The federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has decided against a group of PepsiCo shareholders in their efforts to stop the company from contracting with a firm that uses cells from aborted babies in producing artificial flavor enhancers.

The state of Texas finds itself in a battle with the Obama administration over its decision to defund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s premier abortion provider. “At the direction of lawmakers and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott,” reported the Texas Tribune, “the Texas Health and Human Services commissioner signed a rule [February 23] that formally bans Planned Parenthood clinics and other ‘affiliates of abortion providers’” from participating in the Texas Women’s Health Program (WHP), which provides a variety of health services to low-income women throughout the state, including “family planning.” Planned Parenthood had confirmed that it was providing some 40 percent of the services offered through WHP.

With the devaluation of traditional marriage over the past couple of decades has come an alarming increase in the number of children growing up in homes without fathers, and an increasingly casual attitude about childrearing. A recent study from Child Trends, a non-profit research group that identifies emerging trends in child development, found that as of 2010, 41 percent of all births in America occur outside of marriage. That compares to about 11 percent in 1970 and around 30 percent in 1990.

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (left) said he will move quickly to sign into law the homosexual “marriage” bill to which the state legislature gave its final approval on February 23. The state Senate’s 25-22 vote passage came less than a week after Maryland’s House of Delegates gave the bill a razor-thin approval.

Sixteen years after President Bill Clinton signed it into law, and 12 months after President Obama ordered the Department of Justice to stop defending it, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional because it bars health insurance and other benefits from being extended to the same-sex partners of government employees. DOMA defines marriage as the legal union of only a man and a woman for purposes of federal business.

A pair of pro-life activists are protesting Facebook’s decision to remove a graphic they had posted on their site that included an image of a pre-born baby aborted at eight weeks. What makes the censorship even more troubling is the fact that Facebook had earlier issued an apology to a pro-abortion site for taking down a post that offered explicit instructions for performing a do-it-yourself chemical abortion with the drug Misoprostol, used by doctors to induce labor in pregnant women. The Facebook officials backed up their apology by reposting the abortion instructions.

The Alabama Supreme Court has placed a shot across the bow of Roe v. Wade's crumbling rampart, calling on states to abandon the concept of fetal “viability” introduced in that ruling and to recognize the right to life of the unborn.

While the ruling in the wrongful death case (Hamilton v. Scott ) will have little immediate impact on the infamous U.S. Supreme Court decision, which effectively legalized the killing of pre-born babies who are not viable outside the womb, the court did challenge the arbitrary way in which the viability of a “fetus” is determined, arguing that the Roe viability standard should be abandoned in lieu of its ultimate rejection by the U.S. Supreme Court.

As he had promised, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (left) moved quickly to veto the same-sex marriage bill passed last week by the state legislature, setting up what is expected to be an all-out campaign by homosexual activists for “marriage equality” in the state.

On February 13 Washington Governor Chris Gregoire (left) affixed her signature to a law making her state the seventh to legalize homosexual marriage, even as pro-family forces were preparing a referendum that will challenge the measure and give voters the final say on how marriage is defined in the state.

The state of Washington is one step away from the legalization of homosexual marriage following passage of legislation in the state house of representatives on February 8 by a 55-43 vote. The same-sex marriage bill, which had been aggressively promoted by Governor Christine Gregoire (left), passed the Senate on February 1 by a 28-21 vote margin, and with Gregoire’s expected signature on the bill early next week, Washington will become the seventh state to legalize same-sex partnerships as “marriage,” joining New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Iowa — along with the District of Columbia.