Missouri bishops urge state to refrain from executing convicted child-killer next month

CNA Staff, Jun 26, 2020 / 12:09 pm (CNA).- The Missouri health department issued a license to the state’s only abortion clinic Thursday. Its license had been revoked a year ago over regulators’ concerns about health and safety problems at the clinic.

The state’s Administrative Hearing Commission had ruled last month that the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services was wrong not to renew Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region’s license to perform abortions.

The health department inspected the clinic in St. Louis before granting the license June 25. If it should want to appeal the ruling from the Administrative Hearing Commission, the health department must do so by June 29.

The license had been revoked in June 2019, but the administrative commission and a state judge both granted a temporary stay of the health department’s decision, allowing the clinic to remain open while the case was reviewed.

The health department has cited an “unprecedented lack of cooperation” on the part of the St. Louis clinic, as well as a “failure to meet basic standards of patient care,” identifying four instances of failed abortion procedures at the clinic; among these, one of the mothers developed sepsis, and another was hospitalized with life threatening complications.

According to the health department, Planned Parenthood went back on its agreement to perform pelvic examinations as a “preoperative health requirement.” Several doctors at the clinic refused requests to provide interviews with the health department, and the clinic would not have been prepared for a case of a woman who suffered “severe hemorrhaging” at a hospital before being referred to Planned Parenthood.

A 2016 report on an inspection of the clinic by the health department shows that the clinic at that time was in violation of multiple state standards involving the sterilization and storing of equipment, and the proper documentation of medication and procedures.

Planned Parenthood has accused the state of weaponizing the regulatory process and claimed the state has admitted the pelvic exams are “medically unnecessary.”

In October 2019 Planned Parenthood opened a new clinic in Fairview Heights, Ill., just 15 miles east of St. Louis.

Yamelsie Rodriguez, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said that women are seeking abortions in Illinois due to more permissive abortion laws. Missouri also has a 72-hour waiting period for abortion.

Earlier this month a federal appellate court dismissed a lawsuit filed by a member of the Satanic Temple against Missouri’s informed consent abortion law, rejecting the argument that the law established Catholic religious belief by stating that life begins at conception.

“Any theory of when life begins necessarily aligns with some religious beliefs and not others,” said U.S. Circuit Judge David R. Stras in a June 9 decision from the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Under the plaintiff’s theory, the decision said, “Missouri’s only option would be to avoid legislating in this area altogether.”

State law requires abortion providers to distribute a booklet from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services which includes the statement: “The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”

Missouri enacted a comprehensive abortion ban in 2019, which Republican Gov. Mike Parson signed into law. The legislation was supported by Archbishop Robert Carlson of St. Louis.

Missouri’s law set up a multi-tier ban on abortions after eight weeks, 14 weeks, 18 weeks and 20 weeks, as well as bans on abortions conducted solely because of the baby’s race, sex, or Down syndrome diagnosis. In August 2019 a federal judge struck down all of the bans related to the stages of pregnancy, but left intact the disability, race, and sex-selective abortion bans.

[…]

An inspector had deemed the Catholic chapel’s sanctuary candle a fire hazard. / Credit: Saint Francis Health System

Denver, Colo., May 5, 2023 / 10:25 am (CNA).
Federal government regulators backed off their demands that a Catholic hospital ext… […]

CNA Staff, Jan 1, 2021 / 04:09 pm (CNA).- During his upcoming administration, presumed President-Elect Joe Biden will have to deal with the issue of abortion, and Catholics must engage with him says Charles C. Camosy in an op-ed published by First Things on the last day of 2020.

Camosy, an associate professor of Theological and Social Ethics at Fordham University, says that “Biden doesn’t agree with the U.S. bishops about everything, but he does care about what they say and regularly tries to fit their concerns into Democratic policy proposals.”

“Perhaps Biden’s newly-created office dedicated to reaching out to conservatives should at least be something worth paying attention to,” writes the theologian, but warns that “if there is to be any outreach, then the Biden administration will need to address the greatest problem with today’s Democratic party. And that is abortion.”

“No one supports a consistent life ethic more strongly than I do,” says Camosy, author of ‘Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consistent Life Ethic Can Unite a Fractured People.’ “But in advocating for the full vision of St. John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, it does not follow that we must give all issues equal weight.”

“The U.S. bishops, though they rightly have many priorities, are quite right to claim that abortion must remain the ‘preeminent priority.’ How could ‘the greatest universal genocide’ be anything else?” Camosy writes.

The author observes that “Joe Biden used to be something close to a pro-life Democrat, but he has dramatically changed his views in recent years, especially in the lead-up to the 2020 campaign. If his administration shifts the so-called Mexico City Policy so that U.S. tax dollars fund abortions overseas, as he has promised to do, Biden will become more directly complicit in abortion than at perhaps any other time in his life. He has also reversed himself on the Hyde Amendment, which means he is in favor of forcing pro-life citizens to pay for abortions with their tax dollars.”

But, “Biden has supported Hyde and even late-term abortion bans in the past. He has said he believes there should be room in the Democratic Party for pro-lifers. In the past he has supported conscience protections,” writes Camosy, asking: “Is there any hope we can get that guy back?”

“Given what is at stake for millions of prenatal lives—as well as their mothers (who are often coerced into abortions they don’t want)—Catholics have no choice: We must engage Biden after his inauguration.”

Reminding readers that “Biden is a political animal,” Camosy argues that Catholics could push for “a grand bargain” that would entail “much lower thresholds for legal abortion and much higher levels of support for pregnant women and families. The combination of socially conservative and economically progressive policies fits well with Catholic teaching. And it would save hundreds of thousands of prenatal lives by reducing both supply and demand for abortion.”

“Catholics committed to the fullness of the teaching of the Church have an opportunity. We can encourage Biden to return to his pro-life roots, pointing out the moral urgency of the pro-life cause.”

Charles Camosy resigned from the board of Democrats for Life of America (DFLA), writing in a column in the NY Post that the Democratic Party’s extreme support of abortion left him “no choice” but to leave his party.

Read Comosy’s full op-ed here: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/12/catholics-and-the-incoming-biden-administration 

[…]