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Action Item: If you live in the San Diego area or know people who do, ask around among your friends to see if any of them can help us out with our Wish List!

Talking Point: The state’s mantra–that only “unprotected sex makes babies,” while protected sex is consequence-free–implies rather that children are the unfortunate results of technological failure. ~from this week's main article

Biology trumps Politics: A Child Custody Case in the Ohio Supreme Court Dr. J, Austin Muck, and Todd Wilken meet on Issues, Etc. to discuss the Ohio Supreme Court custody case whose ruling affirmed biological parental rights. (Click the POD icon.)

Lutheran Public Radio: Dr. J is usually on live on Tuesdays from 2-2:15 p.m. Pacific Time (Click the link to listen live or find a station near you.)

August 28 & 31--"Promoting Marriage on Campus," an interview with Dr. J being aired on EWTN's show, “Faith & Culture.” Click here for air times and viewing information.

September 23-25--Detroit, MI Fellowship of Catholic Scholars meeting. Receiving Cardinal O’Boyle Award. "Marriage, Society and the Common Good: The Catholic Perspective in the Public Square" (members only)

October 10-12--La Crosse, WI Ruth Institute program, joint with the Diocese of La Crosse for training Catholic priests (invitation only)

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Do you need advice on how to improve your marriage or relationship, or on how to find the right person for you? Expert Dr. J is here for you. Click here to ask your question, which may be featured anonymously in this newsletter for the benefit of all.

Read past questions and answers here.

Need help with your marriage? You can also check out Dr. J's "101 Tips for a Happier Marriage!"

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The Ruth Institute Wish List

Dear Readers, the Ruth Institute's limited resources are starting to become a burden. We need your help, in just a few little ways. Here's what's on our wish list. If any of you could help us out with any of these items, please contact Jennifer T. 

• Donated office space in north county San Diego
• Electronic equipment for displaying videos and dvds at convention booths:
  • a TV,
  • a DVD player, and
  • a stand

I assure you that anyone willing to donate these items will be making the world a better place. :)

NOTE: The Ruth Institute is a 501c3 organization, so your donations are tax deductible! Speak to your tax advisor about how to deduct non-cash donations.

"It Takes a Family" Conference Alumni on Fire!

Rachel Sheffield is one of the outstanding student alumni from ITAF 2011. Our ITAF cohort this year was truly a group of dedicated students, young professionals, already involved and making a difference in the marriage movement.

Sheffield currently resides in Washington, D.C. and works at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy research organization. Rachel’s policy research focuses on marriage and family, education, and welfare issues. Most recently, she has helped Heritage in the restructuring of FamilyFacts.org, dedicated to making social science statistics about family issues more accessible to the layperson and politician.

Sheffield is a regular contributor to The Foundry, Heritage’s rapid-response policy blog, where her work has been picked up by such sites as The Daily Caller, Townhall.com and National Review Online. Her role at Heritage has provided opportunities to address student groups and Capitol Hill staff on the role of the family in maintaining a strong civil society, as well as to appear on radio to discuss family and education issues.

Sheffield received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in marriage, family and human development from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. While a student, she worked as a research assistant for the university’s National Healthy Marriage Resource Center. Sheffield also interned at the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Ruth Institute is very proud of Rachel's accomplishments, and honored to have had her at "ITAF."

by Helen Alvaré, associate professor at George Mason University School of Law and a senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, as well as a Ruth Institute Board Member.

The new, pro-contraceptive recommendations by the Institute of Medicine endanger the health and well-being of women.

Richard John Neuhaus once commented that the “philosophes” of the French Revolution would turn over in their graves to discover how the Catholic Church had become the chief defender of the place of reason in the public square in the late 20th century. Today in the 21st century it is the feminist revolutionaries of the 1960s who are squirming in their rocking chairs as the Catholic Church dares to defy “the establishment” to stand for the freedom of women and of conscientious objection to federal mandates.

The greatest attack on women’s freedom is last week’s recommendation by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that the new health care law should mandate “the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive methods [and] sterilization procedures” as “preventive services.” This means that every health insurance plan must provide these services without co-pays or deductibles. “Grandfathered” employer plans are exempted, but these lose their “grandfathered” status if the plans are significantly changed; HHS estimates that by 2013, about 88 million Americans’ preventive services coverage will be affected by federal decisions. The Secretary of Health and Human Services has solicited IOM’s recommendations and will render a final decision August 1.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops responded immediately that the new threat to religious conscience posed by this recommendation fails women. He noted further that the “FDA-approved” category includes even abortion-inducing methods (such as Ella), and that IOM’s report appeared to be driven by ideology, not science or care for women’s health.

If you want to give new meaning to the word “outsider” in Washington today, identify yourself prominently as a conscientious objector to birth control as a tool in the “war against unintended pregnancy.” A giant federal health care bureaucracy becomes your enemy. So does one of its closest collaborators, the self-described champion of all things female, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The IOM’s report gave Planned Parenthood everything it lobbied for—even the opinion that abortion, too, is a form of preventive health care, but one that the IOM believed it could not recommend in light of extant law.

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