St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre, New York. / Credit: Nassau Crew via Wikimedia (CC0 1.0)
CNA Staff, Dec 5, 2024 / 13:30 pm (CNA).
The Diocese of Rockville Centre on Wednesday said a bankruptcy court had approved its record abuse settlement of $323 million, which officials said will bring “some measure of healing to survivors” of clergy abuse.
The New York diocese announced in September that it had reached the massive settlement for abuse victims after a four-year-long process that included an earlier offer that the survivors had rejected.
On Wednesday U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn approved the settlement, greenlighting the payout that includes contributions from insurers and diocesan churches.
The Rockville Centre Diocese said in a statement that it was “grateful to God” for the approval.
“For the sake of abuse survivors and the Church’s mission on Long Island, we pray that the plan brings some measure of healing to survivors and allows the Church to carry on the saving mission of Jesus Christ,” the statement said.
“Victim survivors of child abuse deserve our respect, our prayers, and our pastoral support,” they added. “The Church is grateful for their courage and perseverance.”
On Wednesday Glenn acknowledged that “money alone cannot make up for the trauma that so many have lived with for so many years.”
“I hope that confirming the plan today will speed the process of providing survivors with compensation and will help put this terrible history behind them so that the Church can carry on its important mission without the distraction of the bankruptcy process,” he said.
The amount represents the largest settlement in U.S. diocesan bankruptcy history. It will be distributed to about 600 abuse survivors.
The diocese filed for bankruptcy in October 2020 following the passage of the state’s Child Victims Act in 2019. That measure allowed for sex abuse lawsuits to be filed in past cases where survivors had not yet taken action, long after the statute of limitations had expired.
Rockville Centre had last year made a $200 million settlement offer to diocesan abuse victims, though the survivors ultimately rejected that offer.
The diocese on Wednesday said its goal “has always been the equitable compensation of survivors of abuse while allowing the Church to continue her essential mission.”
“We believe this plan has achieved those goals,” it said.
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A mother and her baby who were served by one of Pregnancy Care Alliance’s member centers. / Photo courtesy of Pregnancy Care Alliance of Massachusetts
Boston, Mass., Jul 21, 2023 / 15:02 pm (CNA).
Pro-life pregnancy centers in Massachusetts have allied to enhance collaboration and share resources amid hostility from advocates for abortion.
CNA has tracked more than 60 pro-abortion attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers since May 2022 — four of which occurred in the Bay State — in which vandals have marked pro-life facilities with threatening graffiti and in some cases broken windows and burned down buildings.
Last year, ordinances were enacted in the cities of Cambridge and Somerville, located north of Boston, to issue fines of up to $300 for every instance of “deceptive” advertising by local pregnancy clinics that do not perform abortions or refer clients to those that do perform them.
Other municipalities have attempted to adopt the same ordinance. The state Legislature is currently considering a bill that contains the same language targeting “deceptive advertising” from pro-life pregnancy centers, although there is no definition of the term in it.
That bill in the state Legislature is “clearly aiming to censor protected speech,” Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL), told CNA on July 20.
Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life. Myrna Maloney Flynn
MCFL came up with the idea for the pregnancy center alliance in 2022 to serve as a “hub” for the member pregnancy centers, Flynn said.
“The network was formed with a dual mission of building public awareness and also serving more women,” Flynn said.
One of the ways the alliance is working to share its message is through video testimonials on YouTube of women whose lives were positively impacted through the services of pro-life pregnancy centers.
A 29-year-old woman named “Crystal,” who was able to save the life of her son through the abortion pill reversal method, gave her testimony in a video dated May 17.
After regretting her visit to a Planned Parenthood, Crystal shared her experience with the women working at Abundant Hope pregnancy resource center in Attleboro, Massachusetts.
“There I met the most amazing group of women that really helped me feel confident in my decision and really supported me through the abortion pill reversal,” she said of her visit.
“I am so happy to say that thanks to them and their support, I was able to deliver my son and we had him last April, and he really is the light of my life,” Crystal said.
Flynn said that both MCFL and the pregnancy center alliance are “eager” to tell the stories of women who benefited from the centers. The collaboration means they can wage an effective social media campaign across different platforms.
“Now we work together to come up with creative campaigns, or hashtags or fundraisers, or a series of open houses that we held earlier this year,” she said.
“We’re hitting multiple audiences way more efficiently than each center could do on [its] own. And so, consequently, we hope that in a shorter amount of time, the public in Massachusetts will be better informed and more widely informed about the truth of pregnancy resource centers,” she added.
Flynn will be testifying in front of a joint committee in the state’s Legislature on July 24 in order to oppose the passage of the “deceptive advertising” bill called “An Act to protect patient privacy and prevent unfair and deceptive advertising of pregnancy-related services.”
The bill says: “No limited services pregnancy center, with the intent to perform a pregnancy-related service, shall make or disseminate before the public, or cause to be made or disseminated before the public, in any newspaper or other publication, through any advertising device, or in any other manner, including, but not limited to, through use of the internet, any statement concerning any pregnancy-related service or the provision of any pregnancy-related service that is deceptive, whether by statement or omission; and a limited services pregnancy center knows or reasonably should know to be deceptive.”
Using data taken from the member pregnancy centers in the alliance, Flynn will testify that no clinic that is part of the Pregnancy Care Alliance has received complaints related to “deceptive advertising.”
“Furthermore, Pregnancy Care Alliance centers maintain consistently high satisfaction ratings by their clients,” she said. “Thousands of women have found pregnancy resource centers via internet searches and are grateful that they did.”
In March of this year, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, signed a $389 million supplemental budget bill that included a $1 million “public awareness campaign focused on the dangers of crisis pregnancy centers and pregnancy resource centers.”
It’s unclear how the state is planning to use the funds, as CNA inquired with the governor’s office but did not receive a response. However, Flynn said that MCFL is planning to launch a counter-campaign soon called “$1 million for women.”
“The funds raised would support Pregnancy Care Alliance’s member centers and, by extension, women,” Flynn said.
“By nature of the fact of being a network, these pregnancy resource centers become stronger, and with MCFL as the hub, we can help to make them stronger and spread the word about what they do and correct misinformation in the public sphere,” Flynn said.
Several other states have initiatives bringing pro-life pregnancy centers together in collaboration, such as Indiana, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma.
The Pregnancy Care Alliance website can be found here.
Metuchen, N.J., Aug 16, 2019 / 02:31 pm (CNA).- A judge in New Jersey has temporarily halted a law allowing physician assisted suicide, which had gone into effect August 1.
The law is being challenged by a physician who says that it is a violation of … […]
The Louisiana Legislature on July 18, 2023, overrode the Democratic governor’s veto of legislation banning transgender surgeries and treatments for minors. / Jeffrey Schwartz|Wikipedia|CC BY 2.0
Louisiana will become the 20th state to outlaw sex change operations for children after the Republican-led Legislature overrode the Democratic governor’s veto of the legislation.
The bill, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2024, will prohibit doctors from performing sex change surgeries on anyone under the age of 18. The legislation will also ban doctors from prescribing drugs that are meant to facilitate a sex change, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for patients who are minors.
Rep. Gabe Firment, the primary sponsor of the legislation, said in a statement that the override is a “huge win” for Louisiana children.
“We made it clear today that our children are worth fighting for,” Firment said in the July 18 statement. “This great victory would not have been possible without the prayers and support of parents, grandparents, pastors, and grassroots organizations from around the state who rose up and declared with one voice that ‘no one in Louisiana has the right to harm a child.’ God bless the families of our beautiful state!”
The new law will prohibit any sterilizing surgery on a minor, such as the removal of male or female genitals. It will also prohibit surgeries that would artificially construct tissue that is meant to appear like the genitalia of the opposite sex. Doctors will also not be allowed to remove healthy female breasts for girls or perform breast augmentation surgery on boys or girls.
Other surgeries that remove healthy or non-diseased parts of the body on a minor will also be prohibited, such as facial reconstruction surgery, hair reconstruction surgery, voice surgery, or other aesthetic surgeries designed to facilitate a gender transition.
The law will prohibit doctors from prescribing any drugs that are intended to delay or suppress puberty in a child and will not allow doctors to provide estrogen or testosterone treatments on minors in amounts that would be greater than what would naturally occur in a person of the same sex at that child’s age.
If a doctor has already prescribed these drugs to a minor, the doctor must either immediately halt the treatment or wean the child off of the drugs if necessary. A medical professional who violates the law will have his or her medical license suspended for a minimum of two years and could be subject to civil litigation from the patient. The law does not establish any criminal penalties.
The legislation creates an exception for medically necessary procedures to treat infections, injuries, physical disorders, or physical illnesses. There is also an exception for children born with a medically verifiable sex disorder, such as children who are born with ambiguous sex characteristics.
Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards criticized the Legislature’s overriding of his veto.
“Today, I was overridden for the second time on my veto of a bill that needlessly harms a very small population of vulnerable children, their families, and their health care professionals,” the governor said. “I expect the courts to throw out this unconstitutional bill as well.”
Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry voiced his support of the override in a statement, saying: “The woke liberal agendas that are destructive to children will not be tolerated in Louisiana.”
“We have sent a signal to America that Louisiana intends to strengthen the family unit and to protect children from harmful gender reassignment surgeries … and I’m proud of those in the Legislature who voted to make this override successful,” Landry said.
Louisiana became the 20th state to prohibit sex change surgeries for children, but the practice is still legal in most states.
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