A 22-year-old autistic blind singer won NBC’s America’s Got Talent contest Wednesday night, inspiring millions and sparking celebration among autistic families nationwide. 

With his mother Tina standing by his side, Kodi Lee was announced as the winner in front of a national audience, edging the second-place act, the Detroit Youth Choir. He won $1 million and a chance to perform at a Las Vegas show.  

“He won! Yes!” a member of the Autism Support Group of Southwest Missouri wrote on Facebook. 

The popular series is a talent show for singers, dancers, comedians and illusionists – anyone with a unique gift that can entertain an audience. Viewers vote to decide the winner.

Lee speaks primarily through his music, playing the piano and hitting notes few singers can. He is autistic but also has savant syndrome, which, according to the National Institutes of Health website, is a “rare, but extraordinary, condition in which persons with serious mental disabilities” including autism have an “island of genius.” Lee, though, is what is called “prodigious savant” – a term “reserved for those extraordinarily rare individuals for whom the special skill is so outstanding that it would be spectacular even if it were to occur in a non-impaired person.”

His website says there are only about 25 individuals in the world like him.

Lee…

According to a new report released by the Guttmacher Institute, abortion rates in the U.S. have reached an all-time low. Not since Roe v. Wade in 1973 has the U.S. seen such few abortions.

An estimated 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 occurred in 2017, compared with 14.6 in 2014 and 16.9 in 2011, according to the Washington Post.

The Guttmacher, which started as a research extension of Planned Parenthood, points to several reasons for the decrease, including infertility, fewer pregnancies, wider use of contraceptives, and a decrease in sexual activity. Researchers made clear that they do not believe the recent wave of restrictive abortion laws have made any effect.

“Antiabortion activists are going to try to take credit for this decline, but the facts don’t support their argument,” Rachel Jones, the principal research scientist for Guttmacher and who supports abortion, said.

“Abortion restrictions were not the main driver of the decline in the U.S. abortion rate between 2011 and 2017,” the report said. “Rather, the decline in abortions appears to be related to declines in births and pregnancies overall … several states with new restrictions actually had abortion rate increases.”

The Institute also admitted that the data is a few years behind, so it would not include the most recent wave of state efforts to block pregnancy terminations.

But Catholic University of…

Six churches were vandalized in south Dallas this week with red graffiti paint spray-painted across the steeples and exterior walls, as reported by Fox News.

“When I saw it, it bothered me,” Pastor Clarence Preston of Beth Eden Baptist Church said. “It really troubled me that someone would come to this level, and stoop to this level.”

The vandalism included red-spray painted “LIES” written on three sides of the steeple at Beth Eden, a slash through Jesus’ name at St. Luke Presbyterian Church, and “LIE” also written on a cross in front of St. Phillips Missionary Baptist Church, according to CBN.

The churches are working with the Dallas Police to find the culprit. One of the churches gave video footage of the alleged suspect to the police, who are asking the public for any information on the man.

Authorities are still unsure if the graffiti was done by the same person or a group. Though the messages resemble each other, police also have not said if the crimes are related.

“We had got a warning that something was going to happen yesterday to the churches,” Bishop Ray Campbell of the Ideal Family Church told WFAA.

Congregants found the messages on Sunday morning. They attempted to cover the destruction with black trash bags and the pastors addressed the crime to their churches during services. Members at St. Phillips attempted to scrub off the paint but…

A recent survey has shown that a majority of medical professionals would choose their conscience over their jobs.

According to a poll conducted by Heart + Mind Strategies reported by CBN, 91% of faith-based health professionals said they would leave their field should they be forced to violate their beliefs.

“As we talk to our members, this is the most important issue to them,” Dr. David Stevens, CEO emeritus of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA) said. “And they realize if we lose this battle, they no longer will be practicing medicine.”

These procedures include abortions and gender reassignment.

The Trump administration has pushed forward several “conscience laws” in recent years, but many of these laws have been blocked due to a belief that medical professionals should disregard personal morals to care for their patients.

The poll, however, discovered that a majority of Americans do not believe in this opposition. Eighty-three percent of the public believe medical professionals should not be forced to perform procedures that violate their conscience.

“We also saw strong agreement across party affiliations: 93% of Republicans, 78% of Democrats, 81% of independents and 76% of libertarians,” Greg Schleppenbach of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said.

Eighty-five percent of women also agreed while only 20% of the general…

Next week, President Trump will host and speak at the Global Call to Protect Religious Freedom event, promising to deliver a speech calling all countries to fight religious persecution, according to CBN News.

“The President will call on the international community to take concrete steps to prevent attacks against people on the basis of their religion or beliefs and to ensure the sanctity of houses of worship and all public spaces for all faiths,” said White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham.

The speech comes only a few months after a recent report showed anti-Semitism on the rise in the US and abroad.

in May of this year, the President invited Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein to the podium at the National Day of Prayer. Goldstein was one of the victims in the California synagogue shooting.

Trump told him, “We will fight with all of our strength and everything that we have in our bodies to defeat anti-Semitism, to end the attacks on the Jewish people, and to conquer all forms of persecution, intolerance, and hate…Every citizen has the absolute right to live according to the teachings of their faith and the convictions of their heart. This is the bedrock of American life.”

According to Politico, Trump’s work in pushing forward religious freedom has received approval even from his critics.

“The administration has said it has successfully nudged foreign…

Grammy-award winner Francesca Battistelli and her husband, drummer Matthew Goodwin, are publicly thanking God after she faced surgery earlier this summer while 10-weeks pregnant. That’s when doctors discovered an existing ovarian cyst had grown to the size of a small grapefruit.

Battistelli, 34, shared details of her ordeal on Instagram, adding that God miraculously intervened. In the post, she said her husband – Matthew Goodwin – was traveling when she woke up in excruciating pain.

“I called my midwife who said to watch for a few things and report back,” the mother of four wrote in the Sept. 15 post. “I called my parents basically in tears from the pain in my lower abdomen. They came over and we waited it out for a couple of hours, but the pain got worse. We called my midwife again, and she sent us to the emergency room.”

By the time Battistelli arrived at the ER, however, the pain had disappeared. 

She wrote, “I was grateful but confused. I knew I had a cyst on my right ovary, but no one had been concerned about it until now.” 

Doctors found that the cyst – which would turn out to be 10cm in size, a size comparable to a small grapefruit – had twisted around her ovary and cut off the blood supply, causing the searing pain. By the time the Christian singer had reached the hospital, however, “it had…

A Catholic hospital may have violated state anti-discrimination law by refusing to perform a transgender individual’s surgery, even though the hospital referred the patient elsewhere, a court ruled Wednesday. 

Mercy San Juan Medical Center is a not-for-profit Catholic hospital in the Sacramento, Calif., area. Evan Minton, who was born a female but now identifies as a man, was scheduled to have a hysterectomy at the hospital in 2016 when medical officials learned Minton is transgender. The surgery was part of Minton’s full sex-reassignment transition.

Because it is Catholic, Mercy San Juan only performs hysterectomies if the patient’s life or health is threatened. The hospital rescheduled the surgery at a non-Catholic hospital.

On Wednesday, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco reinstated Minton’s lawsuit, which had been tossed out by a lower court. The ACLU had sued on Minton’s behalf, claiming Mercy San Juan’s decision was “sex discrimination in violation of California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act,” according to KCRA-TV.

“The Unruh Act promises full and equal access to public accommodations, yet Dignity Health refuses to provide necessary care to transgender patients,” said Elizabeth Gill, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California.

Mercy San Juan contacted Minton two days prior to the…

A pastor who ministered in Eritrea said in an interview that he was tortured, starved and forced to do hard labor while he was imprisoned in the country.

The pastor, who is called “Gabriel,” told the Barnabas Fund that he was jailed several times while working in Eritrea, the Christian Post reports. The country is ranked as the seventh most hostile country in the world for Christians, according to Open Doors USA.

Gabriel was first jailed in 1998 for about a month along with other church members. His second time, he was imprisoned for three years even though his sentencing was only for six months. He says he was kept longer because he is a Christian pastor. He fled the country after his release.

“Sometimes you dispute with God, why you let me go through this hardship?” Gabriel was quoted as saying. “But when you start reading the Bible, when you pray devotion daily, automatically your mind clicks, you are in the main way – the way you are supposed to go.”

He said once he was tied up and hit in the head with a stick for about an hour. Another time he was locked inside a metal shipping container for two weeks in solitary confinement.

He said prisoners were only given a small amount of food every 18 hours and they were forced to collect and to carry stones that would be used in construction work.

“Sometimes you break the stones with a heavy hammer. You…