Jody Allard

I was born without fingers on my right hand. No one knows why, even now, 36 years later. It just happened, as these things sometimes do.

No one enters into marriage and becomes whole; there is no magical superpower that's granted alongside the marriage license. Marriage is simply two imperfect people who choose to come together in an imperfect union. That union can be remarkable and powerful, but it can also be dysfunctional and excruciating. Sometimes, it's even abusive.

In case you thought that the Internet couldn't sink any lower, the creators of a new app are about to prove you wrong.

Contrary to what Donald Trump wants you to believe, mental illness doesn't give people easy access to the deadly weapons they use to commit mass murders. Likewise, despite what Bernie Sanders claims, high rates of gun ownership is linked to higher rates of gun violence and implementing sweeping gun control policies would make our country safer.

I lost 100 pounds, and I kept most of it off. But I am not healthy, and I never will be.

ICYMI, "Sixteen and Pregnant" star's Nikkole Paulun's Facebook post about her monthly date nights with her six-year-old son is going viral –– and people are losing their shit over it for entirely the wrong reasons.

You don't get to beat someone simply because you have a feeling. And that is true whether you are a mother or a cop.

". . . it is illegal to sell fetal tissue, but it is perfectly legal to receive compensation for the time and expense involved in collecting, preparing, storing, and transporting tissue for research purposes. This is well-established in the rules and regulations surrounding organ and tissue donation. Similar regulations also make it illegal to sell children, but legal to compensate parents for medical care and expenses incurred during an adoption."

Amber Scorah's son Karl was three months old when she dropped him off at his first day of daycare. When she returned two and a half hours later to breastfeed him on her lunch break, he was dead.

It took five years for my daughter to be diagnosed with autism. There were dozens of red flags, beginning from the time she was about 10 months old, but her pediatrician always told me that she was fine. "She made eye contact with me," she reassured me. "She can't be on the spectrum." Besides, most children with autism, she reminded me, are boys.