1. Kansas voters resoundingly protect their access to abortion, By John Hanna and Margaret Stafford, Associated Press, August 3, 2022
Kansas voters on Tuesday sent a resounding message about their desire to protect abortion rights, rejecting a ballot measure in a conservative state with deep ties to the anti-abortion movement that would have allowed the Republican-controlled Legislature to tighten restrictions or ban the procedure outright.
It was the first test of voter sentiment after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, providing an unexpected result with potential implications for the coming midterm elections.
While it was just one state, the heavy turnout for an August primary that typically favors Republicans was a major victory for abortion rights advocates. With most of the vote counted, they were prevailing by roughly 20 percentage points, with the turnout approaching what’s typical for a fall election for governor.
https://apnews.com/article/2022-primary-elections-kansas-abortion-b6d62a852c2ce4617f2c03589fbb523e
__________________________________________________________
2. ‘Unwanted Children’ Are Still Better Off Alive, By Grazie Pozo Christie, M.D., The Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2022, Pg. A14, Letter to the Editor
Ms. Komisar [(“The Human Cost of Restricting Abortion,” July 29] suggests the “unwanted” might be better off aborted than growing up “prone to depression, anxiety, addiction and other social and emotional disorders.” Sadly, this form of elitism is nothing new. There are examples throughout history of the privileged proposing to eliminate those whom they consider undesirable or burdensome—for their own good, of course. Already, “advances” in prenatal screening are resulting in new eugenic practices that have led to the near-eradication of people with Down syndrome through abortion. Who’s next?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/abortion-pro-choice-life-unwanted-pregnancy-children-mother-adoption-11659393081?
__________________________________________________________
3. Poland sees 90% drop in legal abortions after landmark court ruling, By Luke Coppen, The Pillar, August 3, 2022
The number of legal abortions in Poland fell by 90% in the year after a landmark court ruling, according to newly published figures.
The Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported on July 30 that 107 legal abortions were recorded in the country of more than 40 million people in 2021, compared to 1,076 the year before.
The statistic appears to confirm predictions that a decision by Poland’s constitutional court in October 2020 would lead to a sharp drop in legal abortions, which have averaged around 1,000 per year.
Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal declared on Oct. 22, 2020, that a 1993 law permitting abortion for severe and irreversible disability or a life-threatening incurable disease was unconstitutional.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/poland-sees-90-drop-in-legal-abortions
__________________________________________________________
4. Ectopic pregnancies, miscarriage: Abortion ‘never necessary,’ these doctors say, By Katie Yoder, Catholic News Agency, August 3, 2022, 4:00 AM
Abortion — a procedure with the sole or primary intent and purpose of ending human life in the womb — is never medically necessary, according to medical experts.
…
Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, a radiology specialist and a senior fellow with The Catholic Association, an organization dedicated to defending religious liberty, life, and the Church in the public square, also pointed to the importance of intent.
Abortion, she said, “colloquially means the purposeful ending of a human life.”
…
Christie said that abortion, defined as the purposeful ending of a human life, is “never medically necessary.”
“In certain circumstances, lifesaving treatment that involves the early interruption of a pregnancy may be indicated,” she said. “In this case, the intent is not to end the life of the baby but to save the mother, and this intent is manifest in the fact that a physician would make every effort to preserve the life of a preterm baby where possible.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251941/ectopic-pregnancies-miscarriage-abortion-never-necessary-these-doctors-say
__________________________________________________________
5. Pro-life doctors challenge board’s decertification threat, Panel says promoting abortion ‘misinformation’ harms patients, By Valerie Richardson, The Washington Times, August 3, 2022, Pg. A6
Pro-life doctors are poised to take legal action against a national medical board after it threatened the certification status of physicians who promote “misinformation and disinformation” about abortion.
Donna Harrison, CEO of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists {AAPLOG), blasted the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG) for its July 7 statement on “misinformation and disinformation and medical professionalism.”
“The threat by the pro-abortion American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology to cancel the board certification of tens of thousands of OBGYNs who educate their patients about the peer-reviewed, evidence-based facts concerning abortion is an unprecedented intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship,” Dr. Harrison said in a statement.
“AAPLOG will take actions needed to protect the legal rights of our members and ensure that physicians are free to provide the information that patients need in order to make a decision based on fully informed consent,” she added.
The board, which certifies obstetricians and gynecologists, said it would “review reports of dissemination of misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19, reproductive health care, abortion and other OBGYN practices that may harm the patients we serve or public health.”
…
Shortly after the Supreme Court released its June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, ABOG issued a statement reiterating its support for “access to safe and legal pregnancy termination which is essential to reproductive health” and “the full spectrum of reproductive health care, including abortion.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/2/pro-life-doctors-challenge-threat-certification-ov/
__________________________________________________________
6. US sues Idaho over abortion law, cites medical treatment, By Michael Balsamo and Rebecca Boone, Associated Press, August 2, 2022, 4:43 PM
The Justice Department on Tuesday filed a lawsuit that challenges Idaho’s restrictive abortion law, arguing that it conflicts with a federal law requiring doctors to provide pregnant women medically necessary treatment that could include abortion.
The federal government brought the lawsuit seeking to invalidate the state’s “criminal prohibition on providing abortions as applied to women suffering medical emergencies,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
The announcement is the first major action by the Justice Department challenging a state trigger law since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
https://apnews.com/article/abortion-health-lawsuits-idaho-926faa1d6773e888d1fed10353000e13
___________________________________________________________
7. Cardinal Müller: ‘The German Synodal Way was over before it even started’, By Rudolf Gehrig, Catholic News Agency, August 2, 2022, 4:00 PM
Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has sharply criticized the Synodal Way in Germany.
In an interview with EWTN Vatican / CNA Deutsch, the 74-year-old cardinal said that the Synodal Way, declared a “reform process” by its initiators, is “over” and was on an “anti-Catholic, wrong track.”
…
When asked whether the Synodal Way in Germany was now at an end after the declaration from Rome, as the Münster canon lawyer Thomas Schüller wrote on Twitter, Cardinal Müller replied: “I think the Synodal Way was doomed from the start, it’s just that its initiators haven’t realized it yet.”
Müller said that the Synodal Way in Germany has nothing to do with “synodality,” nor with “way”. Rather, the construct is reminiscent of a “political organization” that considers itself the “vanguard of the universal Church.”
The cardinal said: “Revelation is entrusted to the Church for faithful preservation, and not, as the Synodal Way meant at the beginning, that this virtually randomly assembled body somehow has the right and authority to override the Church’s sacramental constitution and reinterpret Revelation according to its meaning.”
It was the “birth defect of this body” to set itself up as a vanguard of the Church, he said.
“What is being pursued here is nothing other than division,” Cardinal Müller lamented. “It is a so-called reform with a crowbar.”
Among supporters of the Synodal Way there was an “intransigence,” the cardinal said, resulting from “a lack of knowledge of Catholic ecclesiology.”
Müller reflected on the president of the ZdK, Irme Stetter-Karp, who had emphasized in an article for the Hamburg weekly “Die Zeit” that it should be “ensured that the medical intervention of an abortion is made possible across the board.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251940/cardinal-muller-the-german-synodal-way-was-over-before-it-even-started
__________________________________________________________
8. Religious freedom conflicts ahead after Michigan Supreme Court redefines sex, By Kevin J. Jones, Catholic News Agency, August 2, 2022, 5:00 PM
A Michigan Supreme Court decision that state civil rights law bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation may conflict with religious liberty, the Catholic Church in the state has said.
The decision would “usurp the legislature’s role in the democratic process, present constitutional problems for people of faith, and place in jeopardy religious persons and entities who wish to serve others in the public square,” the Michigan Catholic Conference said July 29.
The Catholic conference warned that the decision “expressly does not address” whether enforcing the redefined Michigan civil rights law would violate federal and state constitutional religious freedom protections. It sided with a dissenting justice who said there are “strong arguments” that the majority interpretation “poses constitutional problems relating to religious liberty.”
The 5-2 decision in the case Rouch World v. Department of Civil Rights redefines sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251942/religious-freedom-conflicts-ahead-after-michigan-supreme-court-redefines-sex
__________________________________________________________
9. Garland’s Justice Department Joins Bogus Legal Assault on Pro-Life Laws, Pro-lifers won a legal battle in Georgia but must fend off a misleading lawsuit in Idaho by the Justice Department. , By Dan Mclaughlin, National Review, August 2, 2022, 7:33 PM, Opinion
The Dobbs decision may have settled the central question of whether the Constitution prohibits states from regulating or banning abortion. But legal defenders of abortion have not given up on attacking those laws with every weapon at hand, even when that requires stretching the law and bending the truth. Now, Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is suing Idaho on the theory that federal law preempts aspects of the state’s stringent abortion ban.
By filing in federal court in in Idaho, Garland may hope that the first appellate decision on this issue comes from a friendly panel of the Ninth Circuit. But the lawsuit, based on a novel and aggressive legal theory, distorts the truth about Idaho’s law. It is also a premature effort to promote Democratic talking points in the press about abortion bans applying to extreme cases of threats to maternal life or health.
We should not be surprised that Garland is going down this intensely politicized path. His habit of filing lawsuits against states on social issues has turned the Justice Department into something like a left-wing blog. And the Biden administration has broadcast its intent to thwart states from enforcing their democratically enacted abortion laws on the basis of any excuse at hand.
[Idaho’s law] … treats the mother and child as having an equal right to life, but permits abortion when the mother’s own life is threatened (even if her death is not certain, and the child’s is) and, even then, requires that best efforts be made to ensure the child’s chances of survival.
According to DOJ, the Idaho law bans abortions in situations where the denial of an abortion would violate the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). The primary legal theory of the complaint is that Idaho’s abortion ban would prevent emergency rooms from performing abortions when necessary to stabilize the health of a “pregnant patient.” Naturally, this being the Garland DOJ, the complaint does not use the word “mother” and does not say “woman” except when quoting statutes.
EMTALA provides that hospitals that participate in Medicare must treat people who enter their emergency rooms suffering medical emergencies and who are in need of immediate “stabilizing” attention. It has nothing to do with most applications of Idaho’s law. EMTALA provides no basis at all to require states to permit abortion anywhere but in the emergency room of a hospital that takes Medicare patients, and, even then, treatment is required only where the pregnant woman arrives with “a medical condition manifesting itself by acute symptoms of sufficient severity (including severe pain) such that the absence of immediate medical attention could reasonably be expected to result in- (i) placing the health of the . . . pregnant woman . . . or her unborn child . . . in serious jeopardy, (ii) serious impairment to bodily functions, or (iii) serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part.” If a woman has some condition that places her in no immediate danger, EMTALA’s mandate to provide “stabilizing” treatment would not apply.
What immediate dangers are those? The complaint cites “ectopic pregnancy, severe preeclampsia, or a pregnancy complication threatening septic infections or hemorrhage.” These are life-threatening conditions that would implicate the life-of-the-mother exception in the laws of Idaho and other states with similar exceptions.
…
Defenders of legal abortion have grown accustomed to winning in court just on the basis of precedent and sympathetic judges. When forced to argue on the facts and judged on the same legal standards as any other litigant, they do not fare so well.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/08/garlands-justice-department-joins-bogus-legal-assault-on-pro-life-laws/
__________________________________________________________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. |
