Commentary: Is anyone ‘ready’ for Christmas?

Topeka, Kan., Feb 2, 2021 / 08:01 pm (CNA).- The Kansas Senate on Jan. 28 passed a measure that, if approved by voters, would amend the state’s constitution to exclude a “right to abortion” and reserve the right to regulate abortion in the state to the legislature.

The proposed “Value Them Both” amendment would codify that “the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion.” The Kansas House had passed the amendment Jan. 22.

The impetus for the amendment is an April 2019 ruling from the Kansas Supreme Court blocking a law that would have banned dilation and evacuation abortions, which found that the state constitution protects a woman’s right to have an abortion.

If voters approve the amendment by a simple majority during the primary election in August 2022, it will nullify that ruling.

The amendment’s supporters have said that the amendment is not intended to be a ban on abortion, but rather will allow bipartisan laws restricting abortion passed before the 2019 ruling to take effect. Democratic Governor Laura Kelly is opposed to the amendment.

The Kansas Catholic Conference has supported the amendment, saying that because the measure did not pass the legislature in 2020, “it will be the legislative priority” for the state’s bishops in the 2021 session.

Chuck Weber, executive director of the Kansas Catholic Conference, told CNA that while the amendment’s passage is an “unprecedented legislative achievement,” getting the measure to pass when placed before voters will be a challenge.

Weber said he expects strong opposition to the amendment from the abortion industry.

“Without the financial resources that the abortion industry enjoys, ours will be a grassroots, shoe leather effort. It really is David versus Goliath,” he told CNA.

Weber said the KCC is preparing a statewide grassroots educational campaign which will involve Catholic churches in the state, diocesan Respect Life coordinators, parishes, Knights of Columbus, college students at Newman Centers and Catholic colleges and universities, and Catholic schools. The group is also reaching out to non-Catholic partners, including the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, Weber said.

He urged prayers for the amendment’s passage.

“We already have in place a robust spiritual effort that includes leaning on Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Unborn, who is the Patroness for our effort,” he said, adding that all four of Kansas’ Catholic bishops have encouraged the faithful to pray the rosary together.

The Kansas amendment mirrors an ongoing legal effort in Iowa, another state whose Supreme Court has ruled that a “right to abortion” exists in its constitution. That state’s house on Jan. 27 passed House Joint Resolution 5, which would amend the Iowa state constitution to clarify that it “does not recognize, grant, or secure a right to abortion or require the public funding of abortion.”

Similarly, in Louisiana, voters in November 2020 approved an amendment excluding a right to abortion from that state’s constitution. State Senator Katrina Jackson, a pro-life Democrat, authored the Louisiana amendment when she was a state representative, along with dozens of co-sponsors from both parties.

Tennessee, West Virginia, and Alabama have also passed similar amendments.

Kansas’ abortion policy is prescient not only for its own residents but also for residents of its neighbor Missouri, which currently has only one clinic licensed to preform abortions, located on the far east side of the state in St. Louis.

As a result, many Missouri residents living near the Missouri-Kansas border avail themselves of abortions from clinics located in Overland Park and Wichita.

Nearly half of all abortions performed in Kansas in 2017 were on Missouri residents, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Data from 2019, the latest available, show that Missouri residents accounted for roughly 94% of the out-of-state residents having abortions in Kansas, the Witchita Eagle reports.

A report from the Missouri Department of Health and Human Services shows 39 surgical abortions took place in Missouri from Jan. 1 through Nov. 15, 2020, compared to 1,362 performed in 2019. The state recorded zero abortions in December 2020, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

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Washington D.C., Nov 24, 2017 / 03:47 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Little Sisters of the Poor are returning to court to defend their exemption from the federal contraception mandate, after two states filed lawsuits challenging the exemption.

“No one needs nuns in order to get contraceptives, and no one needs these guys reigniting the last administration’s divisive and unnecessary culture war,” said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at Becket Law and lead attorney for the Little Sisters.

The Little Sisters of Poor are religious sisters dedicated to living with and caring for the elderly poor. In recent years, they have been embroiled in a lawsuit challenging the federal contraception mandate, which requires them to offer an employee health plan covering contraception, sterilizations and some drugs that can cause early abortions. Catholic teaching holds contraception and abortion to be gravely immoral.  

Last month, the Trump administration announced changes to the mandate, including a broad religious exemption that offered protection from its demands to the Little Sisters and other objecting religious non-profits.

“The new rule should mean that their lawsuit against the federal government will soon end,” said Becket, the religious liberty law firm representing the sisters.

However, the states of California and Pennsylvania are now suing, challenging the Little Sisters’ religious exemption.

The HHS contraceptive mandate, issued under the Affordable Care Act, required that cost-free coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations, and some drugs that can cause abortions be included in employer health plans.

The original mandate had only a narrow exemption for houses of worship and their integrated auxiliaries. Following a wave of lawsuits on the grounds of religious liberty, the Obama administration released a “religious freedom accommodation” for faith-based non-profits that were not directly affiliated with a house of worship.

Under the accommodation, these groups could send a form to the government outlining their objection to the mandate, which would trigger a government directive to an insurer or third party administrator to provide the cost-free contraceptive coverage in employee health plans.

However, many groups argued that the accommodation still required them to participate in the provision of products that they believed to be immoral. Furthermore, they argued that, despite the government’s insistence that birth control products are free for insurers to provide, the cost of the objectionable products would ultimately be passed on to them in the form of higher premiums.

More than 300 plaintiffs filed lawsuits against the mandate. In 2014, Hobby Lobby, a craft supply retailer owned by a Christian family, won a case against the mandate in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision.

In 2016, a bundle of cases challenging the mandate and its accommodation made its way to the Supreme Court – including the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Archdiocese of Washington, Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, and other Christian colleges and universities.

After oral arguments in the case in March of 2016, the Supreme Court, in a rare move in the middle of a case, directed both the government and the plaintiffs to submit briefs explaining if, and how, a conclusion could be reached providing the contraceptive coverage while at the same time respecting the religious freedom of the non-profits.

Both parties submitted briefs, and in May of 2016, the Court voided the federal circuit court decisions involving the plaintiffs, and sent the cases back to their respective federal courts. The Court directed the lower courts to give all parties time to come to an agreement that satisfied their needs.

In October 2017, the Trump administration announced a modification of the mandate. While the original rule remains in place, a much broader exemption is granted to non-profits and some for-profit companies, if they can demonstrate a religiously-based objection to the mandate’s demands.

A moral exemption to the mandate is also permitted, although not for publicly-traded for-profit companies. The moral exemption would protect, for example, secular crisis pregnancy centers, which object to the mandate on moral rather than religious grounds.

The “accommodation” offered to non-profits by the Obama administration is now voluntary. Non-profits can have their insurer or third party administrator offer the coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives, and drugs that can cause abortions, but they do not have to do so under law.

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Washington D.C., Jun 8, 2021 / 16:01 pm (CNA).
Fundamental theological principles provide the framework for any doctrinal questions over the discovery of extraterrestrial beings, a theologian claimed in a lecture on June 5.&… […]