Catholic woman may receive settlement over her son’s cremation

Washington D.C., Jan 4, 2018 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The State Department on Thursday unveiled its list of countries designated as the worst offenders against religious liberty. Advocates of religious freedom applauded the list, but said that several additional countries should have been added.

The countries of Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan were labeled as “Countries of Particular Concern” (CPC) in the State Department’s report. The 10 countries on the CPC list are unchanged from last year.

In addition, Pakistan was placed on a “Special Watch List,” which is a new category below that of Countries of Particular Concern.

A country is labeled as a CPC after it engages in “systemic, ongoing, [and] egregious” violations of religious liberty. The “Special Watch List” is for countries that “engage in or tolerate severe violations” of religious liberty, but not to the extent of a CPC.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a government commission created in 1998 to study religious liberty around the world, praised the inclusion of the 10 CPC counties, but said that several others should have been added.

The commission had recommended that Russia, Vietnam, Syria, Nigeria, and the Central African Republic be added, and that Pakistan should have been included on the list of CPCs, rather than the lower designation of “Special Watch List.”

“The designation of these countries is a key step in ensuring continued U.S. engagement in support of international religious freedom. Although USCIRF agrees with the 10 countries on the State Department’s list, it does not go far enough,” said Daniel Mark, chairman of the commission, in a press release.

Mark said it was a “surprise and disappointment” that Pakistan was not added to the list of CPCs, especially given President Donald Trump’s past criticism of the nation, which has engaged in state-sponsored discrimination against religious minority groups, and has anti-blasphemy laws.

Vietnam was previously designated as a CPC, but was taken off the list about a decade ago, in opposition to USCIRF’s recommendation. The commission has since called for it to be re-added to the list.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) questioned why Vietnam was omitted from the list of CPCs. Royce said Vietnam has regularly violated both religious liberty and other basic human rights, and that it is the United States’ responsibility to call out these violations.

Chairman Royce writes: “Religious freedom is a fundamental human right, yet far too  many people around the world are still persecuted, imprisoned, and killed solely  because of their beliefs. It is our responsibility, as Americans, to speak for those with no voice.”

— Jason Calvi (@JasonCalvi) January 4, 2018

Russia was also among the countries that the State Department omitted from its list of CPCs. USCIRF had called for it to receive the designation, in part due to an anti-extremism law that has been used to label Jehovah’s Witnesses as an extremist group, banning them from legally gathering or preaching in the country.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>????RUSSIA notes in this thread. <br>State Dept. doesn't name Russia a <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReligiousFreedom?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#ReligiousFreedom</a> Country of Particular Concern, even though the US Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended that designation. <a href=”https://t.co/s9She8I9KD”>https://t.co/s9She8I9KD</a></p>&mdash; Jason Calvi (@JasonCalvi) <a href=”https://twitter.com/JasonCalvi/status/948987873843400704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>January 4, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

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Washington D.C., Feb 22, 2021 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The Supreme Court will consider a case involving federal funding of domestic pro-abortion groups.

The court on Monday morning granted petition to review a case about the Trump administration’s Protect Life Rule. The Baltimore mayor and city council challenged the rule, supported by a number of states and pro-abortion groups.

According to SCOTUSBlog, the case will be argued in the fall of 2021.

The 2019 rule of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) prohibited grant recipients in the federal Title X family planning program from referring for abortions, or being co-located with abortion facilities. The rule was meant to implement the program’s original stated purpose that funds would not be used for abortion as a method of family planning.

Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, withdrew from the program rather than comply with the rule, forfeiting an estimated $60 million in annual Title X funding.

In September, the Fourth Circuit court ruled 8-6 against the rule, in the case of Cochran v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore. The majority ruled that HHS “failed to recognize and address the ethical concerns of literally every major medical organization in the country” by implementing the rule.

In a separate challenge to the Protect Life Rule, the Ninth Circuit court upheld the rule in Feb., 2020.

In November, a group of pro-life obstetricians and gynecologists and a Christian medical association had asked the Supreme Court to take up the case. The group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed the amicus brief on their behalf.

“The Supreme Court has already recognized that the federal government has the authority to prevent Title X funds from being used for abortion,” stated John Bursch, senior counsel and vice president of appellate advocacy for ADF.

The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists, which claims 4,000 OB-GYN members and associates, and the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, which claims 20,000 members and 329 chapters in the United States, had petitioned the court to take the case.

The court, Bursch said, needs to “make clear that any administration, including future ones, can enforce a rule like this one if it so chooses, and that the courts can’t interfere with that.”

On Jan. 28, President Biden took the first step toward repealing the Protect Life Rule by instructing HHS to review the rule “and any other regulations governing the Title X program that impose undue restrictions on the use of Federal funds or women’s access to complete medical information.”

A COVID relief bill under consideration in Congress would increase funding for Title X by $50 million. Some House Republicans have warned that the funding increase, coupled with the Biden administration eventually repealing the Protect Life Rule, would benefit abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.

According to the group’s latest annual report, it performed nearly 355,000 abortions in the 2020 fiscal year and received more than $618 million in government funding—both figures representing an increase from the year before.

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Atlanta, Ga., Aug 23, 2018 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- An injunction blocking the enforcement of an Alabama law that would have banned a second-trimester abortion procedure was upheld by a federal appeals court on Wednesday.

The 2016 law in question would have criminalized dilation and evacuation abortions (D&Es), dubbed “dismemberment abortions” by the state Alabama, which are the most common type of abortion performed in the second trimester.

Dilation and evacuation abortions are only used by two abortion clinics in the state, West Alabama Women’s Center and Alabama Women’s Center, which challenged the law with representation from the American Civil Liberties Union.

In a 3-0 decision Aug. 22, the judges of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit found the law to be unconstitutional. The law was similarly blocked last October by U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, who said it was unconstitutional because it would have effectively banned abortion in the state after the first trimester.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall told reporters that while he was disappointed with the court’s decision, he was encouraged that the court “recognized the state’s important and legitimate interests in ending barbaric abortion procedures – in this case, procedures that literally tear apart babies living inside their mothers’ wombs.”

In his decision, Chief Judge Ed Carnes wrote that “the State has an actual and substantial interest in lessening, as much as it can, the gruesomeness and brutality of dismemberment abortions. That interest is so obvious that the plaintiffs do not contest it.”

“But the fact that the Act furthers legitimate state interests does not end the constitutional inquiry. The legitimacy of the interest is necessary but not sufficient for a pre-viability abortion restriction to pass the undue burden test,” he said.

Carnes wrote that the Alabama law posed an “undue burden” on women seeking second trimester abortions because the alternatives were not considered “safe, effective or available.”

“In our judicial system, there is only one Supreme Court, and we are not it. As one of the ‘inferior Courts,’ we follow its decisions,” Carnes wrote.

U.S. District Judge Joel Dubina wrote separately to concur with Carnes, adding that he agreed with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ criticism of the Supreme Court’s “abortion jurisprudence”, which “has no basis in the Constitution.”

“The problem I have, as noted in the Chief Judge’s opinion, is that I am not on the Supreme Court, and as a federal appellate judge, I am bound by my oath to follow all of the Supreme Court’s precedents, whether I agree with them or not,” Dubina wrote. “Therefore, I concur.”

U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams wrote separately to note that she agreed with the court in its final decision only.

Marshall has said his office may appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

Alabama has had mixed results in passing recent pro-life legislation. In August 2017, a federal judge struck down an Alabama law requiring more scrutiny for minors who seek an abortion without parental consent.

The state is still considered to be one of the most restrictive in terms of abortion law. Alabama law requires that women be given counseling and an ultrasound prior to having an abortion, though it is optional for the woman to view the ultrasound image. It also has restrictions on the health insurance coverage of elective abortions that are not performed for reasons of life endangerment, rape or incest.

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