Humanize From Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism
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censorship

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Pro-Abortion MDs Want Media to Cancel Pro-Life Voices

The media already mostly ignores anti-assisted-suicide voices in its biased reporting on that issue. Now, Physicians for Reproductive Health — an organization of pro-abortion medical and non-medical activists — is pushing the media to ban all pro-life voices from its reporting on abortion. From the organization’s open letter to the media, “Stop Giving Airtime to Anti-Abortion Extremists“: We are writing today with a big request: stop giving air-time to anti-abortion activists. As the undersigned over 600 providers of abortion care, people who have had abortions and will have abortions, abortion advocates, and individuals who work with the media regularly, we could not be more concerned for the safety and well-being of our communities, in part because of the misinformation, disinformation, and inflammatory threats shared and encouraged by anti-abortion activists in the media. Abortion is one of the most important moral, political, and cultural issues of the current moment. It will, of necessity, become a difficult discourse and debate. These zealots, however, pretend that there is only one legitimate point of view. But this is ridiculous. For example, many abortion absolutists claim that pro-lifers are “racist” because restrictions on abortion will “disproportionately” impact women of color (based on the demographics that African Americans have a higher percentage of abortions than white women). But it is an odd form of racism that wants more babies of color born rather than fewer. See what I mean? The letter pretends that supporting abortion is based on scientific fact: We know your reporting standards are to cover “both sides” of any debate. Allow us to be clear: Medicine and science are not up for debate. Health care is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. And the fact is, abortion is not in the realm of theory or belief. Abortion belongs in health care, social services, and public health reporting. What baloney. Science can tell us what is destroyed in an abortion — a gestating human being. It cannot tell us whether destroying that nascent life is moral, immoral, or morally neutral. The analysis of that question is found in the realms of morality, philosophy, political, and/or religious discourse. In other words, finding a proper abortion policy is not a question of objective fact, but precisely a matter of subjective opinion. The letter also claims that giving a voice to “extremists” — meaning anyone who is pro-life — threatens the safety of workers in the abortion industry and encourages protests. Of course, no one should threaten, harass, or attack anyone, but these days, the ones doing most of the attacking and harassing are pro-abortion zealots against Supreme Court justices, crisis-pregnancy centers, and Catholic churches. Only listen to “the real experts,” the zealots urge: If you believe in the evidence-based reasoning of medical care, if you believe in keeping communities safe, and if you believe in centering the needs of experts of an issue, in this case people who have and provide abortions, then we ask that you interview and center the real experts of this area of medicine. This call to the media to ban pro-life voices from the discourse — as if media’s reporting isn’t already overwhelmingly weighted to the pro-choice side — is not only profoundly anti-democratic, but it would heighten already too-hot community tensions. This call for organized media censorship not only reflects the anti-democratic consequence of being is so caught up in one’s own supposed righteousness that disagreement becomes unbearable, but it is a fool’s errand. Pro-life voices are not going away.

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Anti-vaccine mandate protest sign held by child with american flag

Francis Collins Wants Purveyors of ‘False Information’ about COVID ‘Brought to Justice’

Francis Collins, the outgoing head of the NIH, is frustrated with Americans. He complains that we don’t trust science and believe in conspiracy theories. He also opposes free speech about public-health matters. Read More ›
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Censored keyboard key. Finger

U.N. Secretary-General Wants International Speech Code

This should have received a lot more attention than it did. A couple of weeks ago, U.N. secretary-general António Guterres issued a report that would limit free discourse on issues such as global warming, the pandemic, and other focuses favored by the internationalists. Read More ›
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Man holding stomach

Amazon Bans Transgender Critics but Sells Suicide-by-Starvation Book

The book-selling ethics of Amazon’s management are truly twisted. The company readily offers books that intend to teach how to commit — and will result in — suicides. At the same time, it bans books that simply engage in a respectful debate about a radical agenda — about which, surely, reasonable people can differ — because that could wound people’s feelings. Disgraceful. Read More ›
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Street Battle :

The French Revolution is Attacking the American Revolution

“That’s insane!” These days, how often do we say those words? The litany could go on and on. Dr. Seuss is suddenly persona non grata, six of his books removed from publication because they are “racist” and “hateful.” That’s insane! Read More ›
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book with burning pages on a concrete surface

An Amazon Book Burning

Book burning has always been a crucial ingredient of totalitarianism. In the 1930s the German Student Union infamously made bonfires from books considered antithetical to National Socialism. Similarly, the zealots who executed Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution destroyed books opposed to the diktats of Chinese Communism. Read More ›
Google HQ

Big Tech Now the ‘Fourth Branch of Government?’

Axios’s Felix Salmon has called Big Tech “the fourth branch of government” because of its recent concerted and successful shutdown of President Trump’s ability to communicate on social media. He seems pleased. Read More ›
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Close-up shot of microscope with metal lens at laboratory.

The Ideological Corruption of Science

Why don’t many people “trust the science” anymore? Perhaps because science, as an institution, has fallen prey to the same ideological infection that has invaded and corrupted many other institutions. But it is too rarely discussed, which is why a Sunday Wall Street Journal column by theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss is so important. Read More ›