Melissa Ohden went through an abortion and lived to tell about it. That might not sound noteworthy in an era when more than 3,000 women a day have an abortion. But Melissa was the baby, not the mother. In 1977, at approximately seven months gestation, Melissa was the target of a saline infusion abortion. She wasn’t supposed to survive. She did. Now a married mother…

On Tuesday, as lawyers argued Proposition 8 before the Supreme Court, thousands made their way past the Court building as part of the March for Marriage, organized by the National Organization for Marriage. They came from Chicago and New York City, New Hampshire and North Carolina, and beyond. Some were black pastors who had marched for their civil rights a half century…

A half century into the War on Poverty, liberals can hardly declare victory. But they can claim the dominant anti-poverty narrative: Americans seldom look to conservatives for answers to the problems of poverty. That’s not to say we don’t have answers. To the contrary, we’ve had important successes. The 1996 welfare reform rises to the top. School choice, which…

“We have made woman a sex creature,” complained a psychiatrist at the Margaret Sanger clinic, according to Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminist Mystique. A half-century later, a new Obama ad proudly likens voting for the first time to a young woman losing her virginity. You’ve come a long way, baby. But not necessarily forward. Women’s liberation is parodying…

Paul Ryan has earned a reputation for making Americans confront fiscal deficits many would prefer to ignore. Yesterday in Cleveland, the chairman of the House Budget Committee was at it again, forcing liberals and conservatives alike to look at their respective antipoverty deficits. Ryan exposed the moral and fiscal bankruptcy of the liberal welfare state, driving…

When Stephen Colbert appeared on NPR's "Fresh Air" earlier this month to promote his new book America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't, the comic title wasn't his only nod to confusion. Colbert professed perplexity that evangelical Christians "have to base all [their] political decisions on absolute biblical truths that must not be denied" in a political…

Presidential debates are supposed to clarify issues, but sometimes have the opposite effect. Misinformation on policy can obscure what’s happening in real life, and a case in point is Obamacare’s mandate for preventive health services. Here’s the background: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) handed down the mandate as part of the Affordable Care Act.…

The first presidential debate of the fall gave Americans good insight into the candidates’ perspectives on domestic issues, including the economy, health care and the role of government. But we heard hardly anything about the effect of such policies on our culture. That’s a serious omission. The government affects behavior when it sets tax rates or defines who can…

As summer faded to fall, a Chicago alderman's fury toward Chick-fil-A finally seemed to be cooling. But fall is fickle in the windy city, and Proco Joe Moreno once again is threatening to stall the chicken chain from opening in his ward. Moreno, Mayor Rahm ("Chicago Values") Emanuel and other big-city officials piled on Chick-fil-A after Dan Cathy, the company's…

When the Obama administration announced it will waive the work requirement in welfare reform, it wasn't just a bad idea that will roll back one of the most celebrated reforms of the last 25 years. The move over the summer to allow waivers of the work requirement -- the work in "workfare" -- also showed disregard for the leaders of some of the nation's poorest…