The pro-life fight: What is happening in the states?

Peter Pinedo   By Peter Pinedo for CNA

March 20, 2023 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 5 Print

 

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Washington D.C., Mar 20, 2023 / 12:52 pm (CNA).

Since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the abortion battle has moved to the states.

Now that abortion is no longer considered a federally guaranteed constitutional right, individual states are allowed to determine their abortion policies. This means that each state legislature has a renewed importance when it comes to the abortion fight.

While 13 states have passed total abortion bans, many states have moved in the opposite direction, enshrining abortion as a state constitutional right.

Here is what is happening in the abortion battle right now.

Wyoming bans abortion pills

Republican Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming signed a bill banning abortion pills into law on Friday. The ban is set to take effect July 1 and makes it a felony to prescribe, sell, or use abortion drugs. The bill explicitly states that “a woman upon whom a chemical abortion is performed or attempted shall not be criminally prosecuted.”

Violations of the abortion pill are punishable by six months in prison and a $9,000 fine. This is the first law specifically banning chemical abortion in the U.S., though other states have restricted or banned the use of abortion pills as part of their abortion bans.

Additionally, Wyoming’s “Life is a Human Right Act” also took effect last week without the governor’s signature. This new law declares abortion the killing of a child and bans it except in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality, and the life of the mother. As another Wyoming total abortion ban remains blocked, it is uncertain whether this new law will be able to take effect.

Utah bans abortion clinics

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, signed a bill last week that prohibits abortions outside of hospitals and bans clinics that only offer abortion. The bill prohibits the licensing of abortion clinics after May 2, 2023, and makes it a criminal offense for out-of-state actors to prescribe abortion drugs to Utahns.

The law is set to take effect on May 3.

North Dakota abortion ban remains blocked

The North Dakota Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a state law banning abortion will remain blocked as it works its way through the state’s court system. This means that abortion remains legal through 22 weeks in North Dakota for the time being.

Minnesota considers offering legal protection to abortionists

Minnesota lawmakers introduced a bill today offering legal protection to abortionists who provide abortions to out-of-state women. The law would prevent state courts or officials from complying with extraditions, arrests, or subpoenas from other states over abortions provided within Minnesota. Democrats hold majorities in both houses of the Legislature as well as the governorship, making this bill likely to pass.

Arkansas authorizes ‘monument to the unborn’

Arkansas, which has banned abortion within the state, has now authorized the construction of a “monument to the unborn” on the state capitol grounds in Little Rock.

Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed the law authorizing the monument last week. The monument, which will be privately funded, will mark the number of abortions that were committed in Arkansas before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

California proposes protecting doctors who mail abortion drugs

California lawmakers introduced legislation Friday to protect doctors from any legal repercussions for sending abortion drugs to women in states where the drugs are banned.

Texas judge considers halting abortion pill sales

Matthew Kascmaryk, a federal judge for the Northern District of Texas, is weighing whether to overturn the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. The judge heard arguments from the Alliance Defending Freedom and lawyers representing the FDA on Wednesday.

According to the Associated Press, Kacsmaryk stated he would issue a ruling “as soon as possible.” This case has national implications as a pro-life ruling could potentially halt the distribution of the drug used in over half of the nation’s abortions.

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Don’t blame misfortunes on God, instead turn to conversion, Pope Francis says

March 20, 2022 Catholic News Agency 2
Pope Francis, during his Angelus address on March 20, 2022, called on the world’s leaders to end the “abhorrent” war in Ukraine. / Vatican Media

Boston, Mass., Mar 20, 2022 / 08:34 am (CNA).

Jesus implores us not to blame God for misfortunes and points us instead to conversion as a solution to evils which oppress us, Pope Francis said Sunday. 

“We must be careful: When evil oppresses us, we risk losing our clarity and, to find an easy answer to what we are unable to explain, we end up putting the blame on God,” Pope Francis said to crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his March 20 Angelus address. “And so often the very bad habit of using profanities comes from this.”

“How often we attribute to Him our woes and misfortunes in the world, to Him who instead leaves us always free and hence never intervenes imposing, but only proposing; He who never uses violence and instead suffers for us and with us,” he said.

Pope Francis’s comments included reflections on Sunday’s reading from the thirteenth Chapter in the Gospel of Luke.

In that reading, the pontiff said, Jesus “refuses and contests strongly the idea of blaming God for our evils: Those persons who were killed by Pilate and those who died when the tower collapsed on them were not any more at fault than others, and they were not victims of a ruthless and vindictive God, which does not exist!”

When bad things happen to us, we should not blame God, he said. Jesus tells us “we need to look inside ourselves,” he added. “It is sin that produces death; our selfishness can tear apart relationships; our wrong and violent choices can unleash evil.”

The Lord offers a “true solution,” Pope Francis said, which is “conversion.” Citing the Gospel reading, he said, “If you are not converted, [Jesus] says, you will all perish in the same way.”

God can never be the source of evil, he said, because, citing Psalm 103, God does not treat us according to our sins, but according to his mercy.

Mercy is God’s “style,” Pope Francis said. “He can’t treat us otherwise. He always treats us with mercy.”

Pope Francis offered an invitation to “turn from evil,” to “renounce the sin that seduces us,” and to “open” ourselves to the “logic of the Gospel.”

Where “love and fraternity reign, evil has no more power,” he said.

Pope Francis said that converting is not easy and Jesus knows this. Jesus wants to help in this conversion, he added.

Jesus knows that, oftentimes, “people repeat the same mistakes and the same sins,” and that can bring discouragement,” Pope Francis said.

“Sometimes our commitment to do good can seem useless in a world where evil seems to rule,” he added.

But Jesus encourages us by telling a parable that shows God’s patience, he said. Jesus “offers the consoling image of [a] fig tree that does not bear fruit during the accorded season, but it is not cut down. Jesus “gives it more time, another possibility,” the pope observed.

Pope Francis told the crowd that he enjoys “thinking that a nice name for God could be ‘the God of another possibility’: God always gives us another opportunity, always, always.”

God does not “cut us out of his love” nor does he “lose heart or tire of offering us again His trust with tenderness,” he said. “God believes in us! God trusts us and accompanies us with patience, the patience of God with us. He does not get discouraged, but always instills hope in us.”

Pope Francis said that “God is Father” and “looks after you like a father,” while noting that God does not look at the “achievements you have not yet reached” but rather “encourages your potential.”

“He does not dwell on your past, but confidently bets on your future,” he said. “This is because God is close to us.”

[…]

3 Comments

  1. The next President has to keep secure the advance in the Supreme Court expressed in Dobbs, set in motion by President Trump.

    I have the opinion that the Court as it stands at present is capable of striking down, according to/under the Dobbs decision, State legislation declaring abortion a State constitutional right. Such rights are outside the Federal system and comity among the States and they undermine the Union.

    So then you would want a President who will not only secure the make-up of the Court but also aim at making any successive Court more likely to yield the elimination of so-called abortion constitutional rights in the States.

    In addition, I suggest it is just as important as that, to get a President who sees beyond just “navigating” or “having to navigate” among issues and “lesser evils”. There is a deep need for leadership that sees that abortion must be outlawed and would do it; who will:

    – have the mettle to stick to this goal
    – be avid for meaningful increments to it
    – position things to yield the increments and progress to the goal
    – be ready to win it as comes into reach.

    Reply

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