Beloved Texas priest asks for prayers after ALS diagnosis

Washington D.C., Apr 18, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Louisiana abortion providers presented arguments to the Supreme Court Wednesday, asking the court to strike down a state law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

The Center for Reproductive Rights formally presented its petition April 17, after the court granted a stay in February which blocked the law from coming into effect while lower courts heard the case.

The District Court found against the law in 2016, preventing it from coming into effect, but the decision was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals’ 5th Circuit.

The abortion providers argue that the Louisiana law would, if allowed to come into effect, leave the state with only one doctor qualified to perform abortions. They also contend that the law is near-identical to a Texas statute struck down by the Supreme Court in 2016, calling the similarities “crystal clear.”

The law requires that any abortion doctor have “active admitting privileges” at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion facility.

The appeal filed Wednesday argued that the result of the law would be to deny the vast majority of Louisiana women access to their constitutionally protected right to an abortion.

The 2016 decision was rendered 5-3 before the appointment of a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia.

Chief Justice John Roberts voted to uphold the Texas law, but also agreed to grant the stay in February. The case is expected to be heard by the court during its next session after the summer.

Since the 2016 case was decided, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch have joined the court. Both opposed the granting of the February stay, with Kavanaugh issuing a widely read dissenting opinion.

Speaking in February, Louisiana’s Attorney General Jeff Landry vowed to continue the legal fight, and pointed out that the law was passed by the state legislature with nearly unanimous consent.

“Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has put enforcement of this pro-woman law on hold for the time being,” said Landry.

“We remain hopeful that if the Supreme Court grants certiorari in this case, it will to be to re-affirm that court’s rule in fact-specific cases; because the facts in our case show [the law] is constitutional and consistent with our overall regulatory scheme for surgical procedures.”

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Washington D.C., Aug 29, 2017 / 12:03 pm (CNA).- While lawyers defending the practice of female genital mutilation claim that it is protected by religious freedom rights, one leading religious liberty advocate insists that it must be condemned as a human rights violation.

“Religious freedom does not protect harmful practices, and in particular religious freedom never, ever protects harming children. Never,” Kristina Arriaga, a commissioner at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, told CNA of the practice of female genital mutilation.

Defined by the World Health Organization as the alteration, removal or cutting of female genital organs “for non-medical reasons,” the practice of female genital mutilation is illegal in the United States, and has been since 1997. Since then, traveling to other countries to undergo the practice, known as “vacation cutting,” has also been criminalized.

The procedure does not have health benefits, it can cause lasting bodily injury, and it is a human rights violation, according to the World Health Organization, and more than 200 million women have been mutilated in 30 countries across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

It is still administered in many immigrant communities as a “rite of passage” for women, and has been understood in the past to discourage illicit sexual behavior. Or, it has been sought out as an “economic issue” to ensure girls will have a husband when they grow older, Arriaga said.

Nevertheless, in the United States, an estimated 500,000 girls under the age of 13 have had the cutting procedure or are at risk of receiving it. Many are not even aware of the procedure or how widespread it is, Arriaga told CNA. Since 1997, “only one single case has been brought forward,” she said. “Officers look the other way.”

Contrary to the belief of many, it is not only Muslim communities practicing cutting, Arriaga said, but Christian communities as well. In fact, in certain countries like Egypt, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, Christian communities have higher rates of cutting than other communities do, she said.

Some of these Christian communities in the U.S. practice female genital mutilation as a “perception of purity,” Arriaga said, to deter illicit sexual behavior by young girls.

But the practice is not required by any religious text – instead it is an ancient cultural custom that has been made into a “false” religious practice, she said. “These communities have confused a cultural interpretation in giving it a theological explanation.”

She also clarified that there is a vast difference between male circumcision – which is often performed for hygienic reasons – and female genital mutilation.

“Male circumcision causes no harm. Female genital mutilation is not a form of circumcision,” she said, but is rather an extremely painful procedure that “causes serious health and psychological harm.”

Many religious leaders, including Pope Francis, have spoken out against mutilation, she added. In 2015, at an assembly hosted by the Pontifical Council for Culture, Pope Francis said that the “many forms of slavery, of commodification, of mutilation of women’s bodies oblige us therefore to work to defeat this form of degradation.”

The U.S. State Department stated several times last year its intent to fight the practice of female genital mutilation.

In July 2016, at the 32nd session of the U.S. Human Rights Council, the U.S. “cosponsored resolutions” that supported “the elimination of female genital mutilation,” the State Department announced.

“Just because this is a tradition in some places does not make it right. This practice is harmful, and therefore wrong wherever it occurs,” President Barack Obama stated on Feb. 5, 2016, in his remarks on the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting.

Yet a case in Michigan has brought the practice into the national spotlight, as attorneys for the parents and doctors who performed the procedure on children argue that it is a religious practice and should be protected under freedom of religion.

Three people were charged earlier this year by the U.S. attorney’s office for a federal district in Michigan with performing female genital mutilation on minors, as well as “conspiracy to obstruct the federal investigation.”

Jumana Nagarwala, M.D., Fakhruddin Attar, M.D., and his wife Farida Attar were all charged with performing the practice out of Attar’s medical office in Livonia, Mich., in an Indian-Muslim sect – Dawoodi Bohra – in suburban Detroit.

Lawyers for the accused claim that the practice should be protected under freedom of religion.

However, no human rights violation against children should be protected under freedom of religion, Arriaga said, including female genital mutilation. “This is a grave violation of human rights,” she said, and a “form of child abuse that no one should have to endure.”

The World Health Organization says the practice “can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths.”

One woman who underwent the procedure with other young girls recalled in Mother Jones magazine that “we were cut. Some of us bled and ached for days, and some walked away with lifelong physical damage.”

To defend the practice under freedom of religion would endanger the cause of religious freedom, Arriaga said.

“Conservatives and liberals alike must unite to make sure that the Michigan case does not taint the concept of religious freedom, because if it does, everyone in the United States loses regardless of their religious or political persuasion,” she said.

In 2016, the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a statement saying that religious liberty and religious freedom were being used as “code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.”

“This generation of Americans must stand up and speak out to ensure that religion never again be twisted to deny others the full promise of America,” then-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Martin R. Castro stated.

Although the statement was sharply criticized by religious freedom advocates including Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, Arriaga said that defending human rights violations like female genital mutilation under the cause of religious freedom would ultimately give fuel to such sentiments.

“People who care about religious freedom must make sure that religious freedom is never a code for harming children, that it’s never a code for discrimination, that it’s never a code for bigotry,” she said.

Religious leaders and communities must also speak up for the rights of women, she said.

“Every single state should pass laws criminalizing female genital mutilation, and every community must find leaders in their community that can speak frankly, openly, and in the same language to families who are doing this to these girls,” she said. Michigan has recently passed a law increasing the punishment for the practice to up to 15 years in prison.

“These girls deserve our protection. These girls do not deserve to be harmed,” Arriaga said.

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Pope Francis’ May prayer intention: honor the dignity of women #Catholic https://t.co/KCIlrxhXYW

— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) May 8, 2016

 

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Washington D.C., Sep 13, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).-  

As both the Biden and Trump presidential campaigns court Catholic voters, both campaigns have made efforts to suggest they represent a commitment to Catholic social teaching. But there are marked differences between the candidates’ approaches on issues Catholics say are important to them in the voting booth, especially abortion.

President Donald Trump has received praise for the U.S. bishops’ conference (USCCB) for some of his policies, and criticism for other policies.

Trump’s administration has enacted conscience protections for health care workers, expanded protections against taxpayer funding of abortion providers and promoters domestically and overseas, halted federal funding of research using aborted fetal tissue, and worked to end a government mandate that doctors perform gender-transition surgeries upon request.

The administration has offered legal relief for Catholic organizations opposing the government’s contraceptive mandate, including the Little Sisters of the Poor.

At the same time, Trump’s administration has also resumed federal executions after a 17-year moratorium, cut down on the number of refugees the U.S. allows each year, has separated migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, and has begun the deportation of Chaldean Christians from the Detroit metro area—all of which earned criticism from the USCCB.

Trump has also been criticized for issues of personal character, an issue the Biden camp says should be front and center in the campaign.

Patrick Carolan is Catholic outreach director for the group Vote Common Good, which is campaigning for Joe Biden.

Catholics should heed the advice of Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego, Carolan said, that “a person’s character is what’s as important as any of these issues when considering who to vote for.”

Carolan shared an anecdote about a friend he said is Catholic and voted for Trump in 2016.

After watching Biden’s friendly interaction with a stuttering boy at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Carolan said, his friend remembered Trump’s apparent mocking of a disabled reporter in 2015. He reconsidered his preferred candidate, Carolan said.

“Because in those two instances, Joe Biden is definitely more Christ-like than Donald Trump. Not that either of them are Christ-like,” Carolan told CNA, before emphasizing again that he was “not suggesting that Joe Biden is Christ-like.”

Catholics may blanch at Biden’s support for abortion, but the administration will not be as extreme on the issue as critics are charging, Carolan said.

“Despite what the Republicans say, Biden’s not somebody who thinks that women should be able to have abortions even when they’re giving birth,” Carolan said. A Biden administration, he said, would be “willing to have discussions” on policies that reduce abortions.

Amid the 2020 campaign, however, pro-life Democrats have decried the party’s “extreme” support of abortion in its 2020 platform. Biden has not responded to their call for a platform that would welcome pro-lifers to the party.

While Biden was criticized during the Democratic primary by some abortion advocates, the candidate supports pro-abortion policies that would expand even upon those that existed during the Obama administration.

Biden says he would “work to codify Roe v. Wade,” the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision that legalized abortion, “as amended by Casey.” The Court’s 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision upheld Roe, but said that state laws could regulate abortion so long as they did not pose an undue burden on women seeking abortions.

Biden supports taxpayer funding of elective abortions in the U.S. through the repeal of the Hyde Amendment; a position Biden adopted last year under pressure from liberal groups. He also opposes the Mexico City Policy, which bars U.S. foreign assistance from funding foreign groups that perform or promote abortions.

And Biden’s health plan would offer public funding of abortions on a mass scale, something that President Obama promised he would not do when the Affordable Care Act passed Congress. Biden says he would set up a public health insurance option which, among other things, would cover contraceptives and abortions.

Biden also says his Justice Department “will do everything in its power” to stop state abortion restrictions, such as parental notification requirements or ultrasound requirements.
 
Recently, Biden’s selection of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as his running mate reignited pro-life concerns about abortion policy in his administration.

Harris has been an outspoken proponent of abortion. She grilled judicial nominees on the issue while on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as California attorney general, she supported legislation to force pro-life pregnancy centers to inform clients where they could get abortions.

Harris also has connections to Planned Parenthood. Her presidential campaign communications director, Lily Adams, is the daughter of former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards. And following Harris’ selection as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Planned Parenthood spent five figures on a video ad calling her “OUR Reproductive Health Champion,” according to the Washington Post.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that laws protecting the right to life are of primary importance in civil societies.

“The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation,” the Catechism says.

Despite the Catechism’s teaching, Carolan told CNA that abortion should not be the primary issue that Catholics consider in the voting booth, adding that the abortion rate is falling no matter who is in office—and has actually declined faster during Democratic administrations.

“We have to have a discussion about abortion, but it can’t be framed in black-and-white, like some people try to make it. And it’s not the only issue,” Carolan said.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rate (number of abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age) rose sharply after 1973, the year the Supreme Court struck down state bans on abortion and ruled that there is a right to abortion. The rate jumped from 16.3 to 29.3 between the years 1973 and 1981. It has then declined steadily since to a 2017 rate of 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44.

Fr. Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, who supports Trump’s re-election, told CNA that the abortion rate, ratio (number of abortions compared to number of live births), and absolute numbers of abortions have all declined, but the drop is due to “complex” factors including increased education on abortion, fewer abortionists and clinics, the rise of pro-life pregnancy centers, sexual mores, and state restrictions on abortion.

Federal and state abortion restrictions will push the number of abortions and the abortion rate down, and not increase it, he said.

Pavone pointed a report published by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute that reviewed more than 20 studies in peer-reviewed journals; the institute concluded that birthrates of women on Medicaid increased when the Hyde Amendment took effect in the 1970s, and that the policy “routinely” saves around 60,000 lives each year and has resulted in more than two million lives saved since 1976.

In conclusion, “the more the abortion industry is funded, the more abortions will occur,” Pavone said.

Regarding Biden’s promise to codify Roe, the abortion rate, numbers, and ratio “skyrocketed” after the Roe decision in 1973, Pavone said, and thus “[i[t stands to reason that a codification of Roe would not lead to a decrease in those numbers.”

Carolan says that a proliferation in free or affordable contraception could also reduce abortions. He pointed to a Colorado program, funded by a grant from Warren Buffett’s family, that provided no-cost intrauterine devices (IUDs) to health clinics throughout the state. According to state officials in 2017, it had resulted in a 64% decline in the teen abortion rate in eight years, state health officials claimed in 2017.

“Of course that opens up another issue then about birth control with the Catholic Church, but those are issues that we have to have discussions about and think about,” Carolan said.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says contraception is a moral evil, explaining that any “action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible’ is intrinsically evil.”

Carolan emphasized to CNA that in his view, and the Biden campaign’s, other pressing issues such as the separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the environment, are just as important as abortion.

“Every day 15,000 children die of starvation, of hunger diseases. You think God cares less about those children than those who die of abortion?” he asked.

The U.S. bishops’ conference has said that while Catholics should weigh numerous issues in the voting booth, abortion is a priority.

In a 2020 letter, the bishop’s conference said that “the threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives destroyed.”

The bishops’ letter adds that “we cannot dismiss or ignore other serious threats to human life and dignity such as racism, the environmental crisis, poverty and the death penalty.”

Religious freedom has also been at the center of presidential political debates.

Carolan downplayed the issue, telling CNA that “religious freedom” is a “word that’s misused, and it can be used for almost anything.” He claimed that “religious freedom” has historically been used to justify causes ranging from slavery to churches conducting same-sex marriages before Obergefell.

“We need to stop spreading the myth that our religious freedom is being violated,” Carolan said, noting that there is “not a war against Catholicism.”

During the campaign, Biden has said that he would reinstate the Obama administration’s rules for religious nonprofits on the HHS contraceptive mandate—thus potentially forcing Catholic groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, who say the rule violates their religious conscience, to go back to court.

Biden also says he will undo the Trump administration’s “broad exemptions” for religious groups to nondiscrimination laws—thus possibly opening the door to a flood of litigation against religious groups.

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