U.S. Supreme Court building / Steven Frame/Shutterstock
Washington D.C., Mar 30, 2021 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider whether Kentucky’s pro-life attorney general can defend the commonwealth’s law banning dismemberment abortions.
The court announced it was granting one question of the petition for certiorari, in Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Center, P.S.C.
While Kentucky’s law concerns the legality of a second-trimester abortion procedure, the Supreme Court will not rule on the law itself. Instead, the court will only consider if the attorney general, a Republican who supports the law, can intervene to defend it in court.
In 2018, Kentucky’s then-governor Matt Bevin, a Republican, signed the bill into law which banned the use of dilation and evacuation abortions, or “dismemberment” abortions. The bill was quickly challenged by an abortion clinic, and a federal judge agreed that the law was unconstitutional. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals also found the bill to be unconstitutional.
In 2019, Bevin lost in his reelection bid to Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat. Beshear and the state’s health secretary declined to challenge the Sixth Circuit’s decision, but newly-elected Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican, moved to intervene to defend the law.
The Sixth Circuit denied Cameron’s request to reconsider the law, and he then appealed to the Supreme Court saying that he, as the attorney general, had the right to defend the law even when other state officials did not wish to do so.
While the Supreme Court could eventually consider the constitutionality of the 2018 law, the court would first have to rule that Cameron could intervene in the case; he would then have to make his case to the Sixth Circuit to reconsider its previous decision.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List, said that Monday’s announcement from the Supreme Court was “encouraging news.”
“We commend Attorney General Daniel Cameron for doing everything in his power to defend Kentucky’s pro-life laws, including its ban on barbaric live-dismemberment abortions, which was enacted with overwhelming bipartisan support,” said Dannenfelser in a statement provided to CNA.
“State legislators acting on the will of the people have both the duty and the right to protect their most vulnerable citizens – born and unborn. We look forward to seeing this right upheld,” she said.
In 2019, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal against Kentucky’s ultrasound requirement, allowing the bill to be implemented. That law required women to have access to an ultrasound before having an abortion.
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The Adoration Chapel at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Beaufort, South Carolina. / Photo Credit: Aaron Miller, Miller Design & Marketing
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 20, 2023 / 05:00 am (CNA).
“Awesome. Awesome.”
That’s how Anna Sudomerski, the communications coordinator at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Beaufort, South Carolina, describes the parish’s eucharistic adoration program.
St. Peter’s is among the parishes in the United States that are hosting perpetual eucharistic adoration with the Blessed Sacrament exposed 24 hours a day.
Since Church law dictates that exposition of the Blessed Sacrament requires at least one adorer present at all times, this means the parishes that opt for this extraordinary form of worship must coordinate a major year-round effort to ensure at least one volunteer is present before the Eucharist every hour of the day.
Eucharistic adoration, whether exposed or reserved in the tabernacle, is an ancient custom of the Church dating back to its earliest centuries. Yet its practice today occurs among flagging faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, with U.S. Catholics signaling a growing reluctance to believe that Jesus is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament.
Yet multiple parishes around the country in recent years have maintained vibrant adoration initiatives, including St. Peter’s, which began its perpetual adoration in the early 1990s.
Sudomerski said the St. Peter’s adoration program started at the parish’s original historic church in downtown Beaufort. With the construction of a new church building in 2006, adoration moved to a purpose-built chapel there.
For years, Sudomerski said, the adoration program was run by team captains who each supervised a specific stretch of hours within a given 24-hour period.
“They were in charge of certain times, like from midnight to 6 a.m., in case the adorer could not make it, so the captain would have to find a substitute or cover the hour themselves,” she told CNA. “We had four team captains covering midnight to 6, 6 to noon, noon to 6, and 6 to midnight.”
She said the church’s adoption of the sign-up software Adoration Pro “made it a lot easier for people to sign up.”
“From there, ever since, we’ve done several campaigns,” she said. “One to pass out interest forms to see who would be interested in what hour. We just finished another campaign because Father thought the Eucharist is the most important thing that we have. We’ve done callouts, mailings.”
Light of the World Catholic Church in Littleton, Colorado
Kathryn Nygaard, the communications director at Light of the World Catholic Church in Littleton, Colorado, outside of Denver, said the parish has maintained an adoration program since 2007.
“There are two parishioners who are the main adoration chapel coordinators and they do an incredible job,” she said. “In addition, there are 24 ‘hourly coordinators’ to assist with making sure substitutes fill in during open hours and communicating with the adorers in their specific hour.”
“There are approximately 270 people involved in adoration, as either regularly scheduled adorers or as substitutes,” she said. The church hosts two “renewal weekends” in February for adorers to re-up for the coming year; regular announcements are also made at weekend Masses to attract more interest.
Adorers at Light of the World use the church software Flocknote to communicate with one another, Nygaard said. “Most requests for substitutes are filled within 1-2 days,” she noted.
Bishops aim to ‘start a fire’ of eucharistic renewal
The U.S. bishops last year launched the National Eucharistic Revival, meant to “start a fire” of eucharistic devotion among Catholics in the United States. The initiative was first conceived following the 2019 Pew poll showing low numbers of Catholics with a belief in the Real Presence.
As part of the three-year program, parishes around the country have been encouraged to launch Eucharist-focused programs and events to draw parishioners into a deeper relationship with Jesus through the Blessed Sacrament.
Next year, the bishops will host a National Eucharistic Congress featuring multiple high-profile Catholic speakers along with what is expected to be a crowd of about 80,000 Catholics. Pope Francis in June called next year’s national congress “a significant moment in the life of the Church in the United States.”
St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Columbus, Nebraska
At St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Columbus, Nebraska, worshippers have been keeping perpetual adoration there for more than 62 years — since Feb. 14, 1961, according to a live clock on the parish’s website.
The exposed Blessed Sacrament at St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Columbus, Nebraska. Credit: Tim Cumberland
The parish on its website says the roots of its adoration program go back to 1949 and expanded thereafter. The program now includes worshippers from other nearby parishes who come to participate in adoration.
Parishioner Tim Cumberland told CNA the church is “blessed to have about 550 people in the program.”
“A few years ago, we went to an automated process of managing our perpetual adoration program, using the Adoration Pro software,” Cumberland said. “This has greatly improved our ability for our adorers to find subs online when necessary. A request for a substitute is usually filled within minutes.”
Kim Waller said the 25-year-old adoration program at Holy Infant Catholic Church in Ballwin, Missouri, still uses a coordinator-led sign-up program instead of an online sign-up. Like many programs, Holy Infant breaks down management of the adoration schedule into hourly segments.
“The 24 hourly coordinators form the backbone of perpetual adoration,” she said. “They ensure that there is at least one adorer present in the chapel at all times. The hourly coordinator reviews the sign-up list weekly to ensure that their committed hourly adorer fulfills his/her commitment and contacts the adorer if she/he has not been to adoration as committed for two consecutive weeks.”
A new team of coordinators just took over in January, Waller said. “The last several years, the ministry was administered by a couple who since have passed within six months of each other,” she said.
St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, South Carolina
Donna Pierce told CNA she helped launch the 24/7 adoration program at St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, South Carolina, roughly 30 years ago.
“I think we have about 10-15 people who have maintained their Holy Hour since it began, and currently we have 318 weekly adorers and about 60 substitutes, not counting the many people that pop in the chapel when they can,” she said.
Pierce said a priest from a perpetual adoration apostolate helped the parish launch the program. “He told us that having perpetual adoration is actually much easier to run than a 40-hours or other time frame,” she said. “Adorers incorporate their hour into their schedule, so you don’t have to keep signing up from scratch.”
The exposed Blessed Sacrament in the St. Claire Chapel at St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, South Carolina. Credit: Lori Rainchuso
She said the parish maintains participation in the program by way of biannual talks at Masses (which Pierce described as “our fall and Lent blitzes”). These efforts usually result in upwards of a few dozen sign-ups.
On the website for the National Eucharistic Revival, the bishops say that the current year of the program is focused on “fostering eucharistic devotion at the parish level, strengthening our liturgical life through the faithful celebration of the Mass, eucharistic adoration, missions, resources, preaching, and organic movements of the Holy Spirit.”
Catholic evangelist Tim Glemkowski in a video for the revival urged parish leaders to “prioritize personal encounters with Jesus in the Eucharist” over the course of the year.
“The heart of this invitation … is to create space in our parish calendar this year for people to come and encounter Jesus in the Eucharist personally,” he said. “This could mean parishes that don’t have perpetual adoration start that opportunity, or opportunities for eucharistic processions, or different devotional experiences.”
Pierce said that starting the St. Mary program decades ago was a daunting prospect, but she went ahead with it by putting her trust in God.
“It was terrifying when Msgr. [Thomas] Evatt asked me to be head coordinator to start it so long ago — I was 30 years old with a toddler and working part time,” Pierce said. “So I made a deal with God. He would have to be responsible for sustaining it, and we would just be his instruments.”
“How many, many times he made it obvious he was running it!” she said.
Graces for eternity
St. Bonaventure’s website, meanwhile, predicts that the graces of perpetual adoration will redound not just in the present but for eternity.
“Someday far, far from now, there will be a magnificent heavenly banquet where all of the adorers in the St. Bonaventure adoration program will be reunited,” the parish’s website says.
“Won’t it be wonderful,” the website continues, “for all of us who have been in the program to share stories of how many of our lives, and the lives of those we touched as a result, were radically changed by this personal and enduring encounter with Our Lord!”
This past Sunday, Politico reporter Alice Miranda Ollstein wrote that “no federal dollars have gone to fund abortions…” According to Ollstein, this has been the case “for decades…” In fact, the exact opposite is true. […]
Jefferson City, Mo., May 16, 2019 / 04:15 pm (CNA).- The Missouri Senate has passed a bill that would immeaditly ban most abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy. Legislators responsible for the measure have said that, unlike recent measures in other states, the bill is specifically designed to pass scrutiny under legal appeal.
After passing a senate vote on May 16, the measure now moves to the state House of Representatives.
House Bill 126 includes a ban on all abortions past eight weeks of pregnancy except in cases of a medical emergency. Doctors who perform abortions after that point could face a 15 year jail sentence, but women who recieve abortions would not be punished.
“I think we’ve crafted a bill that will win in the courts,” state Senator Andrew Koenig, one of the bill’s sponsors, told CNA after the senate vote on Friday.
According to Koenig, the bill’s provisions are justified by a 98.5% chance of an unborn child surviving to term after eight weeks, compared to a 24% chance of a natural miscarriage at five weeks and under.
“We believe that the state of Missouri has an interest in protecting that viable pregnancy [after eight weeks],” the sentaor said.
State Representative Nick Schroer, the bill’s sponsor in the House, told CNA in February that he worked with fellow lawyers to craft the bill so that it would stand up to judicial scrutiny.
“We looked at a bunch of case law and worked with attorneys on this,” Schroer said.
Schroer said that should a district court rule against the bill’s eight-week ban coming into force, the law would still include a further ban at 14 weeks. Schroer said roughly two-thirds of abortions in Missouri take place before 10 weeks.
The bill invokes the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution and argues that most abortions performed at 14 weeks gestation invovle in utero dismemberment, which the bill terms “cruel and unusual punishment.”
While the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals has not previously struck down a 14 week ban, Koenig noted, even if it were to do so the bills contains additional bans at 18 and 20 weeks, when doctors are required to certify that the unborn child can feel pain.
“We call it the ‘heartbeat bill,’ but it actually operates a lot differently than any other heartbeat bill that’s passed,” Koenig explained.
Several states, including most recently Georgia, have passed so-called “heartbeat bills” which would prohibit abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio and Georgia currently have “heartbeat” laws waiting to come into force, while courts have struck down similar restrictions in North Dakota and Iowa.
The Missouri bill’s sponsors say they knew that to avoid falling to similar legal challenges, they had to draft a bill not already covered by court precedent.
“We need to give the courts something that doesn’t have precedent behind it, but accomplishes the same goals,” Koenig said.
“Ultimately I think other states can take our language and start really limiting abortion, because I think our law will, for the most part, get upheld.”
The Missouri vote came hours after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law a near-total ban on almost in that state. Unlike the Missouri bill, the Alabama law is intended to generate a court battle and challenge the 1073 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.
“[Our law] is not a piece of legislation that is designed for a challenge,” Missouri House Speaker Elijah Haahr told the Associated Press.
“This is the type of legislation that is designed to withstand a challenge and to actually save lives in our state.”
The Missouri bill also provides for a 70% tax credit for donations Missourians make to pregnancy resource centers on or after January 1, 2021 to foster a “culture of life” in the state, Koenig said.
If passed, the law would also prohibit “selective” abortions following a medical diagnosis or disability such as Down syndrome, or on the basis of the race or sex of a baby.
“For me as a Catholic, for me being pro-life, this is common sense to me,” Schroer said.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that since peaking at more than 20,000 per year in the 1980s, in 2017 the annual number of abortions in Missouri had dropped to fewer than 7,000.
The bill would also require any abortion providers operating in the state to have at least $3 million in insurance to cover women in case of botched abortion procedures.
“I think that’s actually a huge provision we added in the Senate,” Koenig said. “I think ultimately we’ll be able to eliminate abortion in Missouri because of this bill, but I think also because Planned Parenthood would just say it’s not worth doing business in the state of Missouri.”
Missouri has only one abortion provider in the state, a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis.
A Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia, MO has been blocked from performing abortions since October 2018, after the facility failed to adhere to state rules and license expired. No abortions have been performed there since.
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