There’s a new kid on the block. Muppet Lily joined Elmo and Big Bird on the cast of Sesame Street last month. Despite Lily’s bright pink face looking cheery and healthy in her debut episode, the audience found out that Lily deals with hunger and food insecurity. Sesame Street’s newest primetime special, “Growing Hope Against Hunger,” introduced Lily in order to raise awareness of widespread hunger throughout the United States. Viewers were informed that over 50 million Americans don’t have the food they need much of the time. Seventeen million …
What do marriage and family have to do with economic growth? A lot, in fact. According to a new international report, there are multiple links between a strong economy and marriage and family. The Sustainable Demographic Dividend—put together by the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, and other universities throughout the world—highlights these links and argues that “the long-term fortunes of the modern economy rise and fall with the family.” The “great population boom of the last two centuries is waning,” the authors write, …
It’s that time of year again, and the “safe sex” brigade is out in full force to educate your sons and daughters about their sexual and reproductive health. According to a recent study, more young people throughout the world are having unprotected sex and know less about effective contraception. Now contraception enthusiasts are using this as a call for action to increase youths’ access to contraception. The study shows that the number of young people in the U.S. having unsafe sex with new partners increased by 39 percent in the …
Fortunately for New York City’s pregnancy care centers, a politically motivated ordinance slated to take effect in mid-July was declared “unconstitutionally vague” by a federal district judge. The ruling is a victory for volunteer organizations and freedom of speech. The court order will keep the city from fining pregnancy centers that were singled out by the ordinance and required, oddly enough, to highlight the services they do not offer, particularly abortion and emergency contraception. The ordinance also required the centers to emphasize to potential clients whether they have licensed medical …
Members of Congress are vowing to hold Planned Parenthood accountable for its use of taxpayer funding in the wake of a new report from Americans United for Life. Representatives Renee Ellmers (R–NC) and Randy Hultgren (R–IL) invited AUL President and CEO Charmaine Yoest to Capitol Hill yesterday for a news conference about the release of AUL’s “The Case for Investigating Planned Parenthood.” Ellmers opened the discussion by thanking AUL for its groundbreaking report that “lays the foundation for further inquiry.” She said that regardless of how people feel about abortion, …
Planned Parenthood Federation of America has gotten itself into a bunch of trouble this year. It all started with the a series of Live Action videos revealing the willingness of several Planned Parenthood affiliates to clandestinely assist sex-traffickers exploiting minor girls. Now documented misuse of federal health care and family planning funds and other concerns have led multiple states to de-fund the organization entirely. Americans United for Life (AUL), a pro-life public interest law and policy group, recently published a scathing report, “The Case for Investigating Planned Parenthood,” which documents …
A new chart from Heritage FamilyFacts.org bears good news: Recent marriages are lasting longer. This is great for happily committed couples, and it also represents a boon for civil society because of the social and economic benefits marriage provides. Commitment to marriage steadily declined from 1960 to the early 1980s, but as the chart highlights, this pattern is starting to reverse. Nearly 75 percent of the women who married for the first time in the early 1990s reached their 10th wedding anniversaries. This is a three-percentage-point increase compared to women …
Father’s Day may have a commercial pretense to it, but that doesn’t change the fact that many Americans will take June 19th as a serious occasion to express deep gratitude to fathers. As this Heritage FamilyFacts.org video shows, fatherhood is well worth the recognition. Dads help hold American families, and ultimately, civil society together. “The Importance of Fathers” makes it clear that fathers are more than just breadwinners for their families. They’re especially significant in the lives of their children.
