Last month the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune reported:

An unmarried fifth-grade teacher at the Catholic school in Wabasha is out of a job because she got pregnant.

Emily Prigge, 23... told her principal about her pregnancy....
[T]he principal and a priest asked her to resign... and she did. Her pregnancy is about 15 weeks along....

When [Prigge] took the job, she signed a Catholic Christian Witness Statement, where she agreed to set a good example as a Christian in her personal and academic life. Prigge, who is Catholic, says she was told that she didn't live up to the statement because she had premarital sex.

Do you think the school should have fired Prigge?

[HT: reader Hieronymous]

UPDATE on February 23 Weekend Question: The number of comments on this post has shattered the previous record of 615. Currently at 1,624, chatter is still going strong. Who was the 1,000th commenter? Our beloved Bobby Bambino! Bobby, email me your address. You've won a copy of either On Message or Lime 5, take your pick.

Well, we have a new comment record: 674 and counting. The previous record was 615 on a post by HisMan while I was on vacation in April 2007.

This following post was a weekend question from February 23. I'm moving it up to give the conversation a chance to wind down. That said, this particular chat has evolved into a healthy one on Protestantism and Catholicism, which has actually been ongoing for 500+ years. So if this debate does conclude, history will be made.

Congrats on the record!

***************

This weekend's question is theological, about post-natal life.

I Peter 1:18 states lives lived apart from faith and thanks to Jesus Christ for dying to free us from the eternal consequences of sin are "worthless... dead-end[ed}... empty-headed."

Those are strong words. Why do you agree or disagree?

"Worthless": God's Word Translation
"Dead-end, empty-headed": The Message Translation

Barack Obama talks much of hope.

What is the real meaning of hope?

First correct answer gets one of my dvds.

Granny Grump at the Real Choice blog has listed "The Top Ten Signs Your Boyfriend is an Abortionist." Witty:

10. You've seen him run medical instruments through the dishwasher.

9. The top three numbers on his speed-dial are a lawyer, a bookie, and a bail bondsman....

8. His neighbors are always wondering who puts the red biohazard bags in the dumpster.

7. He deducts his [child] pornography collection from his income tax as an educational expense.

6. Every hooker in town knows him on a first-name basis.

5. He says he went to Harvard, but gets the alumni newsletter from the Autonomous University of Guadalajara Medical School.

4. He keeps a stock of blue exam pads in the back seat of his car.

3. He's always ducking out the back door to avoid process servers.

2. He gives you chocolate-covered Percocet for Valentine's Day.

And the number one sign your boyfriend is an abortionist:

1. He has sex with you first, then slips you a mickey.

Can you think of any other signs one's boyfriend is an abortionist?

[HT: reader Janet]

by Mary Kay Hastings and Bethany Kerr

It was just about a year ago this month that Bethany and I stumbled upon Jill Stanek's blog.

So much has happened since, with so many great posts.

Many of you are new and missed them, so we thought you might like to take a trip with us down memory lane.

Here are 6 of our favorite posts from the past year:

Baby Blessing

The post is, of course, Bethany's original post about her tiny baby, Blessing.

She shared the pain of her miscarriage and the awe she felt at the little life she held in her hand.




The 2nd anniversary of Terry Schiavo's death via dehydration and starvation

Next, we posted on the anniversary of Terry Schiavo's death. This one got a lot of hits and even Terri's brother, Bobby Schindler, dropped by to respond to some of the comments made there.

The day Partial Birth Abortion was banned

And who can forget the day we awoke to find partial birth abortions had been BANNED?!



House Episode

Another one that stirred up a lot of controversy was the House episode that mimicked the real life surgery of little Samuel.




But our all time favorite had to be the 99 Balloons video, featuring Baby Eliot.

If you haven't seen this one, be sure to get the Kleenex out!

So this leads to our weekend question:

What were some of your favorite posts from the last year?

Just scroll down the right hand side of the screen and you'll see all the months listed. If you can't find yours, let us know and we'll dig it up for you.

Update from Bethany, 2/9, 8a: Here are some posts you have requested:

Just why did Rudy Giuliani lose in his bid to become the Republican presidential nominee? San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders suggested his equivocation on the abortion issue made him look weak:

I have to wonder if Giuliani's biggest mistake was not touting himself as the only supporter of abortion rights in the Republican primary....

It may seem counter-intuitive to take a stand that most party members do not embrace. According to recent AP poll, two-thirds of Democrats - but only one-third of Republicans - believe abortion should be legal.

Nonetheless, a year ago, when GOP voters knew Giuliani's pro-choice position, they liked him the most because they saw him as a strong leader. After a year of soft-pedaling his abortion position, he doesn't look so strong.

"Counter-intuitive" is putting that theory nicely. "Wildly imaginative pro-abort spin" is more like it. Why do you think Giuliani's star fell?

Since the very day the U.S. Supreme Court overturned every state abortion law by its Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions on January 22, 1973, liberals and MSM accomplices have attempted to distort them by saying they only legalized abortion in the 1st three months of pregnancy.

Was there a time when you understood this falsehood to be true? (Perhaps you still believe it?) When did you learn the truth, that the U.S. has virtually no gestational restrictions on abortion?

See page 2 for Roe and Doe docket and page numbers.

Under Roe, the Supreme Court gave free reign for abortion in the first trimester, but seemed to rule that abortion could be restricted significantly or prohibited in the second and third trimesters. However, the court said that later regulations must allow for abortions needed to protect the woman's health. Roe's companion case, Doe v. Bolton (issued on the same day as Roe) defined maternal "health" as: "all factors - physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age - relevant to the well-being of the patient." These factors are so vague and open-ended that almost any reason can be and is cited to allow abortion in the second and third trimesters.

(SOURCE: Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 164 (1973); Roe, 410 U.S. at 164; Roe, 410 U.S. at 164-5; Doe v. Bolton, 41 U.S. 179, 192 (1973).

[JLS source: Focus on the Family]

On January 7 the Los Angeles Times attributed American Psychiatric Association president Nada Stotland as stating, "It may be... that women who have abortions are more emotionally unstable in the first place."

Do you agree?

CNN recently reported on a new industry: outsourcing pregnancies. It spotlighted an Indian clinic where closely monitored surrogate mothers grow the fertilized egg and sperm of parents from the U.S. and other countries for 9 months in a group home and present them with their newborn.

The positives are that this is a rather inexpensive way for infertile couples to obtain their own healthy biological children, and surrogates make more money for 9 months of labor (pardon the pun) than they would in 15 years.

The negatives are concerns of overall ethics about this way of producing children, whether this exploits poor women, the legalities of change of mind by any of the involved parties, that "wombs for rent" will next become a convenience for the rich who don't want the bother of pregnancy, and because this is an unregulated industry, its standards will fall.

What is your opinion?

[HT: reader Lyssie]

Abortion proponents often claim pro-lifers who support the death penalty are inconsistent (an admission that preborns are human, btw).

This January 4 opinion in the LA Times about GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was typical:

When analyzing Huckabee's platform more closely, however, a major contradiction arises. Huckabee claims to value the "sanctity of every and each human life." Yet, he also declares that capital punishment is needed within American society.

Accepting this premise for the sake of argument, does this mean that those who oppose the death penalty but support abortion are grossly inconsistent, considering the innocence and guilt of the parties involved?

Families Against Planned Parenthood in Denver plans to picket the home of a company executive helping construct PP's new abortion mill on Christmas morning.

I think this is a proper and commendable idea.

Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not?

In the 1995 movie Dangerous Minds, Michelle Pfeiffer played a teacher in a rough school who fought an administrator for moving one of Pfeiffer's pregnant students to another school because she was "contagious."

Do you agree unmarried pregnant teens should be withdrawn from their home high school for fear of copycatting?

From SignOnSanDiego.com, December 6:

James Bopp Jr., general counsel for the NRLC [National Right to Life Committee], said efforts to get state laws banning abortion outright "divert our attention and resources into feudal strategies" that would languish in the courts for years.

"We don't think it is yet time to pursue efforts to prohibit abortion," said Bopp. "If a law prohibits abortion in any way, it's contrary to Roe v. Wade (and would be illegal) and if it doesn't prohibit abortion, then what's the point?"...

"Human life amendments have been bouncing around in one way or another since Roe v. Wade," said Susan Hill, president of the Raleigh, N.C.-based National Women's Health Organization, which is the sole abortion provider in Mississippi. If passed, a human life amendment would "be ruled unconstitutional at this point because it has already been tested."

We have here a pro-life organization agreeing with a pro-abortion organization that a certain pro-life strategy is futile. Do you think that 1) both sides of the abortion issue can agree on strategy, or anything; and 2) both sides in this case could be right?

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire office was seiged and hostages taken by a man, Leeland Eisenberg, who turned out to have a history of mental illness and "severe alcohol and drug abuse," according to his former wife, as quoted by the New York Daily News.

Eisenberg said he wanted to speak to Clinton, according to Newsday, "about the shortage of mental health services in his state."

NYDN reported, "During the siege, [police] said he asked for cigarettes, alcohol and Pepsi."

Today in the papers I cannot find one article insinuating that all mentally ill people, alcoholics, smokers, or Pepsi drinkers are potentially violent.

Yet if this same man in the same condition had professed to be pro-life and wanted to speak with Hillary about her pro-abortion views, MSM, liberals, and the abortion industry would be all over that angle.

The pro-life movment is the most peaceful social justice movement in history.

People calling themselves pro-life have murdered seven abortion industry workers in the past 35 years, all between 1994-98, but as AbortionViolence.com reminds us, "[A]ccording to the U.S. government, more janitors, bartenders, secretaries, hairdressers and cosmetologists have been killed on the job than abortionists."

Meanwhile, Human Life International has documented more than 7000 acts of violence and illegal activities by pro-abortionists, aside from the 50,000,000 babies they have killed.

There could be several reasons why the abortion industry, MSM, and liberals promote pro-lifers as violent. Why do you think they do?

How can someone who is pro-abortion argue against abortions of female fetuses based solely on their gender? Some countries such as China or India have made such abortions illegal. Would you support such a prohibition in the United States?

Let's take a topic break.

On average, how many hours of sleep do you get a night?

At least two questions arise from Planned Parenthood's contention that abortion accounts for only 3% of the women's "health care services" it offers. I'm sure you can think of others.

German philosopher Oswald Spengler, a contemporary critic of Hitler and the Nazis, said, "Every act alters the soul of the doer."

How do you think abortion alters the soul of the doer, if at all?

Moderator Tim Russert posed the following to Sen. Hillary Clinton during the September 26 Democrat presidential debate:

RUSSERT: I want to move to another subject, and this involves a comment that a guest on "Meet the Press" made, and I want to read it, as follows: "Imagine the following scenario. We get lucky. We get the number three guy in Al Qaida. We know there's a big bomb going off in America in three days and we know this guy knows where it is. Don't we have the right and responsibility to beat it out of him? You could set up a law where the president could make a finding or could guarantee a pardon. Should there be a presidential exception to allow torture in that kind of situation?"

In actuality, this was a pro-life question, and a particularly deep one if the extent of torture allowed in this scenario could lead to death. So I'll likewise pose it to you.

(FYI, Clinton's response was, "As a matter of policy it cannot be American policy period...." Then, in a classic journalist "gotcha" moment, Russert responded: "The guest who laid out this scenario for me with that proposed solution was William Jefferson Clinton last year. So he disagrees with you." See video of entire exchange here.)

Veronica at the Planned Parenthood Aurora blog blames pro-lifers for the lack of participation by pro-aborts in the civil discourse, or perhaps it's noncivil discourse, because she says we scare them away:

I have heard from friends, read your comments & blogs. Why weren't there more pro-choice voices at recent City Council meetings? Why did supporters leave meetings early? It is my belief that the history of clinic violence keeps some silent. The fact that the anti-choice leaders picket clinic workers homes keeps us silent.

Do you agree with Veronica it is our fault pro-aborts are less likely to actively engage in the abortion debate?

Three questions to choose from on Planned Parenthood Aurora:

If PP is found guilty of defrauding the City of Aurora, what do you think should be the consequences, if any?

What do you think will be the actual outcome of this real life drama?

Who should play CEO Steve Trombley in the t.v. movie?

The largest abortion provider in the U.S., Planned Parenthood Federation, recently embarked on a national abortion building campaign.

If you are an abortion proponent who (inexplicably) believes, as the Clintons do, abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare," do you support or oppose PP's expansion program, which will obviously result in more abortions. (As it is said, "If you build it, they will come.")

Why or why not?

Yesterday Amanda Marcotte lamented having to sit through a karaoke version of Brick by Ben Folds Five.

When her mom saw the face she made as the singer started and asked Marcotte why she didn't like it, she responded, "Because the point of the song is that his girlfriend sucks for getting an abortion because it was such a downer for him. Boo-f***ing-hoo. How dare you get pregnant on accident with my sperm."

She blogged, "In fact, the song may even be more self-centered and horrible than I put it to my mother. It's indescribably mean, with the lyrics about how his girlfriend turned into this albatross around his neck with this abortion, or actually a brick."

Was the song "indescribably mean"? Was its point as Marcotte described? Read lyrics here. Read backdrop on Wikipedia.

[HT: moderator Lauren]

This question is for abortion proponents:

Would you mind if an abortion clinic located in your neighborhood?

Pro-abort trailer park feminist thought my WorldNetDaily column this week, "Liberal misogynitis," was "silly."

One of several points I made to demonstrate that in reality, pro-aborts, not pro-lifers, are the misogynists, was their promotion of abortion - of which way more than half aborted are female - had caused such a gender imbalance in Asian and Third World countries that a sex slave trade crisis has emerged.

To that trailer park feminist responded:

In other words, women who abort their female fetuses rather than bringing them in to an extremely hostile, sexist world are responsible for their own sexist oppression! How convenient!

What do you think tpf meant by that statement?

A new study suggests political persuasions may be partially genetic in origin.

If this proves true, would you support or oppose aborting babies with a liberal genetic marker?

[HT: Mark Crutcher]

At last week's YearlyKos Convention, Hillary Clinton stated, "I believe marriage should be left to the states."

Hillary and liberals say they want each state to decide whether marriage should be between one man and one woman, not the federal government.

Yet Hillary and liberals don't want the legality of abortion decided by the states, which is all the overturn of Roe v. Wade would do.

Why not? What's the difference?

USA Today reported August 2, "doctors are becoming more assertive in refusing to treat patients for religious reasons," expanding on refusing to commit abortion to refusing artificial insemination, refusing to prescribe the morning-after pill, refusing to administer chicken pox and measles vaccines that were developed with aborted fetal tissue, and refusing assisted suicide.

The State-Journal Register reported August 3 that a federal judge has ruled IL pharmacists can refuse to dispense the morning-after pill.

One of the problems, according to John Lynch, Washington Hospital Center medical director, as quoted by CNN, is, "Our technology is ahead of our morals. From an ethical point of view, we haven't learned when to use our technology."

In light of exploding technology and evolving morals, and bearing in mind there is a growing shortage of medical professionals in all fields, how do you think the question of health care ethics should be handled?

Pearl S. Buck said, "It is natural anywhere that people like their own kind, but it is not necessarily natural that their fondness for their own kind should lead them to the subjection of whole groups of other people not like them."

Do you think this statement applies to abortion?

Sorry, I've been out-of-pocket in DC again this week. I'll be home Monday. Thanks very much to moderators Bethany and MK for holding the fort in my absence.

Thursday night, MN Republican Sen. Norm Coleman was able to add an amendment to a bill that prevents any government from carrying out a death sentence on a woman while she is pregnant. Aside from arguments for and against the death penalty, why would pregnancy matter?

[Hat tip: Family Research Council]

Jennifer Roback Morse wrote on Townhall.com this week:

[U]sing Planned Parenthood's own data... two studies [here and here]...

A poor cohabiting teenager using the Pill has a failure rate of 48.4%. You read that correctly: nearly half of poor cohabiting teenagers get pregnant during their first year using the Pill. If she kicked her boyfriend out of the house, or if she married him, her probability of pregnancy drops to 12.9%. At the other extreme, a middle-aged, middle-class married woman has a 3% chance of getting pregnant after a year on the Pill.

Over 70% of poor, cohabiting teenagers using condoms, will be pregnant within a year. By contrast, the middle-aged, middle-class married woman has a 6% chance of pregnancy after a year of condom use.

These figures cast new light on the debate over contraception education. The commonly quoted failure rates of 8% for the Pill and 15% for the condom are inflated by the highly successful use by middle-aged, middle-class married couples. Yet, the government promotes contraception most heavily among the young, the poor and the single

Bearing in mind comprehensive sex ed has been trialed in the U.S. for over 40 years, and contraceptives are now easily (and literally freely) available, what do you think should be done to lower the pregnancy rate of America's socioeconomically poor?

We decided to stay in DC a couple more days, so I'm posting the Weekend question early, since I now won't be back in the saddle until Monday.

According to ABC on July 3, "[t]he bill to make it a felony to kill a police dog sailed through the [North Carolina] legislature, and the bill to make it double murder to kill a pregnant mother is bottled up in a committee... [due to the] volatile debate over abortion."

Explained Democrat State Sen. A. B. Swindell, "All animals are parts of folk's family."

Swindell opposed the comparisons being made. "The police dog thing - I see that as something different as getting to debate on [the abortion] issue."

Intentional or not, Swindell made two assessments. First, he implied animals are family and preborn children are not. Second, he tied a Laci/Connor Peterson-type murder to abortion.

Do you agree or disagree on either/both points?

[Hat tip: Reader jasper]

What do you think the Declaration of Independence, written primarily by Thomas Jefferson and signed by 56 American leaders on July 4, 1776, means by the term, "created equal"?

In context, this rich statement reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Both of these columns are posted in full on page 2, in case you cannot access them.

New York Times op ed, "Why pro-choice Is a bad choice for Democrats," June 22

Wall Street Journal op ed, "Unintended consequences: It's not enough to be 'wanted'," June 19

Also, some readers of this blog may know Dan McConchie of Americans United for Life. He was involved in a serious motorcycle accident Friday that resulted in a lower spinal cord injury. No further details known yet. Please pray for Dan.

[Hat tips: NYT piece, reader Jeff; WSJ piece, Dr. Frank]

New York Times
Why pro-choice Is a bad choice for Democrats
By Melinda Henneberger
June 22, 2007

I KEEP reading about a universe in which social conservatives are warming to Rudy Giuliani. But this would have to be a place where his estranged children and three wives and multiple appearances in fishnets were irrelevant to the Republican base. Where the nice gay couple he moved in with between marriages would be asked to appear in the film montage at the nominating convention in St. Paul.

Even in the real world, a pro-choice Republican nominee would be a gift to the Democrats, because the Republican Party wins over so many swing voters on abortion alone. Which is why Fred Thompson, who is against abortion rights, is getting so much grateful attention from his party now. And why, despite wide opposition to the war in Iraq, Democrats must still win back such voters to take the White House next year.

Over 18 months, I traveled to 20 states listening to women of all ages, races, tax brackets and points of view speak at length on the issues they care about heading into '08. They convinced me that the conventional wisdom was wrong about the last presidential contest, that Democrats did not lose support among women because "security moms" saw President Bush as the better protector against terrorism. What first-time defectors mentioned most often was abortion.

Why would that be, given that Roe v. Wade was decided almost 35 years ago? Opponents of abortion rights saw 2004 as the chance of a lifetime to overturn Roe, with a movement favorite already in the Oval Office and several spots on the Supreme Court likely to open up. A handful of Catholic bishops spoke out more plainly than in any previous election season and moved the Catholic swing vote that Al Gore had won in 2000 to Mr. Bush.

The standard response from Democratic leaders has been that anyone lost to them over this issue is not coming back - and that regrettable as that might be, there is nothing to be done. But that is not what I heard from these voters.

Many of them, Catholic women in particular, are liberal, deep-in-their-heart Democrats who support social spending, who opposed the war from the start and who cross their arms over their chests reflexively when they say the word "Republican." Some could fairly be described as desperate to find a way home. And if the party they'd prefer doesn't send a car for them, with a really polite driver, it will have only itself to blame.

What would it take to win them back? Respect, for starters - and not only on the night of the candidate forum on faith. As it turns out, you cannot call people extremists and expect them to vote for you. But real respect would require an understanding that what supporters of abortion rights genuinely see as a hard-earned freedom, opponents genuinely see as a self-inflicted wound and - though I can feel some of you tensing as you read this - a human rights issue comparable to slavery.

Again and again, these voters said Democrats are too unwilling to tolerate dissent on abortion. It is a point of orthodoxy no more open to debate within the party than the ordination of women is in Rome.

Democratic Party leaders should also stop pushing the perception that Republicans are natural defenders of the faithful. For years, they have done just that by tirelessly portraying our current president as this committed - indeed, obsessed - pro-lifer who would stop at nothing to see Roe overturned. Karl Rove couldn't have said it better himself; this was better advertising than hard money could buy.

Today, in a similarly oblivious way, the leading Democratic presidential contenders are condemning the Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold a ban on the procedure known as partial-birth abortion. An overwhelming majority of Americans, polls show, support a ban. Legal scholars have underscored the narrowness of the ruling in the partial-birth case, Gonzales v. Carhart, which does not even outlaw all late-term abortions. Yet the leading Democratic candidates, all of whom are lawyers, choose to overstate its impact.

Hillary Clinton called the decision "a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that ... recognized the importance of women's health." Barack Obama echoed that it "dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women." Though John Edwards was one of only two United States senators who did not cast a vote on the bill in 2003, he, too, found the decision to uphold that law "ill-considered and sweeping," and "a stark reminder of why Democrats cannot afford to lose the 2008 election."

Actually, it is a stark reminder of how fully capable they all are of losing it. A Democratic senator I spoke with recently did not see the disconnect between public opinion and the party's position on Carhart as any reason to worry: "Make no mistake; this is a pro-choice country, period."

But in a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, 41 percent of respondents favored stricter limits on abortion, with an additional 23 percent saying it should not be permitted at all.

What are we to make of all this? Surely at a minimum that our enduring reluctance to acknowledge the complexity of the abortion issue has only prolonged and hardened the debate. Most Americans fall somewhere between the extremes of "never" and "no problem" when it comes to abortion.

What polling can't capture and politicians won't hear is the voice of the nun I interviewed who considers herself pro-choice - and has been disciplined by her diocese as a result - because she does not think abortion is wrong for rape victims. Or the voices of the many women I spoke to who hold far more expansive views yet call themselves pro-life. Most people differentiate between a fetus in the early weeks of development and at nearly full term, and draw the line at a procedure that Democratic Senator Pat Moynihan regarded as infanticide.

Would Democrats who hate Carhart really switch parties or stay home on Election Day if their leaders began to acknowledge such distinctions? After the last seven years, I don't think so. Yes, the abortion-rights lobby has raised a lot of money since the ban, but the statements of the Democratic candidates will cost them, too. This issue has been very, very good to the Republican Party - and there is plenty more where that came from.

Melinda Henneberger is the author of "If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear."

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
_______________

Wall Street Journal
Unintended consequences: It's not enough to be 'wanted'
Illegitimacy has risen despite - indeed, because of - legal abortion.
By John R. Lott Jr.
June 19, 2007

The abortion debate usually centers on the morality of the act itself. But liberalizing abortion rules from 1969 to 1973 ignited vast social changes in America. With the perennial political debate over abortion again consuming the presidential campaign and the Supreme Court, it might be time to evaluate what Roe v. Wade has meant in practical terms.

One often misunderstood fact: Legal abortions just didn't start with Roe, or even with the five states that liberalized abortion laws in 1969 and 1970. Prior to Roe, women could have abortions when their lives or health were endangered. Doctors in some states, such as Kansas, had very liberal interpretations of what constituted danger to health. Nevertheless, Roe did substantially increase abortions, more than doubling the rate per live birth in the five years from 1972 to 1977. But many other changes occurred at the same time:

My new poll question this week, on the right, asks your understanding of the legal impact of Roe v. Wade's overturn. My weekend question tackles the sociological impact:

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, what do you think the societal impact will be on America?

In time for Father's Day, Life & Style magazine has named Hollywood's top 10 dads. They are:

10. Gavin Rossdale (married to Gwen Stefani)
9. Tom Cruise
8. David Arquette (married to Courteney Cox)
7. Patrick Dempsey
6. Larry Birkhead
5. Will Smith
4. Ben Affleck
3. Johnny Depp
2. Tobey Maguire
1.

Weekend question combo: It's pretty much a no brainer, but who do you think was L&S's pick for #1 Hollywood dad? Who would be your pick for #1 dad and why?

Update, 6-20-07: Answer to #1: Brad Pitt

This week Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, "Science is a gift of God to all of us and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure. And that is the embryonic stem cell research."

Do you agree or disagree that embryonic stem cell research is a gift of God?

Why or why don't you agree wth this statement:

"As a taxpayer, I'd rather pay $300 for a welfare mom's abortion than pay thousands of dollars to raise her kid for 18 years."

Are you pro-choice and anti-death penalty?

Or are you pro-life and pro-death penalty?

There are two other combinations possible. You get the idea. Please validate your position.

Is there anything wrong with this picture?

[Hat tip: Daena; apparel is being sold for Planned Parenthood fundraiser.]

At what age, if any, do you think abortion clinics should breach a minor girl's "right to privacy" and alert authorities that her pregnancy, request for contraception, or STD testing is evidence a sexual crime may have been committed against her?