Bloody Week in Nigeria; Expendable Mothers; Botched Abortions in TX; The Exorcists Next Door...

Obama Administration Orders Medicare to Pay for Sex Change Surgery  ...Taxpayer dollars could soon pay for sex reassignment surgeries for elderly or disabled Americans on Medicare, thanks to a ruling Friday from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The agency’s Departmental Appeals Board lifted a three-decade-old ban on using Medicare funds for transsexual surgeries...

Mass migration helping stem church decline in Britain  Mass migration of Christians to Britain from countries such as Poland and Romania is among the factors helping to stem church decline, according to new figures.

The latest analysis of church membership shows a growth in black-led churches and the mainstream churches' "Fresh Expressions" movement have also helped lessen "significantly" the rate of decline.

The fall in church membership previously anticipated for 2020 will now not be evident until 2025, according to the research by Peter Brierley whose second edition of UK Church Statistics is to be published soon...

Bloody Week in Nigeria: Troops Kill 40 Terrorists, Boko Haram Kills 40 in Bombing
Boko Haram is believed to have been behind the bombing of the soccer stadium in the town of Mubi in Adamawa. The attack, which appears to have targeted fans leaving a soccer game, killed dozens, including women and children who attended the game. According to a source within Mubi's law enforcement, "More than 40 people have been killed."

The Nigerian Tribune adds that the soccer stadium itself was bombed, but the attack also affected a nearby bar and brothel. It also appears that militants may have been targeting a military base in the area, home to Nigeria's Special Operations Battalion (SOB). The Tribune adds that Boko Haram seems to have been especially active this weekend in northeast Borno state, its home base, attacking remote villages...

Expendable Mothers
Adelaide couple Mark and Matt, both 29, have acquired Thai-designed newborns Tate and Estelle through commercialised surrogacy overseas. According to Adelaide's Sunday Mail, “the dual boy-girl delivery an hour apart by caesarean section to separate surrogate women for gay parents is believed to be an Australian first.”

These babies have a complex genealogical history. They were conceived from eggs extracted from a single Caucasian donor woman (country not identified), separately fertilised with the men's sperm, then implanted into two Thai women who acted as surrogate mothers. Commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia and adoption by gay people disallowed in South Australia. The men spent A$80,000 to obtain the children.

I'm not about to make a case that Mark and Matt won't love the children or provide good homes for them. And it's not just gay men engaging in reproductive tourism in developing countries—an estimated 500 couples a year are doing it, with figures showing a tripling in three years.

What most concerns me is the complete erasure of the mother or mothers in these acts of global womb renting by wealthy Westerners. This latest case highlights this mother disappearance...

1,000 Texas Women Hospitalized Every Year After Botched Abortions  ...Operation Rescue previously reported that, according to statistics presented during a Fifth District Court of Appeals challenge to the Texas hospital privilege mandate, it is likely that nearly 1,000 women are hospitalized by Texas abortion clinics each year...

The Exorcists Next Door
The trees and rolling hills lend a warm, suburban vibe to Marion and Larry Pollard’s West Arlington neighborhood. Shouts of children from a nearby elementary school waft in on waves of heat as you step inside the foyer of their comfortable ranch home, where you’re surrounded by portraits of the grandkids—eight of them, ranging in age from 5 to 22.

To the right is the Pollards’ office, looking like any pastor’s study, with a desk, a trio of chairs, and bookshelves lined with Bible commentaries. A box of tissues sits discreetly beside one chair. A football-sized terrier named Bella bounces in and nestles behind you when you take a seat.

You won’t hear bland Bible homilies in this place, however. The Pollards are exorcists, practitioners of an ancient specialty mostly lost since the early days of the church, and their job is to cast out demons. The demons come out through gagging and coughing and shaking and yawning, with minimal histrionics, because Larry “binds” the theatrical antics of demons, such as flinging bodies across a room. They call it gentle deliverance...