Dinners, deliveries and drives: how some Catholics are serving up Thanksgiving for the poor

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks during news conference to announce a new bill on abortion restrictions on Capitol Hill Sept. 13, 2022, in Washington, D.C. Graham’s proposal would enact a national ban on abortions after the 15-week mark. Also pictured, at left, is President of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Marjorie Dannenfelser. / Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 13, 2022 / 14:00 pm (CNA).

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced legislation Tuesday that would ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks, except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is in danger.

The Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act is an updated version of Graham’s previous 20-week federal ban.

Speaking at a press conference alongside members of several national pro-life groups Sept. 13, Graham said the legislation was designed to “get America in a position at the federal level that’s fairly consistent with the rest of the world.”

Forty-seven out of 50 European countries have bans on abortions before 15 weeks. France, for example, bans abortions beginning at 12 weeks.

“This act provides the bare minimum protections for vulnerable unborn children,” Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, said at the conference. Mancini added that the United States ranks with North Korea and China in allowing “gruesome, late-term elective abortion[s].”

15-week ban aligns with science of fetal pain

The bill’s rationale rests on the overwhelming scientific and medical consensus that unborn children feel pain by 15 weeks’ gestation. 

“Pain receptors … begin forming at 7 weeks gestational age,” the bill’s text reads. 

The bill cites the fact that anesthesia is used in medical procedures performed on unborn children in the womb to prevent suffering from pain. 

The bill would impose criminal penalties on abortionists who commit abortions on unborn children 15 weeks or older.

It also forbids the prosecution of women who obtain these abortions and allows them to pursue civil action against abortionists in violation of the bill.

Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, leader of the House Pro-Life Caucus and a Catholic, introduced an identical House version of the bill this afternoon, for which he was joined by more than 80 members of Congress.

“Every day, a whole segment of human beings is being subjected to painful — and deadly — procedures. This unconscionable human-rights abuse must stop,” Smith said in a statement.

Bill would allow most abortions to continue

Graham’s bill is supported by a variety of pro-life groups, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, March for Life, and Urban Cure.

It is being messaged as a counter to Senate Democrats’ Women’s Health and Protection Act — reintroduced after Roe v. Wade was overturned this year — which would legalize abortion on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy.

“Democrats’ pro-abortion extremism flies in the face of American public opinion, which strongly supports compassionate limits on abortion like those proposed today by Sen. Graham and Rep. Smith,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, said in a statement. 

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Graham’s bill may not garner equal support from all pro-life organizations.

A 15-week ban has been “long denounced by many in the antiabortion movement because it would allow the vast majority of abortions to continue,” the Post wrote.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 92% of abortions occur before 15 weeks’ gestation and around 6% of abortions occur at or after 15 weeks.

“We have our work cut out for us,” Mancini said at the press conference. “At the March for Life, we work for a day when abortion is unthinkable.”

White House, Democrats condemn bill

Graham’s bill faced immediate backlash from pro-abortion activists and prominent Democrats, who are denouncing the move as a reversal from states’ rights.

“‘Let the states decide’ was always a lie,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, tweeted. “They want to ban abortion in every state, in every community.”

At the press conference, Graham said that “it is left up to the elected officials in America to define the issue.”

“States have the ability to do it at the state level, and we have the ability in Washington to speak on this issue if we choose. I have chosen to speak,” he said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a statement condemning the bill on Tuesday.

“Today, Senator Graham introduced a national ban on abortion which would strip away women’s rights in all 50 states,” Jean-Pierre said. “This bill is wildly out of step with what Americans believe.”

The ban is unlikely to advance, with a Democrat-controlled Congress and the White House held by President Joe Biden, who is on record as one of the most pro-abortion presidents in history.

[…]

Washington D.C., Jan 29, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- The US Department of State announced Wednesday the designation of 13 former Salvadoran military officials for their involvement in the November 1989 extrajudicial killing of six Jesuit priests and two others.

The 13 former soldiers will be ineligible for entry into the US.

“The United States supports the ongoing accountability, reconciliation, and peace efforts in El Salvador,” Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, said Jan. 29. “We value our ongoing working relationship with the Salvadoran Armed Forces, but will continue to use all available tools and authorities, as appropriate, to address human rights violations and abuses around the world no matter when they occurred or who perpetrated them.”

“Today’s actions underscore our support for human rights and our commitment to promoting accountability for perpetrators and encouraging reconciliation and a just and lasting peace.”

The Salvadoran Civil War was fought from 1979 to 1992 between the country’s right-wing military government and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, a left-wing revolutionary group.

The Jesuits in El Salvador were active proponents of peace talks and negotiation between the government and the FMLN.

On Nov. 16, 1989 a unit of the Salvadoran Army dragged from their beds six Jesuits at the Central American University in San Salvador and shot them. The priests’ cook-housekeeper and her daughter were also shot.

It is believed that the Jesuits were ordered to be executed for their apparent support of the FMLN, who had recently launched an offensive.

The priests killed were Ignacio Ellacuría, rector of UCA; Ignacio Martín-Baró; Segundo Montes; Amando López; Joaquín López y López; and Juan Ramón Moreno Pardo. All were Spaniards except for López y López, a Salvadoran.

The priest’s housekeeper Elba Ramos and her 15-year-old daughter Celina were also killed.

The soldiers left a message at the site of the killings meant to implicate the FMLN.

The extrajudicial killings garnered international attention, and increased pressure for a peace settlement.

Pompeo said Jan. 29 that the US “condemns all human rights abuses that took place on both sides of the brutal civil war in El Salvador, including those committed by governmental and non-governmental parties.”

The US was a supporter of the Salvadoran government during the war. The Atlacatl Battalion, which killed Fr. Ellacuría and his companions, was trained by American advisers.

The State Department said Jan. 29 it had credible information that the 13 former Salvadoran military personnel “were involved in the planning and execution of the extrajudicial killings” of November 1989.

It listed Juan Rafael Bustillo, Juan Orlando Zepeda, Inocente Orlando Montano Morales, Francisco Elena Fuentes, Guillermo Alfredo Benavides Moreno, Yusshy René Mendoza Vallecillos, José Ricardo Espinoza Guerra, Gonzalo Guevara Cerritos, Carlos Camilo Hernández Barahona, Oscar Mariano Amaya Grimaldi, Antonio Ramiro Avalos Vargas, Angel Pérez Vásquez, and José Alberto Sierra Ascencio, who it said ranged in rank from general to private.

The 13 were designated under the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act 2019, which bars them and their immediately family members from entering the US.

Montano was a colonel, and deputy minister for public security at the time of the killings. He was extradited from the US to Spain in 2017 to stand trial over the murders. He had been in US custody for six years, after being arrested for charges of immigration fraud.

In May 2019, Spanish prosecutors asked that Montano be given 150 years imprisonment for his role in the “terrorist assassinations”, saying he participated in the decision, design, and execution of the murders.

They believe that Montano was a witness when the head of the army’s joint chiefs of staff René Emilio Ponce (who died in 2011) ordered Colonel Benavides, the head of the Salvadoran military academy, to assassinate Fr. Ellacuría, leaving no witnesses.

Benavides and Lieutenant Mendoza were convicted of the killings by a Salvadoran court, but were released in 1993 after an amnesty law was passed covering all crimes committed during the civil war.

That amnesty law was struck down by the Salvadoran Supreme Court in 2016, and Benavides returned to prison, with the court declining to extradite him to Spain. The following year the Society of Jesus and the UCA asked that Benavides’ sentence be commuted.

Spanish prosecutors have also asked for five years imprisonment for Mendoza.

Zepeda, the deputy defense minister, had claimed the priests were complicit in the murder of the Salvadoran attorney general, saying that “the enemy is among us. They must be identified and denounced. Therefore, therefore, we will make the final decision to resolve this situation.”

[…]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 14, 2020 / 07:00 pm (CNA).-  

A developmental psychologist told CNA that a study claiming most women do not regret their abortions is flawed, and does not accurately represent how women experience abortion.

The study, known as the Turnaway Study, is the subject of a new book titled “The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion,” by Diana Greene Foster, PhD. The book was published on June 2, 2020.

The Turnaway Study originated from Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), which is based at the University of California, San Francisco. ANSIRH conducts scientific research domestically and abroad on topics related to reproductive health.

The study describes itself as “the first study to rigorously examine the effects of receiving versus being denied a wanted abortion on women and their children,” and studied women from 30 abortion clinics nationwide who either were denied an abortion because they were past the gestational limit; were initially denied an abortion as they were past the gestational limit but later received one; and those who received a first-trimester abortion.

In January 2020, the authors of the study reported that approximately 95% of women who had abortions did not regret their decision five years after the fact, even if they did initially experience regret.

“Even if they had difficulty making the decision initially, or if they felt their community would not approve, our research shows that the overwhelming majority of women who obtain abortions continue to believe it was the right decision,” said Corinne Rocca, PhD, MPH, an associate professor at the USCF’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences. Rocca is the first author of the Turnaway Study.

“This debunks the idea that most women suffer emotionally from having an abortion,” Rocca claimed.But Dr. Priscilla Coleman, a professor of human development and family studies at Bowling Green State University disagrees with the study’s conclusion and methodology. She told CNA she believes the methodology of the study is “highly problematic.”
 
“In any other field, you wouldn’t be able to publish this stuff,” Coleman told CNA. She said the “politically correct” conclusions found by the Turnaway Study are why it has received widespread acceptance. 

Coleman has testified as an expert on abortion and mental health in state and civil cases involving abortion, in state legislative hearings on abortion, before a U.S. Congressional committee, and to legislatures in the United Kingdom and Australia.

According to Coleman, the composition of the sample studied is one of the biggest flaws associated with the data.

“Initially, only 37.5% of the women who were invited to participate agreed to participate,” said Coleman. “And then, across the study period, 42% dropped out. So the final results are based on 22% of eligible women.”

Coleman was also critical of other research methods used by the authors of the Turnaway Study. As the legal limit to terminate a pregnancy varies from state-to-state, the study may have put two women who had abortions at considerably different points in their pregnancies together in the same research group. She said that many of these delineations were not made clear by the study’s authors, which further complicates their conclusions.

The sociologist also believes that the conclusions drawn by the Turnaway Study do not mesh up with other academic research on the topic.

“Most of the literature–the peer-reviewed scientific articles–indicate that a significant percentage of women are at risk for regretting their abortions,” she told CNA.

“Not every woman’s going to regret her abortion or have mental health problems, but there’s an increased risk. And so that’s something women have a right to know about prior to undergoing the procedure.”

Coleman explained that while the Turnaway Study has produced many academic articles about its results, they do not show the full picture of the risks of abortion, and that women deserve to know more about the risks that accompany the procedure.

Women “have a right to know what the broader scientific literature indicates,” said Coleman.

“There are hundreds of studies and if (women seeking abortions) are only given the results of the Turnaway Study, they’re not being informed, they’re being misled. And that’s problematic in my view.”

[…]