Pope Leo XIV meets with faith leaders at the Vatican, calls for synodality and dialogue 

Harrisburg, Pa., Dec 13, 2017 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that would limit abortions to 20 weeks into pregnancy and ban dismemberment abortion, but Gov. Tom Wolf intends to veto it.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, criticized the governor’s pledge to veto.

“His extreme pro-abortion stance is radically out of step with Pennsylvanians as he prepares to face the voters in 2018,” she said Dec. 13.

The Susan B. Anthony List cited a 2013 Harper Polling survey that said 82 percent of Democratic primary voters in the state think abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the legislation, Senate Bill 3, by a vote of 121-70 on Dec. 12. Six Republicans opposed the bill, while 12 Democrats voted in favor.

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 32-18 in February. There are likely not enough votes to override a veto.

Wolf opposed the bill, saying it violated the doctor-patient relationship. He objected to its lack of exceptions for abortion in cases of pregnancy by rape or incest.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>I will veto <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/SB3?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#SB3</a> because I stand with every woman in Pennsylvania who deserves to make her own health decisions. <a href=”https://t.co/QHoKydPy9a”>https://t.co/QHoKydPy9a</a></p>&mdash; Governor Tom Wolf (@GovernorTomWolf) <a href=”https://twitter.com/GovernorTomWolf/status/940739354355519488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>December 13, 2017</a></blockquote>
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“These women deserve our support, not to be maligned by politicians in Harrisburg for making medical decisions about their bodies for their families with their doctors,” the Democratic governor said in a statement.

Dannenfelser had another view.

“The Pennsylvania legislature just took a bold step to protect unborn children and their mothers,” she said. “We are encouraged by the legislature’s action and look forward to the day when all unborn children are protected under the law.”

The state currently bars abortions 24 weeks or later into pregnancy.

Backers of the bill cited progress in medicine that allows premature babies to survive earlier in pregnancy than before.

The bill would preserve current exemptions for when a mother’s life is at risk, or if she is at risk of a serious permanent injury, the Associated Press reports. It would not allow exemptions for rape, incest, or fetal abnormalities.

Dawn Keefer, R-York, said the issue should not be framed only in terms of women’s rights. Rather, she asked, “what about the rights of those pre-born women in the womb being exterminated?”

Rep. Mary Jo Daley, D-Montgomery, characterized the bill as an attempt to control women “by imposing the views of some legislators on women, and I think that’s wrong – that’s morally wrong.”

The dismemberment abortion ban would in effect ban dilation-and-evacuation abortion, the most common method of abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy.

“Dismemberment abortion is completely inhumane, it’s barbaric,” said Rep. Kristin Phillips-Hill, R-York.

Federal legislation to bar abortion after 20 weeks has made some progress. On Oct. 3 the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act late by a vote of 237 to 189, largely along party lines. It was expected to fail in the Senate.

Dannenfelser, however, claimed, “Momentum is building to pass a national ban on late-term abortion more than halfway through pregnancy.”

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Pope Francis celebrates Mass in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta on May 1, 2020, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. / Credit: Vatican Media

CNA Staff, May 1, 2025 / 15:30 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis, who died last month, was well known for his de… […]

Washington D.C., Mar 16, 2021 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- As the Biden administration refuses to send unused doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to other countries, ethicists discussed Catholic thought on just vaccine distribution.

The New York Times reported last week that tens of millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford are currently sitting unused in U.S. facilities. 

AstraZeneca has yet to request approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the vaccine to be administered in the United States.

AstraZeneca had reportedly asked the Biden administration to send the unused U.S. doses to the European Union, where the vaccine has been approved for use. The White House on Friday defended its decision to keep unused AstraZeneca vaccine doses in the United States, citing the need to ensure that Americans are vaccinated as quickly as possible.

On the question of sending vaccines to other countries in need, ethicists told CNA that the general decision to prioritize vaccination of Americans is not necessarily unethical. Saving unused vaccine doses for the future process of achieving herd immunity does not by itself constitute “vaccine hoarding,” they said.

“I don’t think that taking care of your own population first, or making sure that you’ve covered there, puts you in the category of [vaccine] hoarding,” Dr. John Brehany, executive vice president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told CNA on Monday.

“The government does have a responsibility to prioritize its own citizens, to a certain degree, just like parents have a responsibility to prioritize the needs of their own children, to a certain degree, over the needs of other unrelated children,” Dr. Melissa Moschella, philosophy professor at The Catholic University of America, told CNA.  

The ethical calculus for vaccine distribution is “effectively applying the golden rule,” she said, or asking what the United States might consider reasonable if other countries had unused vaccine doses but still needed to vaccinate a high percentage of their populations.  

On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended keeping the AstraZeneca vaccine doses in the United States, saying, “The president’s priority and focus is on ensuring that the American people are vaccinated,” and citing the need to be “oversupplied and over-prepared” in the vaccine rollout.

“There are still 1,400 people who are dying in our country every single day, and we need to focus on addressing that,” she said.

Asked on Monday when countries in need of a COVID vaccine could have access to U.S. doses, Psaki said that “we are engaged with a range of countries.” Biden in February pledged $4 billion to an effort to promote vaccines in developing countries.

Furthermore, several European countries—including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain—have already suspended distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine because of concerns about blood clots, the AP reported on Tuesday. The World Health Organization and the EU’s European Medicines Agency have maintained there is no direct connection between the vaccine and reported blood clots, and have said the vaccine is safe for use.

Pope Francis has been outspoken on the need for coronavirus vaccines, once they were developed, to be available to poor and developing countries.

In an August 19, 2020 audience, Pope Francis said that a COVID vaccine must be “universal and for all,” rather than “the property of this nation or another.” In his Christmas Urbi et Orbi blessing, he reiterated his point that a vaccine must be “for all.”

“I ask everyone — government leaders, businesses, international organizations — to foster cooperation and not competition, and to seek a solution for everyone: vaccines for all, especially for the most vulnerable and needy of all regions of the planet. Before all others: the most vulnerable and needy!” Pope Francis said.

The Catholic doctrine of the universal destination of goods does apply in the vaccine distribution conversation, Moschella explained to CNA.

“When it comes to the genuinely superfluous goods that one person has, those goods really in some sense are the property—morally speaking, ‘belong to’—the others who are in dire need of them,” Moschella said.

However, she added that more information is needed on why the Biden administration is not sending the vaccine abroad. For instance, officials could be reasonably certain that FDA approval for the vaccine is not far away—and with many Americans yet to be vaccinated, the approval could present an opportunity to more quickly achieve herd immunity.

If the United States eventually achieves herd immunity and still has extra vaccine doses on hand with other countries in need of them, she said, the doses at that point could probably be considered superfluous and it could be wrong to keep them in the United States.

Other questions apply to this conversation, too, Brehany noted—namely the high mortality rate of developed countries in the Northern Hemisphere. According to Johns Hopkins University, Czechia has the highest mortality rate from COVID-19 in the world, followed by the United Kingdom, Hungary, Italy, and then the United States.

A high mortality rate might be another reason for the United States to hold on to doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, with so much of its population still yet to be vaccinated, he said.

Ultimately, the vaccine should be made available to other countries not out of any national interest for the United States, but because citizens of these countries are fellow human beings, Brehany emphasized. 

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