1. Agencies, Researchers Expect Rise in Infant Adoptions if Court Overturns Roe v. Wade, Adoption centers aren’t ramping up staffing just yet as anticipated increase could be uneven, By Clare Ansberry, The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2022, 9:26 AM
Sociologists and many adoption specialists expect the number of infant adoptions, which has been on the decline in the U.S., to rise if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
Adoptions have been falling due to better and more accessible contraception, more parents choosing to raise a child alone and access to abortion. The number of private, as opposed to public, adoptions in the U.S.—which includes noninfants and stepparent adoptions of older children—decreased in 2020 to 39,601, a 20% drop from 2019, according to a recent report from the National Council for Adoption. Public adoptions, which make up more than half of all adoptions, are managed by the child-welfare system.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/agencies-researchers-expect-rise-in-infant-adoptions-if-court-overturns-roe-v-wade-11655990810
__________________________________________________________
2. The Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade is only the beginning for anti-abortion advocates, By Erin Mansfield; Katherine Swartz, USA Today, June 23, 2022
Now an anti-abortion advocate with Georgia Life Alliance, Reed is one of millions of people around the country who are planning their next steps amid expectations that the Supreme Court is on the verge of overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a federal right to abortion.
The fight over abortion rights is moving to the states, a situation that many anti-abortion advocacy groups said they’ve been planning for years. Many will be advocating for new laws in statehouses. Several groups say they’ll be working to get more support for expecting and new parents. In the immediate term, some groups worry about safety.
“Honestly, I think it’s going to be a wake-up call for some states because our work in the pro-life movement does not stop when abortion is no longer an option,” Reed said. “Our work really just begins.”
…
Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life and Students for Life Action, said her organization will continue working in statehouses to advance its early abortion model that focuses on ending abortions in the early stages of pregnancy.
…
Anti-abortion advocates who spoke with USA TODAY said they will support public and private support services for what they call crisis pregnancies. They said they said there would be more demand for these services once the Roe decision comes down, triggering abortion bans in many states.
…
Hawkins said Students for Life and its affiliated groups will advocate increasing supportive services based on its existing “Standing with You” model that helps people find public and private resources in their area and advocates against pregnancy discrimination on college campuses.
Hawkins said colleges rarely have information on their websites showing what resources are available for pregnant students. “I can find these really obscure policies on a college website, Hawkins said, “but I’ll be damned if I could find out, ‘Who can she go and talk to if she’s pregnant?'”
Students for Life said it inspired a federal bill called the Pregnant Students’ Rights Act that has not passed.
…
With crisis pregnancy centers being vandalized and a man recently arrested for threatening Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, advocacy groups are preparing for any violence or vandalism that may come their way in the immediate aftermath of the decision.
Shawn Carney, the president and CEO of 40 Days for Life, whose volunteers pray outside of Planned Parenthood clinics, said his group has put together an emergency plan. He said there will likely be an initial spike in violence, and then tempers will die down.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/06/23/post-roe-anti-abortion-states/7687050001/
__________________________________________________________
3. Money for Children, Not Schools, By Jeff Yass, The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2022, Pg. A17, Opinion
As schools break for summer, it’s a good time to review the return America is getting on its investment in education. The Census Bureau reports inflation-adjusted spending in K-12 education has tripled since 1970 to a record $751.7 billion. Yet barely a third of all fourth-graders across U.S. urban communities can read or do math at grade level. The time has come to reimagine the way we pay for education. Let’s stop writing blank checks to failing school systems.
Consider a single mother of two. From kindergarten to high school graduation, the government will spend nearly $250,000 on each of her children.
…
She and other parents could also pick old-fashioned public schools, which would finally have to earn support by treating parents with respect. I suspect Philadelphia’s parents will think twice before shelling out $24,000 a year for a system that has been adding administrators at a rate of seven times the increase in students while tuition at the average Philadelphia Catholic high school is roughly $8,000, and private-school tuition averages just under $12,000.
Mr. Yass is managing director and a co-founder of Susquehanna International Group.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/money-for-children-not-schools-students-education-k-12-cost-prices-inflation-system-math-reading-11655924112?page=1
__________________________________________________________
4. Pope’s Wariness of U.S.-Dominated World Shapes His Russia, China Stances, Pontiff’s suggestion that NATO might have provoked invasion of Ukraine draws fire from inside and outside the church, By Francis X. Rocca, The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2022, 5:33 AM
In Pope Francis’ view, the war in Ukraine isn’t a straightforward case of good against evil.
The pontiff recently told a group of Catholic journalists that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t like fairy tales. “Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was the bad guy. Here, there are no metaphysical good guys and bad guys,” he said.
Pope Francis’ reluctance to take sides in the conflict has raised eyebrows within and far beyond the Catholic Church. For weeks, while he deplored the suffering of the Ukrainians, the pope denounced the aggression in abstract terms without naming Russia as the perpetrator. He has more than once suggested that the West might have provoked the invasion.
Behind the pope’s stance lies a combination of his wariness of a U.S.-dominated world order, his reluctance to be seen as siding with the West in geopolitical conflicts, and his ambitions for diplomatic outreach toward major non-Western powers in a multipolar world.
…
The pope’s overtures to Russia and China haven’t met with particularly warm responses.
Russia has rebuffed Pope Francis’ offers to mediate between Moscow and Kyiv.
…
The pope faces a decision soon on whether to renew the Vatican’s agreement with China on the appointment of Chinese Catholic bishops.
…
A report published in March by the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China said that Chinese authorities continue to detain and harass Chinese Catholic clerics in the part of the church that has resisted state control.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/popes-wariness-of-u-s-dominated-world-shapes-his-russia-china-stances-11655976795?page=1
___________________________________________________________
5. Roe v Wade; Abortion would be best governed by legislatures, says O. Carter Snead, The law professor says such a change would bring America into line with many other countries, By O. Carter Snead, The Economist, June 22, 2022, Opinion
For the first time in nearly 50 years, we in America are poised to rejoin our friends and neighbours around the world who live in the supermajority of nations that govern themselves on the vexed issue of abortion through the deliberative democratic process rather than via the fiat of unelected judges. To do so wisely, justly and humanely will require the practice of civility, charity and honesty.
…
A first step in the right direction is to strive for truth and accuracy in our public discourse. We can start by accurately describing Justice Alito’s draft opinion and its consequences.
…
Moreover, overturning Roe and related precedents does not, contrary to the views of many Americans (as represented in public opinion surveys) “criminalise abortion”. Rather, it simply returns the matter of abortion to the states to be regulated according to the norms and policies favoured by citizens, as reflected by the actions of their elected representatives.
…
Some have raised the spectre of women being prosecuted, losing access to emergency medical care for ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages, or losing access to IVF and contraception. Here again, such claims bear little relationship to reality.
…
There is no documented case in America of a woman being prosecuted for seeking an abortion since 1922… Aside from a handful of highly publicised comments by stray state legislators, the suggestion that women should be prosecuted in a post-Roe world has been roundly criticised and rejected by pro-life leaders and elected officials alike, and has no realistic chance of becoming law…. There is also no serious likelihood of the incidental criminalisation of contraception, IVF and management of ectopic pregnancy or miscarriages. It is a longstanding principle of criminal law that the state must declare with specificity what it means to make illegal.
…
Moreover, even the most restrictive abortion statutes, such as those recently enacted in Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma, make clear that they do not apply to treatment of ectopic pregnancy or post-miscarriage management.
…
Use of contraception is constitutionally protected by Supreme Court precedent dating back to 1965. Justice Alito’s draft explicitly leaves those judicial decisions unchanged. A right to abortion is also conceptually distinguishable from contraception in that it involves the intentional killing of a prenatal human organism.
…
The bottom line is that Justice Alito’s draft opinion simply declares that abortion is not a fundamental right, as it has never been deeply rooted in American law or legal tradition and the precedents that declared it so were not only mistaken but imposed an unstable, unworkable and extreme legal framework more permissive than the vast majority of nations around the world.
If his draft becomes the opinion of the Supreme Court, we should come together in the political process to seek common ground so that we might care rightly for mothers, children (born and unborn) and families, throughout their entire lives.
O. Carter Snead is Professor of Law and Director of the de Nicola Centre for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame in America and author of “What It Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics” (Harvard University Press, 2020).
https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/06/22/abortion-would-be-best-governed-by-legislatures-says-o-carter-snead
__________________________________________________________
6. Cardinal Kasper warns German synodal way risks ‘breaking its own neck’, By AC Wimmer, Catholic News Agency, June 22, 2022, 2:40 PM
A theologian considered close to Pope Francis has warned that the German Synodal Way is at risk of “breaking its own neck” if it does not heed the objections raised by a growing number of bishops around the world.
Cardinal Walter Kasper also said organisers were using a “lazy trick” that in effect constituted a “coup d’etat” that could result in a collective resignation, reported CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.
…
Kasper warned that the Church was not some substance to be “re-molded and reshaped to suit the situation”.
…
It was “the original sin of the Synodal Way” that it did not base itself on the pope’s letter to the Church in Germany, he said, with its “proposal of being guided by the Gospel and the basic mission of evangelization”.
Instead, the German process, initiated by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, “took its own path with partly different criteria”, Kasper said.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251612/cardinal-kasper-warns-german-synodal-way-risks-breaking-its-own-neck
__________________________________________________________
7. Mincione sues Swiss bank over Vatican investment, By Ed. Condon, The Pillar, June 22, 2022
The investment manager who sold the Vatican a London building has filed suit against the Swiss bank which arranged the Holy See’s investment with him. The suit claims the bank misled him about the source of the Vatican’s money, failing to disclose it was drawn from Peter’s Pence and other funds reserved for charitable purposes.
Raffaele Mincione, currently on trial in Vatican City for financial crimes, filed suit in Luxembourg this month through his company, WRM Group. WRM is seeking a total of 500 million euros from Credit Suisse, a bank long used by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, and Citco, a private banking and investment firm headquartered in the British Virgin Islands.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/mincione-sues-swiss-bank-over-vatican
__________________________________________________________
8. Religious Freedom and School Choice Advocates Celebrate ‘Momentous Victory’ in Carson v. Makin Ruling, By Micky Wootten, CNS News, June 22, 2022, 10:28 AM
In response to the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling that Maine’s tuition assistance program cannot exclude schools on the basis of religious affiliation, Maureen Ferguson, a senior fellow at The Catholic Association, said, “Today’s decision is a momentous victory for religious freedom and parents’ right to educate their children as they see fit.”
The Supreme Court’s June 21 ruling (6-3) in Carson v. Makin said that Maine, in providing tuition assistance to children in public and private schools, could not deny the same financial assistance to children in parochial schools. Maine’s attempt to exclude religious schools was found to violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
…
Ashley McGuire, also a senior fellow at The Catholic Association, described the Maine rule struck down by the Court as an example of “arcane anti-Catholic laws” that “especially hurt low-income children who suffer the most in failed schools.”
According to McGuire, the 6-3 ruling “helps to end anti-religious discrimination and expands sorely-needed school choice for low-income families.”
TCA’s Ferguson further said that the decision “makes clear that religious schools can participate in publicly available programs free from government discrimination, and paves the way for parents to be able to choose the best school for their children.”
https://cnsnews.com/article/washington/micky-wootten/religious-freedom-and-school-choice-advocates-celebrate-momentous
__________________________________________________________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.
|
