During discussion of controversial issues on abortion and fetuses Wednesday, Republican leaders of Florida's Legislature sent all of the House's teenage pages out of the chamber, and they weren't allowed back in until debate opened on the next issue: guns.

On March 4, a group of anti-abortion protesters descended upon the UC Santa Barbara campus. It did not go smoothly.

The focus of this week's episode of the U.K.'s Secrets of South America was Argentina (last week's, featuring the clip of the beauty queen with mesh sewn to her tongue, was Venezuela). The show, a sort of modern imagining of the Prosperi/Jacopetti Mondo movies as hosted by a perky cross between Alexa Chung and Fiona Apple (Billie JD Porter), focused on the seeming contradiction between a society so liberal about sex (Argentina was, for example, the first Latin American country to legalize gay marriage) yet guided by the Catholic church.

Good news for fetuses: the rate of U.S. abortions have hit a new low under President Obama. Not since the legalization of abortion during the Nixon Administration in 1973 has the abortion rate been so low, at just 16.9 abortions per 1,000 pregnancies.

A two-month saga ended today in Fort Worth, Texas when a hospital deactivated the ventilator that was keeping a brain-dead pregnant woman alive. Officials at John Peter Smith Hopsital did so on the order of a judge, who sided with the woman's family.

One of the sad byproducts of the media conspiracy to ignore this week's pro-life conference in Washington was that we almost missed this new iPhone app for baby-savin'. If only we'd seen it on Wednesday, we could've told you how much it sucked sooner:

This evening, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wondered in her "journal" (blog) whether the Times should have devoted more coverage to the annual "March for Life" in Washington D.C., happening this year for the 41st time. She quotes an email from one "Francis H. Hoffman":

Late on Friday, a federal judge ruled that a North Carolina law requiring women to have an ultrasound and have the image described to them by a doctor before undergoing an abortion is unconstitutional.

Pope Francis, addressing diplomats in the Vatican's annual "State of the World" remarks, denounced abortion as "horrific," "frightful," and "a symptom of throwaway culture." BBC News speculates that conservative clergy in Rome had been clamoring behind the scenes for such a condemnation since Pope Francis' election in March.

American conservatives love, love, love Israel. They also hate, hate, hate abortion and socialized medicine. American conservatives face one hell of a moral conundrum in the new year.

A conservative amendment inserted into the Affordable Care Act by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) inadvertently gave GOP staffers the ability to get abortions covered by their health insurance. (Assume good intentions dead)

A federal appeals court in New Orleans has reinstated a key part of Texas’ oppressive new abortion law, only days after a federal court in Texas struck down the same provision. Abortion-performing doctors will now be required to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic, a rule that will lead to 12 clinic closures.

In a recent speech, Senator Rand Paul alleged that abortion rights in Virginia will lead to eugenics. But the exaggeration and hysteria of his claim weren't the speech's biggest problems: turns out, it was lifted straight from Wikipedia.

One day before it was set to take effect, a federal judge struck down key parts of Texas’ draconian new abortion law Monday afternoon, preventing, at least temporarily, the shutdown of as many as 12 abortion clinics.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, the product yielded if you mix a can of hairspray with an old leather trench coat, is telling reporters that his wife used "the wrong word" when she said recently that she believes abortion is a right. Ha ha ha. That crazy woman. Thank goodness her husband is here to set things straight.

Sources close to Democratic Texas State Senator Wendy Davis told the Associated Press on Thursday that she will be running for Texas governor in 2014. Davis, Governor Rick Perry’s favorite “teen mom,” famously stood for over 13 hours in a real filibuster that briefly blocked abortion restrictions in Texas.

Lest anyone think he’s too cool after yesterday’s historic interview, Cool Pope Francis denounced abortion today as a symptom of “throw-away culture” and encouraged Catholic doctors not to perform them.

In a 12,000 word interview with Italian Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, Pope Francis furthered his reputation as World's Coolest Pope by correctly noting that the Roman Catholic Church has become “obsessed” with preaching against abortion, gay marriage, and contraception.

It was fun having a Nazi supervillain as pope, but it wasn't very good for the Catholic Church brand. The new pope, Francis, is working hard at giving the papacy a nicer public image. If you're bummed out about a relationship, for example, he'll call you and talk you through it.

Hours after Gov. Rick Perry signed into law a bill that bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy in Texas, three lawmakers proposed an even stricter regulation: No abortions to be performed after a fetal heartbeat can be detected—which usually happens around the six-week mark.