In bill veto, Oklahoma takes a stand against loan sharks

Students from Liberty University pray in front of the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case on Dec. 1, 2021. / Katie Yoder/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 2, 2022 / 21:25 pm (CNA).

Pro-life leaders had mixed reactions Monday night to the news of a purported U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion signaling that justices will overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. While many declined to comment on the reported leak, all of them condemned Roe.

Politico on Monday night published a purported 98-page draft majority opinion allegedly written by conservative Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in the closely watched Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The document states, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

Court experts reacting to the news emphasized that, if authentic, the draft may still be subject to changes before any final decision is announced.

The March for Life “will not be providing comment on an official decision of #scotus possible leak until a decision is officially announced,” Jeanne Mancini, the president of the March for Life, responded on Twitter after Politico published its exclusive report. 

“We also believe that given the leak the court should issue a ruling as soon as possible,” she added. “This leak was meant to corrupt the process. It is heartbreaking that some abortion advocates will stoop to any level to intimidate the court no matter what the consequences.”

Back in December, Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments in the Dobbs case, which centers on a 2018 Mississippi law restricting most abortions after 15 weeks and directly challenges Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe in 1992. 

“It is commonly known that Roe was erroneously decided,” Mancini said. “#SCOTUS needs to correct the wrong and give people the ability to decide abortion policy.”

Pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List similarly declined initially to comment on the alleged leak, tweeting, “Regarding the SCOTUS leak on Dobbs, SBA List will not be commenting until an official decision is announced by the Court.”

Later, however, SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser issued a fuller statement. “If the draft opinion made public tonight is the final opinion of the court, we wholeheartedly applaud the decision. The American people have the right to act through their elected officials to debate and enact laws that protect unborn children and honor women. If Roe is indeed overturned, our job will be to build consensus for the strongest protections possible for unborn children and women in every legislature,” Dannenfelser said.

“We also recognize the need for the pro-life movement to continue its existing work to support pregnant women and children in need. There are thousands of pro-life pregnancy centers and maternity homes nationwide and an ever-growing pro-life safety net,” the statement continued. “The pro-life movement will continue to grow to meet the needs of these women and their families, walking and planning with them to love and serve both mother and child.”

In response to the Politico report, Lila Rose, the president and founder of Live Action, responded with a slew of tweets, beginning with, “Roe Must Go! The right to kill a child doesn’t exist. But the right to life is a basic human right.” 

She commented on the “Unprecedented leak of a draft SCOTUS decision.”

“Roe has been wrongly decided since the day it was issued. It’s illogical and gravely unjust. Overruling Roe would be an important step in the right direction of protecting our fundamental right to life. But if this decision is issued, true justice has not yet been achieved,” she stressed in a Twitter thread. 

“It’s not enough to send abortion back to the states,” she said, indicating what would happen if Roe is overturned. “Democracies shouldn’t have the ability to vote on if a genocide can be committed against an entire group of people. Human rights are not decided by majority vote. They are inalienable.”

“Pray for the Justices tonight and every night until the decision comes out,” she concluded. “I fear there will be unprecedented threats against them.”

As president and CEO of Americans United for Life, Catherine Glenn Foster responded, “We stand alongside all Americans who have waited so hopefully and for so long for the Supreme Court to reverse Roe, to set American on the path to abortion abolition, and to restore justice to our nation. Today is a day for courage and hope.”

In the same statement, Steven H. Aden, chief legal officer and general counsel at AUL, condemned the leak. 

“The Supreme Court wishes to return the issue of abortion to the American people, and for that reason this draft opinion language is to be applauded,” he said. “It is outrageous that this draft language was leaked, presumably by pro-abortion staffers within the Court. It is a cynical and naked attempt to pressure justices to alter course in Dobbs and to perpetuate abortion violence. The Court should maintain the moral high ground, stick to the clear and courageous language this draft opinion, and not allow itself to be ruled by the expectations of pro-abortion activists or proxy media allies.”

AUL took the position that the “implicit intent of this leak is to pressure and manipulate members of the Court to alter their votes or otherwise water down the language of the final opinion — if the Court is truly the nonpolitical body that Chief Justice John Roberts has said that it is, the Court cannot now bow to partisan pressure to change course for the sake of an illusory detente.”

Another pro-life leader, Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, said, “We don’t know whether rumors of the end of Roe are accurate yet, but we know that ending Roe is the right decision, returning the issue to ‘we the people’ from a few judges with an agenda.”

“You won’t find ‘abortion’ written in invisible ink in the Constitution undiscovered until 7 men saw it in 1973,” she added, referring to the Roe decision. “Ending preborn human life is and has always been a judicial error. The court cannot allow the bullying tactics of the left combined with the threat of chaos caused by an unprecedented leak to change the right course — the end of Roe.”

[…]

Washington D.C., Apr 15, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Global religious persecution spiked from 2014 to 2015, the Pew Research Center noted in a new report released this week.

“Government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion increased in 2015 for the first time in three years,” the latest annual Pew Research Center report on “Global Restrictions on Religion” began.

In 2015, there were “very high” or “high” levels of animosity shown towards religious groups in 40 percent of countries, the report noted, either through restrictive government laws targeting religious groups or violence or harassment toward adherents of specific religions by other members of society.

The 2015 percentage was up six points from 2014, when 34 percent of countries reported such levels of hostility to religious groups.

Pew’s report drew from various sources on global religious freedom, both from the U.S. government (annual international religious freedom reports of the State Department and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom), the European Union and United Nations, and other non-governmental organizations.

The report was part of the “Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project,” funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation.

Certain countries and regions of the world showed especially high hostility towards religious groups. Russia, Egypt, India, Pakistan, and Nigeria all showed both government harassment of and social animus toward certain religious groups.

Some of the most common instances of hostility included “mob violence” waged against people for their religious beliefs or violence conducted in the name of religion, and also “government harassment and use of force against religious groups” Pew explained.

Certain regions fared worse than others on religious tolerance. Countries in the Middle East and North Africa featured the highest median levels by far of both “government restrictions on religion” and “social hostilities involving religion,” Pew reported.

However countries in sub-Saharan Africa showed the “largest increase” in the median levels of government restrictions in 2015, Pew noted, and both Europe and sub-Saharan Africa showed marked increases in “social hostilities involving religion.”

In Europe, there were many reports of harassment or violence against Muslims and Jews, continuing a pattern of both anti-Semitism on the continent and verbal or legal harassment of Muslims as the European Union deals with an influx of refugees from Muslim-majority counties like Syria and Iraq.

For instance, Switzerland showed an increase in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim incidents, including the desecration of a Muslim cemetery and an assault of an Orthodox Jew where one perpetrator shouted “Heil Hitler!”

Mosques and Muslims were targeted for vandalism or violence in the wake of the January, 2015 terror attacks on the offices of the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher market in Paris.

“France’s Interior Ministry reported that anti-Muslim incidents more than tripled in 2015, including cases of hate speech, vandalism and violence against individuals,” the report noted.

Thirty-two countries in the continent showed “social hostilities toward Muslims” in 2015, more than the 26 countries reported in 2014. Meanwhile, the number of European countries where there were social hostilities shown towards Jews remained high.

“The widespread harassment of Jews is notable because about eight-in-ten of the world’s Jews live in just two countries – the United States and Israel – but Jews continue to be harassed in a relatively large number of nations (74 in 2015),” Pew stated.

However, government officials also showed hostility to religious groups either through restrictive laws or rhetoric.

France and Russia in particular showed a spike, with over 200 “cases of government force against religious groups,” the report noted. These were mostly due to laws aimed at specific religious groups targeting the public exercise of religion, from France’s burqa ban to Russia’s treatment of some Muslims and groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses as extremists, jailing them without due process.

Some governments have been particularly restrictive of religious freedom for years, like those of China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Uzbekistan, the report noted. Others have more recently shown greater hostility, like Iraq, Eritrea, Vietnam, and Singapore in 2015.

Some of the government restrictions on religion were supposedly in reaction to terrorism. For instance, Muslim women in Cameroon and Niger were barred from wearing full-face veils after militants wore those veils to conceal bombs.

Both Christians and Muslims saw a sizable increase in the number of countries where they experienced harassment in 2015. Christians “were targeted by the highest number of governments in the Asia-Pacific region, where 33 countries harassed Christians in 2015,” the report said.

[…]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 17, 2020 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- As the Democratic National Convention kicked off on Monday, pro-life Democrats urged their party to adopt a “whole-life” approach that supports people of all ages and races.

Democr… […]