Iowa bishops celebrate as ‘heartbeat’ law goes into effect

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 27, 2023 / 09:00 am (CNA).
Although the most severe cases of religious persecution are currently taking place in certain African and Asian countries, the 2023 Religious Freedom in the Wo… […]

Pope Francis blesses a young woman during a general audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall in December 2022. / Vatican Media.

Rome Newsroom, Jan 10, 2023 / 05:00 am (CNA).

Sickness and vulnerability is scary because it is a threat to the culture of efficiency, Pope Francis said on Tuesday, in a message published ahead of the World Day of the Sick.

“We are rarely prepared for illness. Oftentimes, we fail even to admit that we are getting older,” the pope said Jan. 10. “Our vulnerability frightens us and the pervasive culture of efficiency pushes us to sweep it under the carpet, leaving no room for our human frailty.”

“We are all fragile and vulnerable, and need that compassion which knows how to pause, approach, heal, and raise up. Thus, the plight of the sick is a call that cuts through indifference and slows the pace of those who go on their way as if they had no sisters and brothers,” he said.

The Catholic Church will mark the 31st annual World Day of the Sick on Feb. 11, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in southwestern France is associated with the sick because of the presence of a miraculous spring from which many people have obtained physical healing.

This year’s papal message is titled “Take care of him: Compassion as a synodal exercise of healing.”

“It is not only what functions well or those who are productive that matter,” Pope Francis said. “Sick people, in fact, are at the center of God’s people, and the Church advances together with them as a sign of a humanity in which everyone is precious and no one should be discarded or left behind.”

He said it is crucial that the whole Church strive to follow the example of the Good Samaritan.

Just as the Samaritan asked the innkeeper to take care of the wounded man, “Jesus addresses the same call to each of us,” Francis said.

“As I noted in Fratelli Tutti, ‘The parable shows us how a community can be rebuilt by men and women who identify with the vulnerability of others, who reject the creation of a society of exclusion, and act instead as neighbors, lifting up and rehabilitating the fallen for the sake of the common good’ (No. 67),” he said.

“Indeed,” the pope continued, “‘we were created for a fulfillment that can only be found in love. We cannot be indifferent to suffering’ (No. 68).”

Pope Francis also noted that sickness and weakness are part of the human journey, thus, it can be an act of synodality to walk together in community with those who are suffering.

“I invite all of us to reflect on the fact that it is especially through the experience of vulnerability and illness that we can learn to walk together according to the style of God, which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness,” he said.

Pope Francis also addressed the role injustice plays in the lack of access to adequate medical care which many people experience.

The COVID-19 pandemic, he said, showed the limits of existing public welfare systems.

“It is no longer easy to distinguish the assaults on human life and dignity that arise from natural causes from those caused by injustice and violence,” he said.

“In fact,” he continued, “increasing levels of inequality and the prevailing interests of the few now affect every human environment to the extent that it is difficult to consider any experience as having solely ‘natural’ causes. All suffering takes place in the context of a ‘culture’ and its various contradictions.”

“Gratitude, then, needs to be matched by actively seeking, in every country, strategies and resources in order to guarantee each person’s fundamental right to basic and decent healthcare,” the pope said.

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Washington D.C., Mar 7, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has dismissed arguments made before the Supreme Court against a state abortion law as “absolutely a lie.” In a Thursday interview, Landry said efforts to conflate the case with a Texas law regulating abortion clinics, struck down by the court in 2016, were clearly false. 

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case June Medical Serves v. Russo on Wednesday, as lawyers for a Louisiana abortion clinic challenged the state’s Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, which requires that abortionists in the state have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility.

Critics of the law have likened it to a similar statute in Texas which the Supreme Court struck down in the case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt in 2016. The court ruled that the admitting privileges requirement in Texas’ H.B. 2 placed “an undue burden on abortion access.” 

In an interview Thursday on EWTN Pro-Life Weekly, Landry said there was no reasonable parallel to be drawn between the two cases. 

The Texas law, he argued, singled out abortion facilities by only requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges, without making that a requirement for other ambulatory surgical centers. Under the Louisiana law, abortion centers are simply being brought into line with existing regulation – doctors at all other ambulatory surgical centers are already required to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, regardless of the type of procedure they perform. 

Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, Landry said, brings abortion clinics out of a “no-man’s land,” making them subject to the same regulations other ambulatory surgical centers already meet in Louisiana.  

Landry argued that by conflating the two separate laws and cases surrounding them, the mainstream media is echoing the plaintiff’s argument “which is absolutely a lie.” 

“Texas’ law and Louisiana’s law and the cases are as different as an apple and an orange,” he said. 

Louisiana Solicitor General Liz Murrill, who defended the law before the Supreme Court, agreed, saying in the same interview that abortionists “shouldn’t be given a special exemption to rules that we’re applying to other doctors in our state.”

Murrill said there is a “robust legislative record to support our law,” and argued that the law was being challenged by those with an interest in deregulation – an interest in clear conflict with what was best for women.

“I think it’s just fundamentally in conflict with the interests of the people who are protected with health and safety regulations,” Murrill said. “If you think about a seat belt law, we wouldn’t let Ford Motor Company challenge a seatbelt law or an airbag law in the name of the people who are protected by that airbag.”

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s Solicitor General, defended Louisiana’s <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/ProLife?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#ProLife</a> law in the Supreme Court yesterday. It was a case brought on by an abortion facility over admitting privileges. Murrill explains why she considers this a conflict of interest. <a href=”https://t.co/lPIPd7paoS”>pic.twitter.com/lPIPd7paoS</a></p>&mdash; EWTN Pro-Life Weekly (@EWTNProLife) <a href=”https://twitter.com/EWTNProLife/status/1235719240767791104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>March 6, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

Kate Scanlon is a producer for EWTN Pro-Life Weekly.

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