by voters in Mississippi, pro-life leaders in Colorado have announced that they will work to place a proposed “personhood” amendment on the ballot in their state. The amendment, which has already failed twice in the state, is meant to “protect every child, no matter their age, race, gender, location, or size,” explained Keith Mason, president of Personhood USA, the Colorado group behind personhood amendment efforts in a number of states.

In a deep bow to the homosexual lobby, a small army of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives has introduced legislation that would extend employee benefits to the same-sex partners of federal workers. Under H.R. 3485, homosexual partners of federal employees would be eligible for such benefits as retirement, life insurance, health insurance, workers compensation, and death benefits.

A new study by the Family Research Council has found that only 46 percent of children in the United States will reach the age of 17 living in intact homes with married biological parents.

The teen birth rate reached a historic low in 2010, and while abstinence proponents say the drop is encouraging, they note another CDC report that shows climbing rates of sexually transmitted disease among young people.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee overwhelming approved a bill that would overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law that defines marriage for federal purposes as only between a man and a woman. The 10-8 vote in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act, sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif., left), marks the first time a committee in either the Senate or the House has voted to repeal the 17-year-old law, and represents a major step toward federal approval of homosexual marriage.

A lawsuit filed by the state of Massachusetts seeking to overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as only between a man and a woman, has received the support of a legal brief filed by scores of major corporations. According to LifeSite News, nearly 70 companies signed on to the friend-of-the-court brief filed in Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The companies include Microsoft, Starbucks, Google, NIKE, Levi Strauss and Co., CBS, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mass., Time Warner Cable, and Xerox. Also adding their influence to the brief, reported Keen News Service, a website focusing on homosexual issues, were nearly a dozen national law firms, seven trade and professional organizations, and the cities of New York and Boston.

Pro-life counselors on location at a Milwaukee area abortion clinic said they witnessed as a young girl was forced by a guardian and a clinic employee into the facility after the girl asked the counselors for help. As reported by LifeSite News, sidewalk counselor Tobey Neuberger “said the incident occurred just before 10 a.m. outside Affiliated Medical Services [located at 1428 N. Farwell Avenue, Milwaukee], where she and two other female pro-life counselors gave a ‘very young’ African-American girl literature as she entered the clinic, and told her that she could get more information at a pro-life center across the street.”

According to witnesses the girl appeared to be somewhere between 11 and 14 years of age.

In an apparent effort to raise ratings on his obscure nightly TBS talk show, displaced comedian Conan O’Brien officiated November 4 at a same-sex wedding ceremony between O’Brien’s costume designer, Scott Cronick, and Cronick’s homosexual partner David Gorshein. The “wedding,” which was televised live at the end of a week of shows taped in New York City, had family members of both men crowded onstage to witness the supposedly Jewish-style ceremony.