Alabama: Court Upholds Law Protecting minors

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction against an Alabama law that protects minors from gender-transition hormone treatments. The unanimous decision found no “constitutional right to treat [one’s] children with transitioning medications subject to medically accepted standards.” The court said it is “undisputed that the medications can cause loss of fertility and sexual function. Some families will not fully appreciate those risks and some minors experiencing gender dysphoria ultimately will desist and identify with their biological sex.”

“This case revolves around an issue that is surely of the utmost importance to all of the parties involved: the safety and wellbeing of the children of Alabama,” it said. “But it is complicated by the fact that there is a strong disagreement between the parties over what is best for those children. Absent a constitutional mandate to the contrary, these types of issues are quintessentially the sort that our system of government reserves to legislative, not judicial, action.” The 11th Circuit’s decision in favor of Alabama could hold major implications for the other states in its jurisdiction, Florida and Georgia, where judges have issued a preliminary injunction against similar laws. [Joshua Arnold, The Washington Stand, 8/23/23]

Sept. 9: National Day of Remembrance

Thousands will mark the day as both celebration and mourning as they remember the 65 million unborn babies who were aborted under Roe v. Wade. Eric J. Scheidler, exec. director of the Pro-Life Action League, one of the groups sponsoring the event, said “On this 11th annual National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children, we visit the burial places of aborted children and other memorials put up in their honor — and we solemnly pray for God to heal the deep wounds of abortion in our society. With over 185 services scheduled in the U.S., including 36 at the burial places of aborted children, there’s likely to be a Day of Remembrance prayer service near you,” he added. “It’s not a protest or rally. It’s not held at an abortion facility or government office. It’s a prayerful opportunity to remember, and to heal.”

The gatherings will include testimonies from women who regret their abortions, reflections by clergy of various faiths, music, prayer, mourning for aborted babies and celebration of the end of Roe. Priests for Life, Citizens for a Pro-Life Society & Scheidler’s group want to remind Americans of the horrors of abortion. The grave-side services expose how every abortion results in the death of an unborn child, and that child’s body must be gotten rid of by some means, whether incinerated or thrown in the trash, cut up for scientific experiments or, in some cases, buried. Pro-life leaders also hope the day will bring mercy and healing to the tens of millions of mothers and fathers of aborted
babies.

For more information and a list of locations, visit NationalDayofRemembrance.org. [Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com, 8/28/23]

Massachusetts: Foster Parents Denied

Mike & Kitty Burke allege that the commonwealth denied their adopting children due to their Catholic religious beliefs concerning marriage, sexuality, and gender. During interviews, they affirmed their willingness to love and support any child, regardless of orientation or gender struggles. Their application was rejected with their religious views labeled “not supportive.” The couple believes that the states’ rejection is discriminatory and filed a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Dept. of Children & Families for violation of their religious liberty. [Our Sunday Visitor, 8/27/23]

Court Limits Access to Abortion Pills

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided in part with a federal judge’s decision in Texas to curtail access to mifepristone. The court held that the Food and Drug Administration failed to adequately take into account safety concerns when it loosened access to mifepristone in 2016. The FDA extended the window when mifepristone could be used to terminate pregnancies from seven weeks’ gestation to 10 weeks and reduced the number of in-person visits patients were required to make from three to one. Then, in 2021, it removed a requirement that mifepristone be dispensed only in clinics, medical offices and hospitals, thereby allowing it to be administered through telehealth and sent by mail.

Attorney Erin Hawley of the Alliance Defending Freedom said: “we are very pleased with the Fifth Circuit’s decision. It restores the original 2000 safeguards to a dangerous chemical drug regimen.” Katie Daniel, the state policy director of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a leading anti-abortion group, hailed the ruling: “The FDA ignored science and its own rules when it rubber-stamped Democrats’ reckless mail-order abortion scheme. We won’t rest until the FDA and the profit-driven abortion industry are held accountable for the suffering they’ve inflicted on women and girls, as well as the deaths of countless unborn children.” [NBC News, 8/16/23]

Iowa: Judge Blocks Abortion Ban

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law a ban on most abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy, passed by the Iowa Legislature. It prohibits almost all abortions once cardiac activity can be detected, usually around six weeks, but includes exceptions for rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother. However, an Iowa judge issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the new law, thus reverting the state to its previous legal abortion limit oat 20 weeks of pregnancy. “I will fight this all the way to the Iowa Supreme  Court where we expect a decision that will finally provide justice for the unborn,” Reynolds said. [Our Sunday Visitor, 7/30/23]

“Family planning is contraception AND abortion.”

So said Ann Furedi of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service based on findings that over 50% of women having abortions had been using at least one form of contraception, and 25% had used methods considered “most effective.” She said: “women cannot control their fertility though contraception alone.” U.S data show similar findings: about half of abortion patients said that they used a contraceptive method in the month they become pregnant.”

Assoc. professor Melissa Moschella (Catholic U.) siad there is no evidence that widespread access to contraception reduces abortion rates. Where contraception becomes the norm, people have an expectation that they can engage in sexual activity without worrying about consequences.” And since no method is 100% effective, more unplanned pregnancies result. In his encyclical The Gospel of Life, Pope St. John Paul IIworte that contraception and abortion are “fruits of the same tree.”

Oral contraceptives have potentially serious adverse health effects. Moral theologian Pia de Solenni said “most women don’t feel good when they’re taking hormonal birth control.” More women are questioning the physical effects the pill has on their bodies. “Article after article acknowledges that women report a variety of adverse effects including depression.” [Lauretta Brown, National Catholic Register, 8/27/23]

Michigan: Famer’s Religious Liberty Win

A federal court decision in favor of a Catholic orchardist in Michigan, who announced that his farm would not host same-sex weddings, and was banned from a farmers market as a result, is being hailed as a victory for free speech and religious liberty. In the decision, the judge said Country Mill Farms and the owner Stephen Tennes “were forced to choose between following their religious beliefs and a government benefit for which they were otherwise qualified.”

The farm includes a cider mill and donates produce to the Greater Lansing Food Bank. It also hosts events such as wedding shower and birthday parties from August through Thanksgiving, according to its webpage. The judge’s decision notes that Tennes “Stopped running haunted houses, something his father started, because the practice was not in line with his faith. He has declined to host bachelor and bachelorette parties for the same reason.” [Kurt Jensen, Our Sunday Visitor, 8/28/23]

Warren Buffett’s Dark Side

The “Wizard of Omaha” is America’s most revered investor and famous penny pincher whose wealth is $100 billion. The dark side? The biggest funder of abortion in human history poses as America’s most celebrated philanthropist. Since 2002, Buffett has poured $41 billion into four foundations, each of which bankrolls groups expanding abortion-on-demand policies nationwide or even sustain the UN’s population control campaign in impoverished countries. “Warren Buffett has never spoken publicly about his views on abortion,” the New York Times observed in 2010. “But in the 1990s [his foundation] helped finance the research and development of the [mifepristone] pills that induce abortion… [and] helped finance a lawsuit to overturn the ban on so-called partial-birth abortion in Nebraska.

For decades, Buffett’s committed a fortune de to his belief that humans will reproduce ourselves into oblivion, endangering global supplies of food, housing, and even human survival. Since 2003, Ipas has received over $422 million from Buffett family foundations. Ipas invented and markets manual vacuum aspiration technology, literally sucking embryos and fetuses from the womb in more than 100 countries. Another under-the-radar group is Pathfinder International, which used its funding to overturn the U.S. Mexico City Policy, a ban on federal funding of groups that perform abortions overseas.

In the past decade, Pathfinder used close to $1 billion from USAID to abort Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans and push looser abortion policies in poor countries. Pathfinder was seeded in the 1950s by Clarence Gamble, heir to the Procter & Gamble soup fortune, himself a committed eugenicist and ally of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger who sat on the group’s board. Many are familiar with Sanger’s “Negro Project of the South” to expand birth control and abortion to southern blacks; she got the idea from Clarence Gamble, the project’s funder. EngenderHealth is a little-known group that provides abortions in poor countries. Even less well-known is its original name: The Sterilization League of New Jersey, one of a crop of sterilization advocacy groups created by eugenicists in the 1930s.

Advocates for Youth is one of the lead transgender groups grooming schoolchildren for gay sex, pedophilia, and HIV – thanks to $29 million from Buffett. We’ve recorded its vision for sex education in classrooms, which includes teaching second-graders about sexual consent, fifth-graders about “trusted adults” whom they “can talk to about relationships” (invariably sexual), and tenth-graders about the latest medical breakthroughs that make living with HIV tolerable. [Hayden Ludwig, Restoration of America, 8/28/23]

Next Month: October is Respect Life Month when many events & activities are held in support of life. The Life Chain project is planned for the afternoon of October 1st, Respect Life Sunday. Each year, Life Chains form in hundreds of cities nationwide to make a public, prayerful, peaceful stand for Life. For a location near you, see https://www.lifechain.org Also, 40DaysforLife prayer vigils worldwide will begin Sept. 27th and end on November 6th. For a local vigil, visit https://www.40daysforlife.com/ Also, check church and right to life groups in your area for other activities such as guest speakers and conferences.

This free monthly newsletter is used by dozens of churches as a bulletin insert, and since 2013 has had over 30,000 readers. To receive each month’s issue in your inbox, email Frank Tinari, Ph.D. at tinarifr@shu.edu