It is not just Christian institutions that are challenging President Obama’s contraception mandate. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Missouri businessman who argues that the mandate, which forces him to provide free birth control for his employees through their health insurance, violates his constitutionally protected religious freedoms. CNSNews.com reported that the suit, the first filed against the mandate by a business owner, requests a permanent injunction banning the department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from requiring individuals and institutions with religious objections to abide by the mandate.

On Thursday the U.S. Senate rejected a measure that would have provided conscience protections for individuals and institutions opposed to President Obama’s mandate requiring employers to provide free access to contraception in their health insurance coverage — including abortion-inducing drugs.

A total of seven states have joined together in a lawsuit against the Obama administration, seeking to halt the mandate requiring employers to offer health insurance that includes free access to contraceptive drugs that can cause abortion.

As resistance intensifies to the Obama administration’s mandate requiring employers to offer health insurance that includes free access to contraception, a federal judge has ruled that pharmacists in Washington State can be guided by their consciences rather than the state with regard to stocking and distributing abortifacients — the types of contraceptive drugs that can cause abortions.

America’s Roman Catholic bishops have joined other Christian and conservative voices in rejecting President Obama’s “compromise” on his earlier announced mandate requiring all employers — including most religious institutions — to include free contraception to women in their health insurance coverage.

Christian and pro-family groups are blasting President Obama’s “compromise” on his contraception mandate for religious groups as a meaningless distinction without a difference. On February 10, the White House announced that under a revision to the objectionable decree, religious institutions would not be required to offer free contraceptives to women employees as previously mandated. Instead, the requirement would be totally shifted to their insurance providers.

There may be some unintended grave consequences for the heavy use of birth control pills in nations like the United States. A recent study published in the online British Medical Journal Open found that those countries having a high number of women using birth control pills also have a higher incidence of men with prostate cancer. While the study did not make a definite tie-in, “researchers said estrogen hormones released in urine that recycle through the water supply could account for one possible explanation” for the correlation between use of the pill and increased prostate cancer, reported ABC News.

Looking at a season on the sidelines, or possibly the end of his Hall of Fame career, NFL quarterback Peyton Manning (#18, left) apparently traveled recently to Europe for a medical procedure that has not been approved in the United States: adult stem cell therapy.

A recent U.S. study has confirmed that women who have abortions increase the likelihood of suffering from severe mental health issues. The study by Dr. Priscilla Coleman of Bowling Green State University, published in the prestigious British Journal of Psychiatry, found that women who opt to abort their babies nearly double their risk of mental health problems, compared to women who deliver their babies.

After 102 years, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, America’s historic military hospital that treated Presidents, foreign leaders, and generations of wounded soldiers returning from combat and service around the world, is set to close its doors in September.