Planned Parenthood in Missouri filed suit Tuesday to prevent the doors from being closed on its last clinic in Missouri, which is currently the only abortion clinic operating in the state.

The controversy comes in the wake of Missouri passing a ban on abortions beyond the eighth week of pregnancy.

The license for the St. Louis-based clinic is set to expire Friday, and the state and Planned Parenthood are at an impasse over the results of a state audit of the facility. The state gave the facility three conditions to meet before their license could be renewed. Planned Parenthood told the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services on May 20^th that it could meet two of those demands—to adjust the personnel who offer state-mandated counseling at the clinic and add an additional pelvic exam for women who are having an abortion, even those administered by a pill.

Planned Parenthood said they were complying with the pelvic exam even though a physician at the clinic described it as “unnecessary,” “medically irrelevant,” and “borderline harassment.”

The two sides cannot agree on a resolution to the third condition, which is the department’s demand to interview seven physicians who provide services at the clinic as part of an investigation into “deficient practices.”

Helene Krasnoff, head of litigation at Planned Parenthood of America, said they…

The headline has sparked jokes all over the country. Ark Encounter, the Noah’s ark replica and theme park in Kentucky, is suing Allied World Insurance Company in district court because they would not pay for over $1 million in damages from excessive rain.

Williamsburg – where the park is located – saw higher than normal rainfall in 2017. While the 520-foot ark itself was not damaged, a slope near the access road on the east side of the ark started to fail before a “significant landslide” damaged a barrier along the road. In its place, engineers suggested they build a retaining wall with concrete shafts. In addition, they repaved portions of the road and reworked the drainage around it.

According to the Washington Post, Ark Encounter submitted the damage to Allied World Insurance, but the company denied the claim. Reportedly, the insurance company said the theme park’s policy carried an exception clause for work related to “design deficiencies” or “faulty workmanship.”

In the end, the insurance company paid what the suit calls a “very small portion” of the claim, but Ark Encounter said the company “breached their contractual obligations, acted in bad faith, and violated Kentucky law by failing to provide further coverage.”

Louisville’s Courier-Journal contacted Ark Encounter’s attorney, Amanda Brooke Stubblefield. She said they…

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy came under fire this week after the London Times published an article detailing that the Civil Rights leader had extramarital affairs with more than 40 women.

According to the London Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning MLK biographer David Garrow wrote a scathing piece about King for Standpoint Magazine’s upcoming June addition, breaking down the allegedly promiscuous life of the Civil Rights icon.

It is well known that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was surveilling King in the 1950s and 60s as approved by the former U.S. Attorney General, the late Robert Kennedy, in an attempt to tie him to the communist party.

According to the Christian Post, the FBI documents on King – including the surveillance recordings – were sealed under court order in January of 1977. The documents would be sealed for a span of 50 years, marking 2027 as the year they are expected to be released. 

According to the London Times, however, a “huge archive of documents” was recently released by the FBI containing memos which discuss the secret FBI tapes. Reportedly the memos detail King’s alleged involvement in over 40 extramarital affairs. The documents are also said to accuse King of watching a fellow minister rape a female congregant in a hotel room.

The London Times reports that the released documents allegedly implicate…

U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg engaged in a verbal spar Tuesday over several abortion-related legal issues – Including over whether a pregnant woman should be considered a “mother.” 

“A woman who exercises her constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy is not a ‘mother,’” Ginsburg wrote in a Supreme Court order.

At issue was an Indiana law that did two things: 1) banned sex-, race- and disability-selective abortions, and, 2) required the burial or cremation of aborted babies. An appeals court struck down the entire law. The Supreme Court upheld the latter segment of the law but chose not to get involved in the former issue.

Thomas, in a separate opinion, said he agreed with the court’s decision, although he made clear he believed such an abortion ban would be constitutional. Ginsburg also wrote a separate opinion, saying she thought the entire Indiana law was unconstitutional. Each also wrote a footnote directed at the other. 

“Justice Ginsburg’s dissent from this holding makes little sense,” Thomas wrote.

“Justice Thomas’ footnote… displays more heat than light,” Ginsburg retorted.

The high court, in its majority opinion, pointed to a 1983 decision that said states have a “legitimate interest in proper disposal of fetal remains.”

Ginsburg called it a “waste of the…

Intelligence agents in Iran have forced an Assyrian Christian church to close its doors.

According to the Assyrian International News Agency, agents “stormed” the 100-year-old Presbyterian church on May 9, changed the locks and removed the cross from the church tower.

“They made it clear that the Assyrian people are no longer allowed to hold any worship service there,” a source told Article18.

The source also said that the government agents installed a monitoring system around the church and threatened the custodian at the Tabriz church.

In 2011, the church was “confiscated” by a Revolutionary Court order, but church members have been allowed to use the building for services in the Assyrian language.

“Many churches owned by Protestants have been confiscated in Iran,” said Article18’s Advocacy Director, Mansour Borji, “In most cases the government has been unable to repurpose them, especially if they were listed. So they typically remain as empty buildings, often neglected, and turn into ruins before being demolished, as was the case with the church in Kerman.”

Under the constitution of the Islamic Republic, Assyrian Christians and Armenian Christians are allowed freedom of worship, but the groups are forbidden from holding services in the Persian language. Officials have said that services in Persian are proselytizing and converts to the…

While there has been an unexpected resurgence in giving, the Southern Baptists are hemorrhaging church members, culminating in 30-year low attendance numbers. 

According to the denomination’s Annual Church Profile, membership tumbled down to 14.8 million in 2018 — which is the first time it has dipped below 15 million since 1989. Though the overall giving elevated to a healthy $11.8 billion, the SBC is rightly concerned by the latest figures, which indicate a sizeable exodus of members.

“Facts are our friends, even when the facts themselves are unfriendly,” tweetedSouthwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President, Adam Greenway. “Heartbreaking to see these ACP declines. We must do better as Southern Baptists. God help us.”

For the past decade or so, the number of people baptized in the Southern Baptist denomination has also been falling steadily – down to 246,000 baptisms a year. Shockingly, that number is about the same as was recorded back in the 1940s when the SBC was a fraction of its current size.

“Like many, I am discouraged to see 7,000 less baptisms this year,” the president of the SBC, J. D. Greear, told Christianity Today. “It is the Lord who saves, but this information should spur us on even more to be intentional in evangelism.”

Though the baptism numbers are disappointing for a denomination that is centered around seeing lives transformed by…