US

St. Louis, Mo., Jan 24, 2018 / 06:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pro-life laws in Missouri have drawn the ire of members of the Satanic Temple, which has filed a lawsuit claiming the laws violate their religious freedom.

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.”

This law and others drew objections from the Satanic Temple and one of its members, whose lawsuit claims the restrictions violate her religious freedom. The politically active group, based in Salem, Mass., was founded by self-described atheists who profess disbelief in a literal Satan.

The plaintiff goes by the name Mary Doe in the lawsuit, not using her name due to fears of personal attack. In 2015 she traveled to a St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic from southeast Missouri for the abortion.

The lawsuit seeks to block Missouri’s three-day waiting period for an abortion and a requirement that doctors who perform abortions offer the booklet to women seeking abortions. The suit further objects to requirement that abortionists must offer the women an ultrasound and a chance to hear a fetal heartbeat.

The plaintiff’s complaint says her professed tenets include a belief that a woman’s body is “inviolable and subject to her will alone” and that she makes health decisions regarding her health “based on the best scientific understanding of the world,” according to her complaint. The complaint says a pregnancy is “human tissue” and part of her body that “she alone” can decide to remove.

W. James MacNaughton, a New Jersey lawyer, represented her before the Missouri Supreme Court Jan. 23.

“It is a bedrock principle of our culture (and) of our country that we choose for ourselves what to believe by way of religious beliefs,” MacNaughton told the court, according to the Associated Press. “It’s not the business of government to tell us that.”

The Missouri attorney general’s office is defending the restrictions on abortion, saying religious freedom protections do not apply.

Solicitor General John Sauer told the court that such laws would only protect against obstacles to practicing one’s belief or being forced to violate one’s religion.

MacNaughton, the plaintiff’s lawyer, told the Washington Post the lawsuit was prompted by the Hobby Lobby decision favoring the store owners whose Christian beliefs conflicted with federal mandates to provide abortifacient contraceptives in their employee plans.

“I have thought the really defining issue is religion,” he said. “Are you committing murder when you have an abortion? That’s a religious question.”

The Satanic Temple has filed a similar lawsuit in federal court. Its website says its members and allies have provided “religious exemption and legal protection against laws that unscientifically restrict women’s reproductive autonomy.”

The group’s founders say they identify with Satan’s putative outsider role.

Lucien Greaves is one of the founders. In a statement, he contended the legal case showed the group is “on the front lines working to restore and preserve Enlightenment values.”

In 2014 the group attempted to stage a re-enactment of a satanic “black mass” at Harvard University, initially claiming it would use a consecrated Host from a Catholic Mass. The Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club had intended to host the event on campus. The event was voluntarily moved from campus and then postponed indefinitely after loss of venue.

The group has also previously engaged in political advocacy.

In 2015 it had planned to place a statue of an occultic Baphomet figure on the grounds of the Oklahoma capitol on religious freedom claims. Shortly afterward, a court ordered the removal of a Ten Commandments monument on the capitol grounds.

In response to a Minnesota town’s debate over a veterans’ memorial that had a cross, the group proposed its own version of a memorial involving pentagrams.

[…]

Sacramento, Calif., Jan 24, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A horrifying case of alleged child abuse in a large homeschooling family in California has sparked calls for more regulation of homeschools, as well as worries such rules could mean more fal… […]

Washington D.C., Jan 24, 2018 / 02:42 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After two students opened fire at their high schools this week, bishops in the US have offered prayers and condolences for the victims and their families.

“Over the past two days in Kent… […]

Washington D.C., Jan 23, 2018 / 02:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A recent Pew study shows that support for legal abortion varies widely among religious groups, with Catholics falling somewhere in the middle when it comes to beliefs about legal abortion.

Among Catholics in the United States surveyed in the study, 48 percent said they were in favor of legal abortion, while 47 percent said they were opposed to it and 5 percent said they didn’t know.

Unitarian Universalists are the most likely religious group to support legal abortion at 90 percent, while Jehovah’s Witnesses were the least likely to support, it at 18 percent, according to the study.

Among both atheists and agnostics, 87 percent support legal abortion; as do 83 percent of Jews; 82 percent of Buddhists; 68 percent of Hindus; 55 percent of Muslims; and 27 percent of Mormons. Among Orthodox Christians, 53 percent support legal abortion.

The numbers may be surprising, as the Catholic Church is one of the most outspoken opponents of legalized abortion in the U.S. and teaches that abortion under any circumstance is a grave sin.

However, a closer look at other available data for Catholics helps to explain some of this discrepancy.

Overall, “the more frequently you go to Mass the more likely you are to oppose to oppose abortion,” Mark Gray, a senior research associate with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) out of Georgetown University, told CNA.

However, responses vary significantly depending on the frequency of Mass attendance of the respondent as well as on the phrasing of poll questions about abortion, according to data from the General Social Survey analyzed by CARA.

When asked if they would support abortion if a woman wants it for any reason, 85 percent of frequent Mass attendees (those who go weekly) said they would not support abortion, while 56 percent of Catholics who attend Mass less than monthly said they would oppose abortion if a woman wants it for any reason.

Responses changed the most among Catholics when were asked whether they would support abortion in situations in which the “woman’s health is seriously endangered.”

When posed this question, 26 percent of weekly Mass attendees said they would oppose abortion in this circumstance, compared with 5 percent of infrequent Mass attendees saying the same.

The discrepancy between these two different sets of responses may be attributable to a misunderstanding of the principle of double effect, an aspect of moral theology which can be used in evaluating acts which will have multiple effects.

The principle of double effect states that an act which is not inherently evil may be chosen for a good end, even if it is foreseen that this act will have an additional, evil effect, which is not disproportionate to the good end. The actor chooses the positive end, and tolerates the evil effect as a consequence of achieving that good end. The act may never be chosen for the sake of the evil effect.

Therefore, in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, a physician may licitly choose the act of removing the affected area of the mother’s fallopian tubes to achieve the end of saving her life. The consequent death of the embryo or fetus owing to its removal is a foreseen, but unchosen, side effect of that act.

This principle of double effect is sometimes also invoked (incorrectly) to justify an abortion performed to save the life of the mother. However, the principle of double effect does not apply in this case, because the act of abortion is the direct killing of an innocent – an inherently evil act which is proscribed in all cases. Even if the act of abortion is chosen as an end to the means of saving the mother’s life, the act is itself nevertheless evil.

[…]

Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2018 / 05:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Thousands gathered in Los Angeles on Saturday for a rally and march supporting the dignity of every human life and proclaiming that every human person is “made for greater.”

&ldquo… […]

Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2018 / 03:55 pm (CNA).- Last week, I attended the national March for Life in Washington, D.C. I have attended the march on several occasions before, and it is always a beautiful and encouraging experience.

But unfortunately, I… […]

Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2018 / 03:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- US President Donald Trump has proclaimed that Jan. 22, the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion nationwide, is being observed as National Sanctity of H… […]

Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2018 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- One year ago, President Trump reinstituted and expanded the Mexico City Policy, widening a ban on funding for NGOs that are involved in abortion—a ban that could shift tens of millions of dollars a… […]

Denver, Colo., Jan 21, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A man who lost his own child to abortion believes men have important things to say on the issue, and their voices need to be heard.

“We are told that men shouldn’t talk about abortion,” but it’s an issue that affects them too, Jason Jones told CNA in a recent interview. “It’s a man’s issue and it’s a woman’s issue.”  

“As a man, I have something in me that wants to protect the vulnerable from violence. That is what men do,” he said.

Jones, a national pro-life advocate, said when he speaks frankly in those terms, men respond to him, because “we need to say the truth.”

“When men speak about abortion, it is very effective,” he added.

It might seem natural to think that women are better pro-life “spokespersons,” or that men should have a diminished role, Jones said. But “men have their place” in the discussion.

“Men share their stories, and their stories are sorrowful. Men who are scared, and manipulated or coerced into having an abortion. Men who can be humble and say ‘I coerced my daughter or my girlfriend or my wife into getting an abortion.’ We need to hear those stories.”

When men tell the truth about their own experience with abortion, “it changes people,” he said. “No one has a happy abortion story. When people tell the truth, it influences people.”

Jones, who often shares the story of his own child’s abortion, told CNA he was 17 when he and his girlfriend Katie found out they were pregnant. Still in high school, they planned to hide the pregnancy while he dropped out and joined the army so he could take care of the baby. He was excited to be a father, he said.

However, while still in basic training and during their third trimester, Jones got a call from his girlfriend’s father saying their “secret” had been discovered and “taken care of.” He was devastated.

An atheist who didn’t fully understand what abortion was, Jones said he realized his daughter, whom they had already named Jessica, had been murdered.

“That was it for me. It horrified me. It was unbelievable,” he said. “I had never been to church a day in my life, I knew nothing about politics. I was just a kid who was last in his class in high school, who to me, school was just something I had to do to play football.”

However, since the moment he found out that his daughter had been aborted, he says he has committed his life “to protecting women and children from the violence of abortion.”

Jones, 46, is now a film producer, author, and human rights worker known for his pro-life activism. He remained an atheist for years, though his contact with Christian organizations and study of political philosophy eventually led him, in 2003, to the Catholic Church. 

In his comments to CNA, Jones, who is now married with seven children, said that it can be hard to discuss abortion because the friends and loved ones of someone who has had an abortion often become defensive, saying that to condemn abortion is to condemn a person they care about.

“The irony is that you know your sister had an abortion because she called you crying about it, with a broken heart. And then when that person stumbles upon a pro-life activist, they get angry because they think you are calling their sister a bad person.”

“We need to help people understand that when a woman gets an abortion it’s…an act of desperation,” he said. “She’s a victim just like the child.”

Jones said the pro-life movement needs an “apologetic” that is able to get the truth about abortion across in a simple way, and which teaches men to defend women and children.

“You do not need sophisticated arguments to tell a man: you don’t pay a stranger to kill your baby. As a man, you defend your child from violence … you defend the woman carrying your child from violence…it’s just very simple.”

He said that much of the language used in the pro-life movement is designed for women and to talk to women who are in a crisis situation, but men interact differently and need to be approached in a different way.

“When I talk to men about abortion, I talk to them as a man. I talk to them plainly,” he said. “I talk to them as a man that has lost his child.”

Many people can be cavalier and insensitive about abortion, he said, explaining that he can become passionate and wants to remind people that “we are victims in this too.”

When speaking about abortion, he says men should just be themselves: “Don’t talk about abortion differently that you talk about everything else, don’t put it off to the side. You are allowed, as a man, to talk about an issue like a man.”

Jones said his message to people who might be in a state of fear or crisis because of an unexpected pregnancy, said his message to them would be “what are you afraid of?”

“I had that experience, I became a teen parent,” but looking back, “what was I afraid of? … Being a father is such a beautiful gift … there is no more beautiful thing in the world than being a father.”

[…]

Washington D.C., Jan 19, 2018 / 04:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- They came from across the country and the globe to Washington, DC. for one purpose: to stand in solidarity with unborn children.

With a quite a few groups donned in matching hats and scarves – quickly rendered unnecessary due to the unseasonably warm January day – and clutching some innovative signs, the 45th annual March for Life went off without a hitch Jan. 19.

While the rally made history as President Donald Trump became the first sitting president to address the march via livestream video, the individual marchers to whom Catholic News Agency spoke over the course of the day were more concerned with the need to protect the unborn and to promote the dignity of life.

And they were big fans of the nice weather, of course.

The crowd was overwhelmingly young, and large groups from all over the country were spotted on the National Mall. A group of around 400 from Baton Rouge, La., made an impressive entrance, and the wave of white hats continued as far as the eye could see.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-partner=”tweetdeck”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>From earlier—here’s a small bit of the 400-strong contingent from Baton Rouge, LA at the <a href=”https://twitter.com/March_for_Life?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@March_for_Life</a> <a href=”https://t.co/XJN3oKe7ha”>pic.twitter.com/XJN3oKe7ha</a></p>&mdash; Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) <a href=”https://twitter.com/cnalive/status/954493345660919808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>January 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

The University of Mary had a three-bus contingent of about 150 students, faculty, and staff, who made the 30-hour car ride to Washington, D.C from Bismarck. The prospect of a long bus ride didn’t sway UMary junior Mary Kampa, who was returning to DC for her second March for Life in a row.

“Knowing that it’s not about the bus ride, and it’s not about me, and it’s for something much greater – standing up for the dignity of life,” Kampa told CNA. “I want to be a voice for the voiceless,” she continued.

Last year, the University of Mary contingent led the march. Kampa said that was an honor. This year, 20 students were present in the Rose Garden for Trump’s address.

And true to form, some UMary students were clad in short-sleeved shirts prior to the start of the pre-march rally. Kampa wasn’t surprised by this, considering the weather her and her classmates had left behind in North Dakota.

<blockquote class=”instagram-media” data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-permalink=”https://www.instagram.com/p/BeJeT5blJxh/” data-instgrm-version=”8″ style=” background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% – 2px); width:calc(100% – 2px);”><div style=”padding:8px;”> <div style=” background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:50% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;”> <div style=” background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;”></div></div> <p style=” margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;”> <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/p/BeJeT5blJxh/” style=” color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;” target=”_blank”>We are the Pro-Life Generation! #marchforlife2018 #whywemarch #lovesaveslives #lifeatmary</a></p> <p style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;”>A post shared by <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/universityofmary/” style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;” target=”_blank”> University of Mary</a> (@universityofmary) on <time style=” font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;” datetime=”2018-01-19T22:36:06+00:00″>Jan 19, 2018 at 2:36pm PST</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async defer src=”//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”></script>

“It was negative 20 [degrees] last Sunday, so this is awesome,” she said, laughing.

Another big fan of the weather was Ave Maria University student John-Paul Arias. Arias was at his first March for Life, and unlike many of his classmates who were in DC, he flew up.

Arias said he thought it was important for men to “defend the life that we helped create,” and that they too had an important role in the pro-life movement. He said he was thrilled to be in Washington, and very excited to be at the march.

And despite AMU’s location in southwest Florida, it was somehow warmer in DC on Friday.

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