S. Dakota dioceses focus on healing, after statute of limitations bill fails

February 25, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1 Print

Pierre, S.D., Feb 25, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- The South Dakota legislature has killed a bill that would have opened a two-year window for childhood victims of sexual abuse of all ages to sue the organizations in which their abuse took place.

The bill would have been an expansion of current South Dakota law on the statute of limitations for abuse cases, which allows victims of childhood abuse up to the age of 40 to sue organizations, such as Catholic dioceses.

According to the AP, the legislature heard testimony in favor of the bill from some of the surviving members of a group of nine biological sisters who allege that they were sexually abused by priests and nuns at an Indian mission school.

The Charbonneau sisters have been unsuccessfully lobbying to expand the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse in South Dakota for nearly 10 years, the AP reported. The sisters allege they were the victims of rape and abuse by clergy and nuns at St. Paul’s Indian Mission School on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota while they attended during the 1950s and 1960s.

In the past year, following a new wave of Church sex abuse scandals in the United States and throughout the world, multiple states and countries have repealed or extended their statutes of limitations in order to allow more time for victims of childhood abuse to come forward.

Officials with the dioceses of Sioux Falls and Rapid City told CNA that regardless of the civil law, the dioceses were prepared to offer help to victims in the form of counseling and spiritual accompaniment.

“The Church recognizes God’s law as superior to all other laws. And for that reason, if there’s going to be any person coming forward that feels they’ve been harmed at the hand of the minister of the Church, out of her moral obligation we will respond and do all that we can to assist that person, regardless of what the statutes and civil law says,” Matt Althoff, chancellor of the Diocese of Sioux Falls, told CNA.

Althoff said that sexual abuse creates a “woundedness” in people’s souls, and that the diocese offers psychological counseling as well as spiritual direction in order to help victims heal. He said anyone who has been wounded by the Church is welcome to seek out those services regardless of when the abuse took place.

Father Michel Mulloy, administrator of the Diocese of Rapid City, told CNA he also hoped for “reconciliation and healing for anyone who has experienced any wrong. I believe that the one who can give that reconciliation and healing is Jesus Christ.”

“All I attempt to do in my ministry is to bring people to the cross of Jesus Christ and to accompany them in seeking and receiving the reconciliation and healing that Jesus can and, I believe, does want to give.”

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US appeals court rules against abortion restriction in Alabama

August 23, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

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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