Hemant Mehta is the founder and editor of FriendlyAtheist.com, a YouTube creator, and podcast co-host. He is a former National Board Certified math teacher in the suburbs of Chicago. He has appeared on CNN and FOX News and served on the board of directors for Foundation Beyond Belief and the Secular Student Alliance. He has written multiple books, including I Sold My Soul on eBay and The Young Atheist's Survival Guide. He also edited the book Queer Disbelief.
Over the past several years, Planned Parenthood has increased the raw number of abortions it provides. In 2006, they performed 289,750 abortions. By 2013, the number had gone up to 327,000. It’s possible the increase is, in part, due to the lack of alternative locations for women to get the procedure done. Over that same time period, the number of anti-cancer services dropped from 2,007,371 to 935,573. Why the drop? Because for some services, like pap smears, there were “changing medical standards about who should be screened and how often.” If you’re a pro-life politician who wants to use that information to make Planned Parenthood look evil, what do you do? Easy. You just have to assume your base isn’t intelligent enough to look into the details of whatever you show them. It worked with the recent anti-Planned Parenthood videos, after all. So yesterday, during a congressional hearing, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) showed Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards this chart documenting those numbers: Read more
Last month, the Freedom From Religion Foundation issued a damning report highlighting public universities who had chaplains for their football teams. In cases where the chaplains were paid, it meant tuition money and taxpayer funding were being directed at people who were there for no other reason than to promote Christianity. (In addition to player access, some chaplains also received free tickets to games and a personal office.) Now, Alabama State Rep. Craig Ford has put forth a bill, HB 33, that would make it legal to hire chaplains at public schools in the state. (It’s named after the chaplain at Auburn University.) Read more
