News Briefs

Bismarck, N.D., Sep 12, 2019 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- After a North Dakota judge nixed part of a new law requiring doctors to inform their patients about abortion pill reversal, pro-life advocates say they hope the decision will be overturned.

“While this is a disservice to women, who have a right to this information, we’re hopeful that Attorney General Stenehjem will appeal and defend this common-sense law. Women have a right to know,” Medora Nagle, Executive Director of North Dakota Right to Life, told CNA.

U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Hovland granted a preliminary injunction Sept. 10 against part of a North Dakota law which would have required physicians to tell their patients that a medically-induced abortion could be reversed if the patient acted quickly.

The injunction was sought by the American Medical Association, Access Independent Health Services, Inc., Dr. Kathryn L. Eggleston, and Red River Women’s Clinic, which is the only clinic providing abortions in the state.

“Legislation which forces physicians to tell their patients, as part of informed consent, that ‘it may be possible’ to reverse or cure an ailment, disease, illness, surgical procedure, or the effects of any medication—in the absence of any medical or scientific evidence to support such a message—is unsound, misplaced, and would not survive a constitutional challenge under any level of scrutiny,” Hovland said in his decision.

A medical abortion, sometimes called a chemical abortion, is a two-step process that involves the ingestion of two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. The first drug, mifepristone, effectively starves the unborn baby by blocking the effects of the progesterone hormone, inducing a miscarriage. The second drug, misoprostol, is taken up to two days later and induces labor.

Several pro-life clinics throughout the country provide abortion pill reversals, a protocol that involves giving pregnant women who regret their decision to take the first drug doses of progesterone to counteract the progesterone-blocking effects of the mifepristone.

Teresa Kenney is a women’s health nurse practitioner with the Sancta Familia (Holy Family) Medical Apostolate in Omaha, Nebraska. Kenney told CNA that because progesterone is safe for pregnant women and their unborn babies, and the benefit of reversing a medical abortion is so great, the procedure “makes complete sense” from a scientific standpoint.

“If I give a medicine that decreases or blocks progesterone to stop a pregnancy, then it makes perfect logical medical sense to give progesterone to help reverse that,” Kenney told CNA.

“The benefit is overwhelmingly positive,” she added, “and in this situation…I would argue that two lives are actually saved when it works, because not only do you save the life of the baby, and that’s a human life being saved…but you also save the life of the mother in the sense that when she has made a choice that she deeply regrets, and we have now given her the opportunity to emotionally and physically change that choice, and it succeeds, we’ve saved her life too.”

Kenney said that progesterone has been scientifically proven to be safe for women and their babies in early pregnancy to prevent natural miscarriages from occurring.

“Just because there hasn’t been a randomized controlled double-blind study on abortion pill reversal doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make sense to implement it in medicine, because there is already scientific support for progesterone in early pregnancy in the prevention and miscarriage,” she said.

“Do we need more research? Absolutely. But to withhold treatment when, again, we know that it does no harm…we know that it medically makes sense, it scientifically makes sense, and the benefits are overwhelmingly positive, why wouldn’t we do it?” she said.

Kenney said that she finds it “frustrating” that there has been a lot of research and effort in the medical community to prevent pregnancy, but not as much to support it.

“We do live in a contraceptive society,” she said. “We have a culture against life. And so all of the studies are geared towards preventing pregnancy.”

Christopher Dodson, executive director of the North Dakota Catholic Conference, said Sept. 10 that “North Dakota legislators rightly believed that women should know about the procedure before starting the abortion process.”

He stated, “the abortion lobby co-opted the American Medical Association and used legal technicalities and medical complexities to deny women the right to know. We applaud the legislators who overwhelming supported HB 1336, Governor Burgum for signing the measure, the physicians who submitted testimony to the court in support of the law, and the Attorney General for defending women’s rights.”

One pro-life clinic that offers abortion pill reversal is Bella Natural Women’s Care in Englewood, Colorado.

Dede Chism, a nurse practitioner and co-founder and executive director of Bella, told CNA in 2018 that because progesterone is known to be safe for pregnant women and unborn babies, the progesterone abortion pill reversal procedure is “common sense.”

A recent study, published in Issues in Law and Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal, examined 261 successful abortion pill reversals, and showed that the reversal success rates were 68 percent with a high-dose oral progesterone protocol and 64 percent with an injected progesterone protocol.

Both procedures significantly improved the 25 percent fetal survival rate if no treatment is offered and a woman simply declines the second pill of a medical abortion. The case study also showed that the progesterone treatments caused no increased risk of birth defects or preterm births.

The study was authored by Dr. Mary Davenport and Dr. George Delgado, who have been studying the abortion pill reversal procedures since 2009. Delgado also sits on the board of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a group that supports the abortion pill procedure reversal.

Nagle said that women should be empowered by the law, and that they should be given “all of the information before making a decision of this magnitude.”

According to Nagle, seven other states have similar laws on the books requiring doctors to tell their patients about the abortion pill reversal procedure, which she said has saved more than 750 babies so far.

“We won’t be discouraged,” she said. “We will continue to fight for women’s rights to be given all of the information.”

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Tampa, Florida, Sep 12, 2019 / 05:20 pm (CNA).- A judge in Florida has denied a couple custody of their four-year-old son, who has leukemia, because there is “imminent risk of neglect” if he stays with his parents, who skipped a chemotherapy session for the child in order to leave the state to seek alternative treatments.

A judge ruled Sept. 9 that the Tampa Bay-area parents, Joshua McAdams and Taylor Bland-Ball, will be required to undergo a psychological evaluation with a parenting index after which point they may be able to be reunified with their son Noah, who is currently with his grandparents, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

Kevin Miller, assistant professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, stressed that the Catholic Church takes parental rights very seriously, but these rights should not be misused.

“When it is not fairly clear that parental rights are being abused, it seems to me, the state should generally be deferential to parents,” Miller told CNA.

But this case, he said, raises serious questions about whether the parents are misusing their authority and rights.

Florida law allows the state to provide medical treatment to children even if the parents object, CBS News reports.

“There was no alternative with a remote chance of success…They were choosing between life and death for their child,” Judge Palermo said as quoted by Fox13.

If the parents do not comply with the evaluation, the out-of-home placement could become permanent. They have 30 days to appeal the judge’s decision, the Times reports.

Doctors at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg diagnosed Noah with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in April 2019.

After two rounds of treatment, on April 22, 2019, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office issued a Missing Endangered Child alert after the parents did not show up for Noah’s third treatment, stating that “the parents failed to bring in the child to a medically necessary hospital procedure.”

McAdams, Bland-Ball, and Noah were located in Kentucky a week later; they had fled to Ohio to seek alternative treatments. Authorities placed Noah in the custody of his maternal grandparents in early May 2019.

The child’s mother argues that rather than denying him lifesaving treatment, she and her husband were simply seeking a second opinion, believing that chemotherapy had harmful side effects. On a GoFundMe page, Bland-Ball says that they were unhappy with the treatment they received at the hospital in St. Petersburg, and also that Noah’s condition has not improved.

Bland-Ball had sought to use “rosemary, Vitamin B Complex, including B17, completely alkaline diet, Rosemary, a liver/kidney/gallbladder/blood herbal extract, daily colloidal silver, high dose vitamin c, collagen, Reishi mushroom tea and grapefruit peel and breastmilk” as alternative treatments for Noah’s leukemia.

She has also posted on Facebook seeking cannabis treatments for Noah, and her attorney has confirmed that Noah also has received CBD and THC oil treatments. Medical marijuana is legal in Florida.

Bland-Ball also moved Noah’s PICC line, which she had no formal training on how to do other than watching instructional YouTube videos, the judge said.

Among the reasons the judge cited for his decision were evidence the parents dumped a car and cell phones while fleeing Florida, and the judge stated that he was convinced that the parents would flee Florida again if given the chance.

The judge also cited McAdams’ “proclivity for aggression” towards family members. McAdams in August 2016 was arrested on a charge of misdemeanor domestic battery by Brooksville police, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

McAdams reportedly threw a plastic toy bucket at Bland-Ball but accidentally hit Noah, cutting his face. McAdams then shoved Bland-Ball into a wall “multiple times,” causing a head contusion, the Times reported.

He spent three days in jail, records show, and the case was dropped in March 2017; McAdams later attended counseling. The Times reports that Bland-Ball also filed for a protective injunction against McAdams, according to court records, but it was later dismissed.

‘Appropriate social measures’

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “In creating man and woman, God instituted the human family and endowed it with its fundamental constitution. Its members are persons equal in dignity. For the common good of its members and of society, the family necessarily has manifold responsibilities, rights, and duties.”

According to Miller, those rights include the right of parents to make decisions about how to promote the welfare— physical, psychological, intellectual, spiritual— of their children.

He also emphasized that “the family is a community of love in a way that no other community is capable of being,” and thus respect for family rights serves the good of both family members and of society more broadly.

The Catechism also teaches: “The family must be helped and defended by appropriate social measures. Where families cannot fulfill their responsibilities, other social bodies have the duty of helping them and of supporting the institution of the family. Following the principle of subsidiarity, larger communities should take care not to usurp the family’s prerogatives or interfere in its life.”

But, Miller told CNA, some actions that parents might claim to be exercises of parental rights might actually be abuses of those rights. In case of gross abuses, he said, putting children in serious danger, it can be appropriate for the state, as part of its natural purpose of looking after the common good of its members, to step in and stop those abuses; this is obviously the case when, for example, parents subject their children to certain kinds of violence.

Parents overruled

Of course, Miller said, it is possible for the state to overstep its authority.

International cases such as that of 11-month-old Charlie Gard in 2017 and toddler Alfie Evans last year have highlighted situations of the state determining treatment for a patient against the parent’s wishes. In both cases, which took place in the UK, the state determined that the patients be removed from life support, despite the protest of the parents.

These cases are different from the Florida case, Miller said, because in both UK cases, the state was choosing death for the children in question, and in the Florida case, the state is prioritizing a treatment aimed at saving child’s life.

“I think one clear difference is that in those [UK] cases, it was the state that— I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say— wanted them to die,” Miller commented.

He noted that in the Gard case, the parents attempted to transfer to transfer the child to the United States to undergo an experimental treatment for his condition.

“In the one case, it was experimental treatment, but it was experimental treatment offered as part of a bone fide study by a bone fide doctor at a bone fide hospital here in the US. So in that case they were pursuing an approach that you could certainly call extraordinary rather than ordinary means of treatment, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I think it’s within the rights of the parents to decide whether to pursue that kind of a treatment or not.”

He noted that in both of the UK cases, the question was not whether or not to pursue an alternate form of treatment, but rather whether or not to continue basic life-saving measures.

Miller said the only similarity he sees between the UK cases and the Florida case is the fact that the state overruled the wishes of the parents.

“This [Florida] case, in multiple respects, is almost like the opposite of what was going on in the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cases,” Miller said.

“In terms of what the parents are trying to do, and in terms of what the state is trying to do…there’s absolutely no inconsistency in siding with what the state is doing in this present case and siding with the parents in those earlier cases.”

‘An abuse of parental rights’

“I suspect that the parents are genuinely sincere in claiming that what they want to do is in their son’s best interest – although the fact that the father, on one occasion, attempted an act of violence against the mother that ended up injuring their son is cause for concern,” Miller said.

“Nevertheless – and putting aside that point about the father’s history – it seems to me that what they want to do constitutes an abuse of parental rights.”

According to Fox13, the judge said the particular type of chemotherapy being given to Noah has a 70-year track record with 90-95% success rate.

“Proper treatment, based on evidence established by a tremendous amount of research, is, sadly, very difficult for the child, his parents, and other family members. It takes several years. There are side effects, including serious ones, during this period. There is the possibility of other side effects appearing years later. The fact remains that in the vast majority of cases, treatment is lifesaving, and so confers benefits that far outweigh the burdens,” Miller noted.

“In contrast, there is absolutely no evidence to support the parents’ view that stopping standard treatment very early, and switching to the approach that they favor, will confer any benefit. Rather, it is certain that – barring a miracle – the child will come out of remission and die of leukemia.”

Miller also pointed out a fact that has been circulated in news reports about the case: that at least one of the alternative treatments that Bland-Ball mentions, known commonly as Vitamin B17, has been found by the National Center for Biomedical Information to not only be likely ineffective for curing cancer, but also bringing with it the potential for cyanide poisoning.

“Again: We ought to be vigilant about the problem of abuse of state authority. This does happen – including in the area of health-care decision making. The phenomenon of ‘medical kidnapping’ is not purely fictitious,” Miller cautioned.

“But in the case at hand, it is clear to me that it is the parents – not the state – who are abusing their rights.”

‘Measure of last resort’

Father Tad Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told CNA that removal of a child from parental custody ought to be a measure of “last resort,” to be used only after a “shared understanding” between the parents and healthcare professionals cannot be achieved.

“Sometimes parents may be attracted to ‘alternative’ treatments they came across on the internet that have not [been] tested or verified, and it may be important to spend a great deal of time and energy explaining to such parents the clear preferability of using standard treatments that have been tested and verified as efficacious for many patients,” Pacholczyk said.

Pacholczyk said parents should generally be permitted to make medical judgements on behalf of minor children, especially when weighing the burdens of particular treatments such as chemotherapy— or, as in the Charlie Gard case, whether to discontinue treatment altogether.

“The decision to discontinue such interventions ultimately lies with the patient — or in this case with the parents as the child’s proxy,” he said.

In making such judgements, he noted, parents need to be in close communication with healthcare professionals, and avail themselves of their medical expertise, prior to reaching any conclusions regarding the proposed treatment.

“In situations where there is a standard treatment available, one that works in a high percentage of cases…it may indeed be unreasonable, and even wrong, for parents to decline such a treatment if the burdens to their child associated with its use are fairly low,” he said.

“In such cases, however, the first line of attack should be not to take away the custody of their child, but to work assiduously to convince the parents to use the most effective approach.”

Echoing Miller, Pacholczyk said that the family is, broadly speaking, the best place for a child, and “custody should be taken away only in clear situations of manifest danger to the child or in other evident situations of abuse or gross neglect.”

Judge Palermo in the Florida case emphasized that in his view, the state had “met its burden and found clear and convincing evidence for neglect.”

“Being raised through substitute arrangements set up by the state is many times more detrimental to the well-being of children than remaining within their native family setting,” he said.

“State and governmental agencies are almost invariably worse at caring for the needs of children than the child’s own parents, even when those parents may not exercise perfect judgment or may lack ideal parenting skills.”

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Washington D.C., Sep 12, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- US Senate Democrats sought to repeal the Mexico City Policy this week in an appropriations bill, raising concern that some pro-life policies could be endangered during budget negotiations as the end of t… […]

St. Paul, Minn., Sep 12, 2019 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- More than 200 people attended an informational hearing of a Minnesota House committee Wednesday that listened to testimony regarding an assisted suicide bill, which is unlikely to advance in the Republican-led Senate.

Among those testifying against the End-of-Life Options Act was Kathy Ware, who cares for her 21-year-old son Kylen, who has multiple disabilities.

“My son is not undignified because I have to help him use the bathroom,” Ware said Sept. 11, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “This bill makes a public statement by law that death is better than living with a disability like Kylen.”

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Mike Freiberg of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. It would allow a mentally capable adult with a terminal illness who has six months or fewer to live to be prescribed life-ending medication. A second doctor would have to confirm the terminally ill adult’s situation.

The manner of death of those who commit assisted suicide would be “listed as the underlying terminal illness and not as a suicide or homicide.”

The bill says that “a person who has custody or control of medical aid-in-dying medication … that remains unused after the terminally ill adult’s death shall dispose of the unused medical aid-in-dying medication by lawful means according to state and federal guidelines including: (1) returning the unused medical aid-in-dying medication to a federally approved medication take-back program or mail-back program; or (2) returning the unused medical aid-in-dying medication to the local or state police departments who shall dispose of the medication by lawful means.”

In Oregon, where assisted suicide was legalized in 1997, doctors have written 2,217 prescriptions for lethal medication, and about two-thirds of those who were prescribed them, 1,459, have died from the drugs.

The Minnesota bill would allow health care providers to choose not to provide assisted suicide, but requires the provider to “make reasonable efforts to accommodate the terminally ill adult’s request including transferring care of the terminally ill adult to a new health care provider.”

Health care facilities would be able to bar their employees from providing assisted suicide only if the terminally ill person intends to take the medication “on the facility’s premises.”

The bill also declares that what it terms “aid-in-dying” does not constitute suicide or assisted suicide.

Marianne Turnbull, a St. Paul resident who has cancer and supports the bill, said at the hearing of the House Health and Human Services Policy Committee that “when the time comes, I want a good death. I want to die at home surrounded by people who love me.”

Stephanie Packer travelled from California to testify against the bill, the Star Tribune reported. Packer has pulmonary fibrosis, and said her insurer stopped covering several of her medications after assisted suicide was legalized in her home state, and she was told her copay for assisted suicide medication would be only $1.20.

“If there are other options out there to save them money, they are good businesspeople, and they are going to do it,” she said of insurance companies.

A Nevada physician, Dr. T. Brian Callister, warned that with legal assisted suicide, “what we are going to see is a movement towards the cheapest treatment” by insurers. “The cheapest treatment is the medicine that is going to kill you.”

Senator John Hoffman, DFL-Champlin, told the AP that insurers could pressure the elderly and disabled to use assisted suicide medication, and said, “I think people with disabilities should be pretty concerned.”

Rep. Anne Neu questioned at the hearing how many people would choose assisted suicide “in fear of being a burden on their families.”

The state’s bishops are among the religious leaders opposed to the bill.

At the hearing, Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota noted his opposition to the bill, while Harlan Limpert, a Unitarian Universalist minister, indicated his support.

Senator Michelle Benson, R-Ham Lake, who chairs the Minnesota Senate Health and Human Services Committee, said shortly after the House committee’s hearing that “physician-assisted suicide is a dangerous policy and we will not hear it in the Senate.”

“Many of those opposed to state-sanctioned suicide are in the mental health and disability community because when people are vulnerable, they are at the greatest risk of outside influence clouding their personal judgement,” she noted. “When people are facing difficult decisions or even desperation, the state should not be telling them ending their life is a way out.”

Benson suggested palliative care as a “life-affirming” alternative, and said: “In fact, we proposed a palliative care commission to discuss policy options that would support palliative care, but House Democrats opposed the bill.”

“Senate Republicans have increased funding and expanded health care access to those with mental health issues in recent years. It frightens me to consider someone who may be having suicidal ideation could be told that suicide is a positive choice for their life. Let’s be clear: it is not. Whether it’s done by a medical professional or an individual’s tragic decision, suicide hurts those left behind,” she stated.

“Finally, if physician-assisted suicide becomes law, it may be easier for some to remind those with a high level of care that it is cheaper for them to die than to keep them alive. The cost of care is not how we determine the value of someone’s life.”

The state legislature will not reconvene until February 2020.

In the US, assisted suicide is legal in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia, and in Montana by a court ruling. A law allowing it in Maine will take effect Jan. 1, 2020, and a law legalizing it in New Jersey is on hold while it is being challenged in court.

In Colorado, a Colorado man who has cancer and his doctor have filed a suit against a Catholic health system alleging that its policy barring doctors from participating in assisted suicide violates state law.

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