BOSTON December 21, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One in 13 girls aged 14-to-20, or about 7.7 percent, who participated in a recent study from Boston University’s School of Public Health said they have engaged in “Multi-Person Sex” (MPS), reports the Daily Mail. Researchers believe imitation of pornography is a leading cause.

The study involved 328 girls from underprivileged areas of the city who had visited a neighborhood clinic for sexual health issues. However, economic status did not appear to be determinative of risky sexual behavior.

The study found more than half of the girls who had engaged in MPS had been coerced into having group sex by a boy or forced into a “gang rape,” and one-third of participants had used drugs or alcohol before the encounter. In 45 percent of MPS encounters, at least one male did not use a condom.

The average age when girls began having intercourse with multiple partners was 15.6.

Researchers said the use of pornography – by either partner – was a primary influence. “Girls were five times more likely to engage in MPS if they or their boyfriends had watched porn,” said Emily Rothman, an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the university. “Out of those who engaged in MPS, 50 percent did things their partners saw in porn first. Porn may be influencing the sexual behavior of these teens.”

The researchers findings give further credence to the conclusions of Canadian filmmaker Sharlene Azam, whose 2009 documentary Oral Sex is the New Goodnight Kiss documented girls as young as 11 going to sex parties and having intercourse with multiple partners. Azam attributed teenage hypersexual behavior to porn consumption.

Patrick A. Trueman, President of Morality in Media, told LifeSiteNews.com, “While the [Boston University] report is shocking, it is not altogether a surprise because…we know from scientific studies [pornography use] leads one to engage in the same activities that are viewed in the pornographic film.”

A 2005 survey found,  “Unwanted porn found its way to 17% of 10- to 11-year-old boys, 16% of girls 10 to 11 years old.”

Trueman, the former Chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Justice Department, said that pornography distorts an underdeveloped part of teenagers’ brains known as the prefrontal cortex, which is “the home of good decision-making and reasoning.”

Scientists and psychologists have concluded this has a lifelong impact on growing boys and girls. “While masturbating to porn, the adolescent brain is being shaped around a sexual experience that is isolating, visceral, and completely void of any love or compassion,” wrote Alexandra Katehakis of Psychology Today. “This has the potential to lead to great problems in sexual compulsivity and sex addiction throughout the adolescent boy’s life, because his brain gets shaped to expect the ‘heroin-like’ porn dopamine rush from all of his real-life sexual experiences.” This expectation will lead the teen to “seek out riskier and more visceral experiences that resonate with his early porn use.”

A 2009 CyberSentinel poll claims 13-to-16 year-olds spend almost two hours a week viewing pornography. The average age a child is first exposed to internet pornography is 11.

According to Psychology Today, a 2010 study of 73 Swedish teenagers aged 14-20 revealed that teenage boys who viewed pornography accepted the notion that “women are there solely to satisfy the men’s needs…more or less uncritically.”

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 18, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - Republicans most trust Dr. Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee to handle the issue of abortion, according to a recent CNN poll. However, a series of statements from Carson's campaign, and from Dr. Carson himself, have led to questions about the clarity of his pro-life views about when life begins, how RU-486 works, and his views on experimenting with aborted fetal tissue, among other issues.

On Tuesday, the Carson campaign defended his decision to refer women to abortionists if the child suffered from fetal deformities.

"Referring it on does not mean he is advocating it," campaign spokesman Doug Watts told Politico. "He’s advocating they are getting qualified medical supervision. He has always believed that the battle over abortion had to be waged in the hearts and minds of Americans, that you cannot legislate morality. But he also believes we’re winning the debate.”

Carson told the Baltimore Sun in 1992, “As a physician who does not believe in abortion, when faced with a patient who has severe medical problems, I would refer someone for an abortion."

"I would never advocate it’s illegal for a person to get an abortion," the doctor said at the time. "I think in the long run we do a lot of harm when we bludgeon people."

Carson made the statement the same year he participated in a study that examined tissues derived from two aborted children. While Carson played no role in harvesting or handling the tissue, he strongly defends medical experimentation with aborted babies, calling opposition to the practice "foolish." Rick Santorum has said he would never engage in medical research that was "morally suspect."

Recent misstatements also called into question whether he believes life begins at conception.

On August 12, Fox News host Neil Cavuto asked Carson, “At the point of conception - do you see that as life, Doctor?”

“Certainly once the heart starts beating - certainly at that point," Carson replied.

While he has said he opposes abortion without exceptions, he told Cavuto, "in cases of rape and incest, I would hope that [mothers] would very quickly avail themselves of emergency room and in the emergency room, they have the ability to administer, you know, RU-486, other possibilities, before you have a developing fetus."

Carson later said that he misspoke.

"I think when conception occurs, life occurs," he told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. He also told ABC's This Week program, "I believe that life begins at conception."

He said that his remarks to Cavuto meant to imply that both sides of the abortion debate would be able to agree that life begins when a fetal heartbeat can be detected - usually within the first six weeks of pregnancy.

When asked about "RU-486," he responded, "I think when conception occurs, life occurs. But I do believe in contraception."

"The egg is only fertilizable at certain times - and there are certain types of drugs, progestins, that can prevent ovulation...if ovulation doesn’t occur, you’re not going to have conception."

The Carson campaign later said Carson meant to speak of "emergency contraception," not the RU-486 abortion pill.

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However, one of the world's foremost authorities on Plan B has said that it, too, acts as an abortifacient.

Dr. James Trussell, the director of Princeton’s Office of Population Research, wrote in 2013, "To make an informed choice, women must know that [emergency contraceptive pills]…prevent pregnancy primarily by delaying or inhibiting ovulation and inhibiting fertilization, but may at times inhibit implantation of a fertilized egg in the endometrium."

Dr. Carson is currently second in national polls of Republican presidential hopefuls, behind only Donald Trump.

August 18, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – People who suffer from gender confusion are encouraged by the current cultural climate to "be themselves," meaning reject the gender they were born with.

"Transgender" teens are taught that what they feel is who they are and that to be happy and fulfilled, they must become the opposite sex. When Bruce Jenner decided to publicly look like a woman, he was supported by the mass media. Even the president of the United States, when Jenner decided to have castration surgery, applauded him as a "courageous" hero.

But studies repeatedly show that "transgender" people who seek to become the opposite sex are in fact not happy or fulfilled. In fact, a life-or-death internal war is continually going on within, to the degree that many, if not most, seek to end their lives.

That's what the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Williams Institute found when the foundation analyzed results from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. The numbers of suicide attempts are heartbreaking.

Over 41 percent of active "transgender" people try to kill themselves. That's ten times the average 4.6 percent suicide attempt rate.

And this study isn't the only one proving that those who seek to live as if they were the opposite sex are, in fact, killing themselves. Over a dozen other surveys worldwide have found the same alarmingly high suicide rates.

A national survey of more than 6,500 transgender people asked the question "Have you tried to commit suicide?" Forty-one percent answered, "Yes."

"Chronically high stress levels," "anxiety," and "depression" are most commonly reported among active transgender people. Self-harm by cutting is often reported as well.

The suicide hotline for them, Trans Lifeline, handled more than 20,000 calls in its first nine months of operation alone. Greta Gustava Martela, a lesbian who founded the hotline, summarizes, "With 41% attempting suicide, you have to assume something's just not working for transgender folks."

The mainstream media attributes the exploding transgender suicide rate to outside influences, such as peer and parental rejection, but does not consider the transgender person's tragic internal battle as intrinsic to living a psychological dichotomy.

The facts speak otherwise. The University of Birmingham's Aggressive Research Intelligence Facility (ARIF) conducted a medical review that found that there is no conclusive evidence that sex change operations improve the lives of transsexuals. In fact, many transsexuals remain severely internally distressed and suicidal after the operation.

Chris Hyde, the director of ARIF, explained, "A large number of people who have [sex change] surgery remain traumatized – often to the point of committing suicide."

And yet the effort to ignore the suicidal facts and teach even grade school children that transgender people are fulfilling their "true" selves continues. As Stella Morabito of The Federalist writes, "The [transgender] guy isn't allowed to talk about his regret. Not openly. The transgender lobby actively polices and suppresses discussion of sex-change regret."

Some transgender patients have said they realized, too late, that sex change operations did not live up to their promise. Alan Finch explains, "You fundamentally can't change sex. ... The surgery doesn't alter you genetically.  It's genital mutilation[.] ... It's all been a terrible misadventure[.] ... The analogy I use about giving surgery to someone desperate to change sex is it's a bit like offering liposuction to an anorexic."

Tennis champion Renée Richards, who went from male to "female" in the '70s, wrote, "I would have been better off staying the way I was – a totally intact person[.] ... I don't want anyone to hold me out as an example to follow[.] ... I get a lot of letters from people who are considering having this operation ... and I discourage them all."

August 18, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told Congress late last week that Planned Parenthood has been following the law in its practice of attaining fetal tissue and body parts for sale.

HHS also insisted it does not fund fetal tissue research or elective abortion through Planned Parenthood. Rather, it gives the nation's largest abortion provider money for its "critical health services." 

In a letter sent late Friday and addressed to Sens. Joni Ernst and Roy Blunt, HHS's assistant secretary for legislation contended that HHS "knows of no violations" of U.S. fetal tissue laws on the part of government researchers or the companies that supply the tissue, and said also that HHS takes the word of non-profits supplying it fetal tissue for research that they are operating in line with all aspects of the law.

"Currently, we know of no violation of these laws in connection with the research done at our agencies," stated Jim Esquea in the letter. "Furthermore … we have confirmed that HHS researchers working with fetal tissue obtained the tissue from non-profit organizations that provided assurances to us that they are in compliance with all applicable legal requirements."

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Sen. Ernst's office provided a copy of the letter to LifeSiteNews. While the senator is away on military duty, a spokesperson for her provided the following response:

Senator Ernst is still reviewing the letter and there are several state and congressional investigations into Planned Parenthood's selling of baby body parts. As she has stated, Senator Ernst does not believe that taxpayers should be forced to foot the bill for roughly a half a billion dollars annually for an organization exhibiting such disrespect for human life.

In its letter, HHS also said fetal tissue research has been significant in efforts to cure disease and plays a vital part in vaccine development.

"The use of fetal tissue in medical research has been an instrumental component of our attempts to understand, treat, and cure a number of conditions and diseases that affect millions of Americans," the letter stated. "In addition, research using cell lines derived from fetal tissue has also played an essential role in the field of vaccine development." 

This is disputed by Debi Vinnedge, executive director for Children of God for Life, which advocates for ethical vaccines.

"Fetal tissue research has not produced great advances in medicines," Vinnedge told LifeSiteNews. "In fact, there is not one single use of aborted fetal tissue or cells that has not been accomplished using moral sources as well." 

Federal research on fetal tissue has gotten more attention in the month since the first in a series of undercover videos was released showing various high-ranking Planned Parenthood executives negotiating the sale of fetal body parts and tissue from children aborted at its facilities.

The videos raise the possibility of Planned Parenthood profiting from the sale of fetal remains, and also show the abortion giant planning specific abortion procedures to best allow for procurement of intact body parts, both in violation of federal law.

Also exposed by the videos was Planned Parenthood's willful use of partial-birth abortion to harvest fetal body parts and its stealing aborted baby body parts without the consent of the babies' mothers, both also against federal law.

Ernst and Blunt were the top two signatories in a July 22 letter from 50 U.S. senators to HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell questioning Planned Parenthood's practices and whether they are in compliance with federal laws pertaining to the use of fetal tissue and partial-birth abortion.

Taxpayers have funded two federal agencies that purchase aborted children's remains over the last seven years with more than $300,000.  The National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration both take part in research using fetal tissue.

Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR), identified in the Planned Parenthood videos as a fetal tissue supplier, has received $257,000 from the NIH and roughly $73,000 from the FDA since 2009.

The letter told Congress that it had assurances from fetal tissue providers to the NIH and FDA that their tissue procurement was in accordance with the law.

HHS concluded with the qualification of the funding that it does provide to the nation's largest abortion chain, and listing its self-styled services.

"While HHS provides funding to Planned Parenthood federation of America through competitively-awarded grants and contracts, the funding does not support research involving fetal tissue," it said. "Instead the funds are used to provide critical health services, including annual wellness exams, cancer screenings, contraception, and to further the study of sexually transmitted diseases."

Planned Parenthood claims that abortion makes up only 3% of its services, when statistics bear out that the number of abortions it performs far outweigh its other activities. Planned Parenthood and its advocates also continually claim that the abortion behemoth needs federal funding to provide mammograms, when it does not provide them, instead referring women to other organizations that do.