1. Pills Are New Target in 50-Year Abortion Battle, By Kate Zernike, The New York Times, April 6, 2022, Pg. A1
Last year, after Texas passed its strict abortion ban, surgical abortions in the state dropped by half. Many women found a workaround: pills. The week the law took effect, requests for medication abortion shot up to 138 a day from 11 a day at just one service that delivers the pills by mail.
Anti-abortion lawmakers in the state were already on it. That same week, they passed another law making it a felony to provide abortion pills through the mail and requiring doctors to comply with new testing and reporting procedures to prescribe them.
Medication abortion is the new front in the nation’s five-decade-long fight, as both sides anticipate that by summer the Supreme Court could overturn or pare back the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade.
Supporters of abortion rights, who argue that women should be able to make their own reproductive choices, see the pills as a workaround in states that have already moved to ban or severely restrict abortion. Women in those states would get abortions not in the back alleys of pre-Roe America, but via a post office box or a friend in a state where abortion remains legal, or from an online pharmacy in India.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/us/abortion-pills.html
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2. Pope says UN organizations ‘impotent’ in Ukraine war, By Inés San Martín, Crux, April 6, 2022
Pope Francis on Wednesday said that the international organizations, such as the United Nations, have proven to be useless in stopping violence and atrocities in the war in Ukraine.
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He said that following World War II, an attempt was made to lay the foundations of a new “era of peace, but unfortunately, we do not learn.”
“Unfortunately, the old story of competition between the greater powers went on,” the pope said. “And, in the current war in Ukraine, we are witnessing the impotence of organizations of the United Nations.”
Francis’s criticism of the United Nations as ineffective comes a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the UN’s Security Council – where Russia has veto power – and called it useless.
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-europe/2022/04/pope-says-un-organizations-impotent-in-ukraine-war
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3. Trial testimony: Vatican wanted to pay off London broker, By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, April 5, 2022
The former head of the Vatican’s financial watchdog testified Tuesday that the agency launched an intelligence investigation into a suspicious London real estate deal after it learned about it but had no power to stop the Vatican secretariat of state from concluding it.
The testimony by defendant Rene Bruelhart in the Vatican’s big fraud and extortion trial again put the spotlight on Pope Francis and the No. 2 in the secretariat of state, Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, who Bruelhart said made clear the deal had to be concluded “under any circumstances.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/trial-testimony-vatican-wanted-to-pay-off-london-broker/2022/04/05/34422fb4-b50c-11ec-8358-20aa16355fb4_story.html
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4. Pope Francis to visit Lebanon in June during economic crisis, By Bassem Mroue, Associated Press, April 5, 2022, 2:29 PM
Pope Francis will visit Lebanon in June, the president’s office said Tuesday, in an apparent show of support for the country experiencing an unprecedented economic meltdown.
Francis has held special prayers for Lebanon and has repeatedly said he plans to visit the small country since the economic meltdown began in October 2019.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pope-francis-to-visit-lebanon-in-june-during-economic-crisis/2022/04/05/39f32120-b4f3-11ec-8358-20aa16355fb4_story.html
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5. Oklahoma state House approves bill to make abortion illegal, By Sean Murphy, Associated Press, April 5, 2022. 5:10 PM
The Oklahoma House gave final legislative approval on Tuesday to a bill that would make performing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
With little discussion and no debate, the Republican-controlled House voted 70-14 to send the bill to Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has previously said he’d sign any anti-abortion bill that comes to his desk.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/oklahoma-state-house-approves-bill-to-make-abortion-illegal/2022/04/05/e82a4344-b4fe-11ec-8358-20aa16355fb4_story.html
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6. Anti-Abortion Activists Say They Were Allowed to Take 115 Fetuses, A medical waste disposal company denied their account. Most of the fetuses were buried in secret, the activists said, but they kept five that were later seized by the police in Washington, D.C., By Michael Levenson, The New York Times, April 5, 2022
Anti-abortion activists claimed on Tuesday that five fetuses that were removed from an apartment in Washington last week had been in a box containing a total of 115 that the driver of a medical waste truck voluntarily allowed them to take from his dolly outside an abortion clinic.
The driver’s employer, Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services, denied their account and added that the use of its services to dispose of fetuses was against company policy.
It was the latest turn in an investigation that burst into public view last Wednesday, the same day that Lauren Handy, 28, an anti-abortion activist, was arrested and charged, along with eight others, with illegally blocking access to a Washington abortion clinic in October 2020.
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At a news conference on Tuesday, Ms. Handy, the director of activism at a group called Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising; Terrisa Bukovinac, the group’s founder and executive director; and Randall Terry, the founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, sought to answer those questions.
They claimed that Ms. Handy and Ms. Bukovinac had gone to the Washington Surgi-Clinic to protest abortions on March 25 when they happened upon a Curtis Bay driver who was loading boxes outside. They told him there were “dead babies” inside, they said, and asked him if he would get in trouble if they took one of the boxes.
When he asked what they planned to do with it, they promised a “proper burial,” and he said, “OK,” and gestured toward his dolly, they said. Ms. Handy grabbed one of the boxes, and took it back to her apartment, she said.
The two women said that a Roman Catholic priest said Mass, and that they read aloud names that they gave to the fetuses before 110 of them were buried, with a priest present, at a location they declined to disclose.
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They said their lawyer then contacted the Washington police to pick up the five remaining ones, which the activists said they considered evidence of violations of federal laws, including the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which bans certain methods to terminate pregnancies starting at 12 weeks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/us/fetus-anti-abortion-home-washington.html
___________________________________________________________TCA Media Monitoring provides a snapshot from national newspapers and major Catholic press outlets of coverage regarding significant Catholic Church news and current issues with which the Catholic Church is traditionally or prominently engaged. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Catholic Association. |
