1. Health Workers’ New Advocate Sees Objection to Abortion as a Civil Right: Trump administration effort extends legal protections to those refusing to participate in procedures for religious reasons.
By Stephanie Armour, The Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2018, 5:30 AM
The Trump administration is pursuing a significant shift toward a more conservative health-care agenda, expanding the use of civil-rights laws to defend health-industry workers who object to medical procedures on religious grounds.
Roger Severino, an administration appointee to the Department of Health and Human Services, is heading a new division at the department that will shield health-care workers who object to abortion, assisted suicide, or other procedures they say violate their conscience or deeply held religious beliefs. HHS has proposed rules that would expand the division’s enforcement ability and require many health organizations to inform workers about their federal protections regarding personal faith or convictions.
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Similar developments concerning religious protections are under way throughout the administration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has issued religious-liberty guidelines that give religious groups broad protection, possibly exempting some from anti-discrimination laws. The Education and Justice departments have rescinded guidance that clarified legal protections for transgender students.
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Mr. Severino’s new division largely seeks to enforce laws, already on state and federal books, that protect providers who refuse to conduct procedures because of their conscience or religion. The Church Amendments, for example, enacted in the 1970s, protect individuals from performing abortion or sterilization procedures if they object.
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Since the election 17 months ago, the Office for Civil Rights has received an estimated 1,115 conscience and religion complaints, up from the 904 total conscience and religion complaints during the total previous eight years.
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The list of coming changes has many worried that HHS is putting religious priorities ahead of those of a secular state. But Mr. Severino rejects the notion that his office is pushing an evangelical or Catholic agenda, saying his unit will protect people of all faiths.
“It’s not about denial of service based on a person’s identity,” he said in an interview. “A retailer like Target happens not to sell guns; that doesn’t mean they’re denying anyone their right to buy guns.”
2. The Story Behind ‘Paul, Apostle of Christ’: When he died in A.D. 67, there were 2,500 Christians. By 350 there were 34 million.
By Charlotte Allen, Ms. Allen is the author of “The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus”, The Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2018, Pg. A13, Opinion
I went to see “Paul, Apostle of Christ”—the recently released film about the New Testament’s hardest-traveling Christian missionary—with low expectations. Faith-based films have fared poorly since Mel Gibson’s 2004 blockbuster, “The Passion of the Christ.” Typically they’re low-budget ventures produced with biblical fidelity but weak scripts, B-list acting and corner-cutting sets.
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Nonetheless, writer-producer Andrew Hyatt has managed to put together a surprisingly effective—and affecting—movie. No doubt he was aware that his limited budget could not do justice to the panorama of Paul’s Mediterranean travels, his shipwreck off Malta, or his dramatic encounters with rulers and crowds. Mr. Hyatt chose to focus instead on the first Christians who formed Paul’s churches. In A.D. 67, when Paul met his death, historians have estimated that there were only about 2,500 Christians scattered in small communities throughout the Roman Empire. By the year 350 there were nearly 34 million of them, a majority of the empire’s population. Why did these early Christians thrive, despite being universally despised?
Mr. Hyatt could have used as his guidebook Rodney Stark’s “The Rise of Christianity” (1996). Mr. Stark used social-science methodology, such as statistical arithmetic and the study of social networks, to argue that this explosive growth was owing neither to God’s miraculous favor nor to the heavy hand of Christian emperors such as Constantine. Christians took care of each other and, when possible, their pagan neighbors. They took seriously Jesus ’ injunction to feed the hungry and visit the sick, Mr. Stark argued. This made a huge difference in ancient cities, including Rome.
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Mr. Hyatt has dedicated his movie to “all who have been persecuted for their faith.” Today that resonates in large and small ways—from Islamic State’s violent repression of Christians to the controversy over wedding cakes in the U.S. It also should resonate with the future makers of faith-based movies: You don’t need $30 million to tell a powerful Christian tale.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/
3. A bright day for human decency: President Trump and Congress strike a blow against human trafficking.
By The Washington Times, April 13, 2018, Pg. B2, Editorial
The “world’s oldest profession” it may be, but prostitution and human trafficking have moved briskly into the 21st century. The Internet is crowded with websites purveying sex for money.
President Trump and Congress finally took a whack at this grotesque “industry.” President Donald Trump signed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, a verbose title shortened to FOSTA. The new law, which was enacted with wide bipartisan support, strengthens the ability of prosecutors to go after websites and Internet companies that knowingly practice or encourage sex trafficking. Websites that once bore no responsibility for their wanton abuse of women, a few men and many children, can now be held accountable. The Communications Decency Act has been duly amended. The law further enhances the ability of victims to make those responsible for their bondage pay up.
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The mother of a young woman who died because of sex trafficking — she was murdered by a pimp — was an appropriate witness to the bill signing. “I will live with the heavy pain of losing my sweet daughter every single day for the rest of my life,” Yvonne Ambrose of Chicago says. “But, being at the White House to witness the signing of this monumental bill into law is proof that our fight against online sex-trafficking has made a change, a change that will save the life of someone else’s daughter.”
The signing of the law comes close after the shuttering of websites like Backpage, a grotesque online bazaar of human flesh, including that of children, and the sex section of the website Craigslist. This is expected to curtail the booming market for human flesh. Between 20 million and 30 million men, women and children are currently enslaved across the globe, says the State Department. Every year 600,000 to 800,000 people are smuggled across international borders. Of those, 80 percent are female. Half are children.
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The mother of a young woman who died because of sex trafficking — she was murdered by a pimp — was an appropriate witness to the bill signing. “I will live with the heavy pain of losing my sweet daughter every single day for the rest of my life,” Yvonne Ambrose of Chicago says. “But, being at the White House to witness the signing of this monumental bill into law is proof that our fight against online sex-trafficking has made a change, a change that will save the life of someone else’s daughter.”
The signing of the law comes close after the shuttering of websites like Backpage, a grotesque online bazaar of human flesh, including that of children, and the sex section of the website Craigslist. This is expected to curtail the booming market for human flesh. Between 20 million and 30 million men, women and children are currently enslaved across the globe, says the State Department. Every year 600,000 to 800,000 people are smuggled across international borders. Of those, 80 percent are female. Half are children.
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Such a blow against such an outrage would seem to be saluted by one and all. If it’s harder to obtain prostitutes, it follows that demand should eventually fall, and after that supply as well. But certain voices on the left and in Silicon Valley take a different view of decency and honor.
“The shutting down of #Backpage is an absolute crisis for sex workers who rely on the site to safely get in touch with clients,” says one participant in the late Women’s March. “Sex workers rights are women’s rights.”
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Silicon Valley, which has had a rough week in Congress, opposed the new law, too. The tech companies are afraid they will be held legally responsible for what they publish.
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The pornographers are unhappy, too.
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The new law is hardly a latter day Emancipation Proclamation. But it’s a blow against slavery nonetheless. Congress and President Trump have done something worthwhile, and better late than never they deserve the thanks of men and women of decency, honor and goodwill.
https://www.washingtontimes.
4. Pro-life walkout blacked out after anti-gun push Media more than willing to cover student protests — unless they’re about abortions.
By Bradford Richardson, The Washington Times, April 13, 2018, Pg. A6
The media appear more than willing to cover student walkouts — unless, of course, the students are protesting abortion.
The major television networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — did not mention Wednesday’s pro-life student walkout in their nightly news shows, according to the Media Research Center.
Last month, those networks’ news programs gave more than 10 minutes of airtime to the anti-gun walkout on the one-month anniversary of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting.
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Students at 191 high schools and 81 colleges were listed as participants in Wednesday’s pro-life walkout. They left their classrooms for 17 minutes to honor “the 10 children who will violently die during that time at a Planned Parenthood abortion facility.”
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Students for Life said more than 400 students and student organizations contacted them for support prior to the walkout.
Pro-life activists say the media blackout is further evidence that abortion is not covered in good faith.
According to the Media Research Center, the anti-gun March for Our Lives received 13 times more coverage than the pro-life March for Life this year. The pro-choice Women’s March also received more than three times the coverage of its pro-life counterpart.
https://www.washingtontimes.
5. The Women’s March and Backpage.com: A Sordid Story.
By Ashley McGuire, Ashley McGuire is a senior fellow with The Catholic Association and the author of “Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female”, Real Clear Politics, April 12, 2018
No.
That’s about all there is to say in response to the official Women’s March Twitter page, which decried the federal government’s move to seize and shut down Backpage.com, a multibillion-dollar internet human trafficking platform.
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In an Orwellian tweet, the Women’s March wrote:
“The shutting down of #Backpage is an absolute crisis for sex workers who rely on the site to safely get in touch with clients. Sex workers rights are women’s rights. Follow@SafeSpacesDC @melissagira @swopusa @KateDAdamo @supporthosechi@anaorsomething for more info.”
First, let’s get the backstory on Backpage.
For years, some of the smartest lawyers in the country have been trying to nail the website. A years-long Senate investigation found with absolute certainty that it wasn’t just running ads selling trafficked women and children, it was actively helping their pimps to skirt the law and hide from investigators. The title of the Senate report detailing the results of the investigation, “Backpage.com’s Knowing Facilitation of Online Sex Trafficking,” clearly didn’t mince words.
Even as Backpage employees helped pimps code their ads so that things like the age of a girl being sold for sex was obvious to the buyer but not to an investigator (or a terrified parent), the company hid for years behind outdated technology laws that granted blanket immunity to websites for any criminal activity. All that changed last month with the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), thanks to the brave and bipartisan leadership of Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). The bill closed a legal loophole that had allowed Backpage to exist for as long as it did by criminalizing the knowing facilitation of online sex trafficking.
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But the Orwellian cherry on top was the fact that the Women’s March re-tweeted something called Collective Action for Safe Spaces, whose Twitter handle is @SafeSpacesDC. Backpage was many things, but safe it was not. Something tells me the mother of 16-year-old Desiree Robinson, who was sold into sex on Backpage for $250 and then killed and dumped in a garage on Christmas Eve, would agree. Or the family of Ashley Benson, who was bought on Backpage and then strangled by her buyer after an argument about money. Or the mother of Alexus Garcia, whose body was burnt after the man who bought her on Backpage killed her and tried to cover up his crime.
As Backpage is dismantled and the criminals who ran it are taken down one by one, more and more of these horror stories will come to light. Backpage was an online house of horrors. And in trying to legitimize what went on there, all the Women’s March does is march its own movement to its death.
6. Vatican panel: Bishops should meet on women’s role in church.
By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, April 12, 2018, 1:42 PM
The Vatican’s commission of Latin American church leaders is demanding greater decision-making opportunities for women in the church and proposing that Pope Francis call a special meeting of the world’s bishops to discuss women.
The Pontifical Commission for Latin America said after its recent plenary that the church needs a radical “change of mentality” in the way it views and treats half of humanity. It was published in Thursday’s Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
The commission members — 22 Latin American cardinals and bishops, plus 15 women who joined the panel for the meeting — said it was both possible and “urgent” to increase opportunities for women at the parish, diocesan and Vatican level.
7. House Republicans urge HHS to add abortion restrictions to family planning program.
By Jessie Hellmann, The Hill, April 12, 2018, 11:00 AM
House Republicans are pushing President Trump’s health department to add abortion restrictions to the federal family planning grant program.
The Title X Family Planning Program funds organizations providing birth control, cancer screenings and other services to low-income women and men across the country, but conservatives have long argued the program indirectly supports abortion.
Members of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus with 154 members, are urging the Department of Health and Human Services to ban organizations receiving Title X family planning money from referring patients for abortions.
The members are also asking that Title X organizations be physically and financially separated from facilities that provide abortions.
“The Title X Family Planning Program is in dire need of review and updated regulations that ensure program integrity with respect to elective abortion,” members of the RSC wrote in a draft letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar, obtained by The Hill.
The letter is being circulated for signatures among House Republicans by Reps. Ron Estes (Kan.), Vicky Hartzler (Mo.) and Chris Smith (N.J.)
Under current law, Title X funding recipients are required to offer counseling to women in the case of a positive pregnancy test on their options, which include adoption and abortion.
The members argue that the requirement deters organizations opposed to abortion from applying for the funds.
8. New US law aims to prosecute websites that facilitate sex trafficking.
By Jonah McKeown, Catholic News Agency, April 12, 2018, 1:02 PM
A new law aims to make it easier to prosecute websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking, such as Backpage.com.
President Donald Trump signed the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017” into law April 11.
Under the new law, the government will be able to prosecute the owners or operators of websites which knowingly assist, support, or facilitate “the prostitution of another person,” or who act with reckless disregard for the fact that their conduct contributed to sex trafficking. Users and victims will be able to sue those sites.
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Some online groups, such as the Women’s March, claim that the shuttering of sites that are used by people who are not being trafficked will drive the already shady business of prostitution even further underground, and make conditions worse for people who choose to sell sex for a living. Advocates in favor of prostitution have already created several new websites that are hosted overseas, in countries like Austria, to avoid the alleged self-censorship of American-hosted sites.
Critics, however, challenged the idea that prostitution is a profession of choice for women.
“Nobody says when they’re a little girl, ‘I want to grow up to be a prostitute,’” said Dr. Grazie Christie, Policy Advisor for The Catholic Association, speaking on EWTN’s Morning Glory.
9. Tightest abortion law in US on hold for several more months.
By Emily Wagster Pettus, Associated Press, April 12, 2018, 5:59 PM
The most restrictive abortion law in the United States will remain on hold for at least several more months.
The Mississippi law bans abortion after 15 weeks. It took effect when Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed it March 19, but the state’s only abortion clinic immediately sued and U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves put it on hold the next day.
On Wednesday, Reeves extended his temporary restraining order until at least Oct. 24.
