Earlier this year, a national conversation surrounding the morality, legality and ethics of in vitro fertilization (IVF) was sparked after the Alabama Supreme Court determined that “extrauterine children” are, in fact, children under Alabama law.

The parents of several embryonic children who were created through IVF sued the Center for Reproductive Medicine after their babies were destroyed by a patient at the fertility clinic.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in the parents’ favor after finding Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act covered their children.

The decision to undergo IVF as a proposed “treatment” for infertility often stems from very painful and personal struggles. As the Daily Citizen has written previously, “It’s not easy or comfortable to talk about the ethics of assisted reproduction. But too much is at stake not to.”

A frank and important discussion regarding the morality, legality and ethics of artificial reproductive technologies took place at SoConCon 2024.

The panel, “IVF Part 1: Peeling Back the Layers on One of Today’s Most Relevant & Sensitive Issues,” featured several experts: Autumn Leva, senior vice president, strategy at Family Policy Alliance Foundation; John Shelton, policy director at Advancing American Freedom; and Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

It’s not an easy time to parent girls.

Don’t get me wrong — legally, it’s never been better to be woman. Unlike almost every generation of women before them, your daughters will get to vote, own property, choose a career, make and control their own money and socialize with people they want.

But America’s cultural perceptions of femininity and womanhood haven’t grown apace with its legal freedoms. Your girls are growing up in a world that tells them women must be “feminine,” popular and above all, pretty.

If they fail to meet any of these criteria, our culture tells them they might be boys.

Fortunately, parents don’t have to abandon girls to these lies. American Heritage Girls (AHG), a God-centered alternative to the Girl Scouts, is one of the many organizations dedicated to giving girls the foundation they need to become healthy, resilient women.

Patti Garibay founded AHG in 1995 after the Girl Scouts excluded God from their oath, which had been written almost a century earlier.

“I knew that a character development program has to be based on something,” Garibay told Focus on the Family in 2022. “What’s going to be the moral barometer? What would provide [the definition] of right and wrong? When you remove God, you remove all of that.”

Focus on the Family and Family Policy Alliance are launching an updated and revised resource to help parents navigate the serious problems in our education system: Equipping Parents for Back-to-School.

How would you respond if you discovered your school clinic was dispensing contraceptives to children — without informing parents? Or if a boy took a spot on your daughter’s high school soccer team because he “identified” as a girl? Or if you found out your six-year-old child’s teacher was reading books about gender-confused children to the whole classroom?

In December 2020, Family Policy Alliance and Focus on the Family released a resource to help parents navigate these types of issues in the education system: Back to School — For Parents.

Now, we’ve updated this free resource!

In the past four years, and especially with the COVID-19 school closures, we’ve become aware of even more problems in the education system. Stories like these have made headlines across the country:

• Boys using girls restrooms and locker rooms.
• Schools hiding students’ mental health issues from parents.
• The failure of some school districts to teach children basic skills like reading, writing and arithmetic.
• Profane, violent and sexual books in school classrooms and libraries.
• Students being trained as radical activists.

During a press conference at Kansas City Chiefs’ training camp in St. Josephs, Missouri, Super Bowl winning kicker Harrison Butker was asked once more about the commencement address he gave this past May at Benedictine College.

Speaking in Atchison, Kansas, on Saturday, May 11, 2024, Butker offered heartfelt and convictional thoughts on a variety of hot button cultural issues, including the sanctity of life, gender confusion, family, marriage, parenting and restrictive COVID policies. His speech, which was shaped by his deep love for the Lord, was widely mocked and belittled. Critics pounced, criticizing and labeling the dedicated kicker as being misogynistic, bigoted and ignorant.

Here was the passage that really sent critics into orbit:

“For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you.

“How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”