In today’s America, a single woman facing a surprise pregnancy is likely to consider just two options: abortion or single motherhood. The third choice, adoption, carries such a social stigma that domestic placement of infants has plummeted — even as the number of parents desperate for a baby grows.

As mayor of Waterville it is my duty to act in the best interests of my constituents and ensure a healthy and prosperous future for the city.

The downturn we call the Great Recession officially started in 2007. After spending the last two years talking to people who lost jobs, homes or savings during the official recession, however, I’d argue that the trouble actually started decades earlier.

One of my favorite stories about my father also happens to be an instructive moral tale about parenting.

The news, at the same time shocking and hopeful, about the discovery of three Cleveland women who went missing as teenagers a decade ago has riveted the country.

Laurence Fink, the 60-year-old CEO of Wall Street money manager BlackRock Inc., wants the retirement age raised to 70. In one TV interview, he explained that we could all wait a few more years before collecting Social Security because most of us have jobs where we just “sit around.”

As a central part of President Barack Obama’s health care law, Americans soon will be able to obtain insurance through federal exchanges. But how, exactly, will people apply for coverage?

When engineers at Samsung and Apple design a new smartphone, they make use of the latest scientific evidence, the accumulated product of years of careful research. When our public officials design complex, new social policies, however, they rarely have more to go on than ideology, intuition and common sense.

I have an independent dental hygiene practice in Bridgton. I mostly see MaineCare kids and adults who do not have dental insurance or who have trouble affording care.

In December 1964 in Oslo, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when receiving the coveted Nobel Peace Prize, fixated on “man’s inhumanity to man” during his acceptance speech.