CNA Staff, Feb 4, 2021 / 12:02 am (CNA).- A Catholic lawyer who helped found the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong has been nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.Martin Lee Chu-ming, 82, founded Hong Kong’s Democratic Party in 1994.Lee has been … […]
Washington D.C., Feb 3, 2021 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, chairman of the US bishops’ domestic justice committee, praised Wednesday President Joe Biden’s environmental executive orders.
Biden’s executi… […]
CNA Staff, Feb 3, 2021 / 04:58 pm (CNA).- An upcoming documentary aims to revise Catholic iconography for those who self-identify as LGBT and will depict Jesus Christ as “a member or ally of the LGBTQ+ community.” It includes appearances from Father Ja… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 3, 2021 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- U.S. bishops are asking that the next COVID relief bill include “life-affirming policies” and reject abortion funding.
In a letter to members of Congress on Wednesday, several bishops advocated for the next COVID relief bill to include certain emergency aid policies while excluding funding of abortions.
The relief package “should promote the dignity and value of all human life and protect poor and vulnerable people who are most at risk,” the bishops stated.
“Accordingly, we urge you in the strongest possible terms to use the money and policies in these bills to fund and promote life-affirming policies and not to advance the destruction of innocent unborn human life,” they added in their letter.
The letter’s signers included Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, the domestic justice chair of the U.S. bishops’ conference (USCCB); Bishop David Malloy of Rockford, chair of the USCCB’s international justice and peace committee; Bishop Michael Barber of Oakland, chair of the USCCB’s education committee; Bishop Shelton Fabre, chair of the USCCB anti-racism committee; Bishop Mario Dorsonville, chair of the USCCB migration committee; and Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chair of the USCCB pro-life committee.
President Joe Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. Although he met with Republicans on Tuesday, who presented a $600 billion counter-proposal, Democrats appear poised to pass Biden’s proposal with or without Republican support.
Senate Democrats are reportedly using the parliamentary process of reconciliation to pass the relief measure, thus only requiring 50 votes in the chamber with Vice President Kamala Harris available to break a 50-50 split.
Pro-life groups had expressed concern to CNA earlier this month that COVID relief could open up new federal funding of health care without pro-life protections. On Wednesday, the pro-life group March for Life Action tweeted its concern that the bill could include abortion funding.
The bishops on Wednesday reiterated their stance against abortion funding in the relief bill.
“Any public option for health care, or similar efforts to increase access to health care, must include protections against using taxpayer dollars for elective abortions,” the bishops said.
The bishops asked members to maintain increases to food stamp benefits, fund emergency rental assistance, provide for “testing, vaccination, and treatment for COVID-19 for all,” increase Medicaid resources for states, and provide for protective equipment and paid leave for essential workers.
In addition, they advocated for “equitable access” to emergency aid for non-public schools, “legal status and a pathway to citizenship” for essential workers, Dreamers, and TPS recipients and their families, and an expansion of the above-the-line charitable tax deduction.
House Republican Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) has criticized the use of reconciliation to pass the relief measure, saying that it included a $15-an-hour minimum wage among other policies that Republicans are objecting to.
Washington D.C., Feb 3, 2021 / 03:43 pm (CNA).- Asked Wednesday if President Joe Biden intends to work with the pro-life community, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the president “will reach out to all Americans”.
Owen… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 3, 2021 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- Warning: graphic and disturbing content below. Reader discretion is advised.
Uyghur women interned in China’s “re-education” camps are subjected to systemic rape by Chinese sold… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 3, 2021 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- A federal appeals court on Tuesday allowed an Indiana county to display a nativity scene at its courthouse.
A three-judge panel of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that a nat… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 3, 2021 / 11:00 am (CNA).- The U.S. bishops’ conference welcomed President Joe Biden’s immigration actions on Wednesday, while one Catholic group decried the continuance of deportations.
On Tuesday, the White H… […]
Topeka, Kan., Feb 2, 2021 / 08:01 pm (CNA).- The Kansas Senate on Jan. 28 passed a measure that, if approved by voters, would amend the state’s constitution to exclude a “right to abortion” and reserve the right to regulate abortion in the state to the legislature.
The proposed “Value Them Both” amendment would codify that “the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion.” The Kansas House had passed the amendment Jan. 22.
The impetus for the amendment is an April 2019 ruling from the Kansas Supreme Court blocking a law that would have banned dilation and evacuation abortions, which found that the state constitution protects a woman’s right to have an abortion.
If voters approve the amendment by a simple majority during the primary election in August 2022, it will nullify that ruling.
The amendment’s supporters have said that the amendment is not intended to be a ban on abortion, but rather will allow bipartisan laws restricting abortion passed before the 2019 ruling to take effect. Democratic Governor Laura Kelly is opposed to the amendment.
The Kansas Catholic Conference has supported the amendment, saying that because the measure did not pass the legislature in 2020, “it will be the legislative priority” for the state’s bishops in the 2021 session.
Chuck Weber, executive director of the Kansas Catholic Conference, told CNA that while the amendment’s passage is an “unprecedented legislative achievement,” getting the measure to pass when placed before voters will be a challenge.
Weber said he expects strong opposition to the amendment from the abortion industry.
“Without the financial resources that the abortion industry enjoys, ours will be a grassroots, shoe leather effort. It really is David versus Goliath,” he told CNA.
Weber said the KCC is preparing a statewide grassroots educational campaign which will involve Catholic churches in the state, diocesan Respect Life coordinators, parishes, Knights of Columbus, college students at Newman Centers and Catholic colleges and universities, and Catholic schools. The group is also reaching out to non-Catholic partners, including the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, Weber said.
He urged prayers for the amendment’s passage.
“We already have in place a robust spiritual effort that includes leaning on Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Unborn, who is the Patroness for our effort,” he said, adding that all four of Kansas’ Catholic bishops have encouraged the faithful to pray the rosary together.
The Kansas amendment mirrors an ongoing legal effort in Iowa, another state whose Supreme Court has ruled that a “right to abortion” exists in its constitution. That state’s house on Jan. 27 passed House Joint Resolution 5, which would amend the Iowa state constitution to clarify that it “does not recognize, grant, or secure a right to abortion or require the public funding of abortion.”
Similarly, in Louisiana, voters in November 2020 approved an amendment excluding a right to abortion from that state’s constitution. State Senator Katrina Jackson, a pro-life Democrat, authored the Louisiana amendment when she was a state representative, along with dozens of co-sponsors from both parties.
Tennessee, West Virginia, and Alabama have also passed similar amendments.
Kansas’ abortion policy is prescient not only for its own residents but also for residents of its neighbor Missouri, which currently has only one clinic licensed to preform abortions, located on the far east side of the state in St. Louis.
As a result, many Missouri residents living near the Missouri-Kansas border avail themselves of abortions from clinics located in Overland Park and Wichita.
Nearly half of all abortions performed in Kansas in 2017 were on Missouri residents, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Data from 2019, the latest available, show that Missouri residents accounted for roughly 94% of the out-of-state residents having abortions in Kansas, the Witchita Eagle reports.
A report from the Missouri Department of Health and Human Services shows 39 surgical abortions took place in Missouri from Jan. 1 through Nov. 15, 2020, compared to 1,362 performed in 2019. The state recorded zero abortions in December 2020, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Washington D.C., Feb 2, 2021 / 06:15 pm (CNA).- Pro-life advocates are concerned over the nomination of Samantha Power to head a critical United States international aid agency.
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced his nomination of Power to be administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In that position, Power would have broad sway to determine which groups would and would not merit U.S. assistance in developing countries.
Pro-life leaders are concerned that, given Power’s record in international affairs, she would either direct aid to pro-abortion and pro-LGBT groups in developing countries, or condition U.S. assistance upon groups adopting pro-abortion and pro-LGBT principles.
Fr. Bonaventure Luchidio, National Director of the Pontifical Missionary Society in Kenya, said in a statement to ACI Africa that he hopes Power “having been a diplomat of highest repute and a global writer and a Pulitzer award winner will not persuade and influence other people’s conscience and mind by proposing a pro choice agenda towards aid to needy countries.”
“This will be unethical and immoral at the same time,” Luchidio said. “May human dignity and preferential option to the poor be the guiding principles and concerns that take precedence in all aid given to needy countries without attaching aid to some practices that impair our conscience.”
Power’s nomination to USAID is waiting upon Senate confirmation. She formerly served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration.
Born in London and raised near Dublin, Power immigrated to the United States as a child. She worked as a foreign correspondent before turning to foreign policy, and her book on genocide won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 2003.
Power, a Catholic, also co-chaired the Catholic outreach for the Biden 2020 presidential campaign.
Bishops and leaders of international pro-life groups have questioned what type of American interests would be advanced in their countries on Power’s watch. They likened a pro-abortion U.S. foreign policy to cultural imperialism.
For instance, President Biden last week announced he would rescind the Mexico City Policy, opening the door to funding of foreign NGOs that perform or promote abortions abroad.
This action applies to hundreds of millions of dollars in USAID family planning assistance, as well as billions of dollars of U.S. global health assistance. Thus, Power could be in a key position at USAID to direct funding to pro-abortion groups such as Marie Stopes International or the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of Nigeria’s Oyo Diocese said in a statement to ACI Africa that under Power, USAID “will doubtlessly pursue an ideological and cultural onslaught against African religious and cultural values.”
“More than ever, Catholics in particular and Africans in general, need awareness education so as to know what is really going on about the right to life and the gender ideological war,” the bishop said.
Jesús Magaña, president of United for Life – Colombia, said in a statement to ACI Prensa, “It is very sad to see that the new president of the United States of America, Joe Biden, has an agenda of death.”
“This is confirmed by the [selection] of Samantha Power as the new director of the United States development agency (USAID),” Magaña said.
“Her trajectory as a promoter of abortion and the LGBT agenda confirms that the agency will be used in an ideological way to impose programs that distance themselves from the development of the peoples, by imposing agendas of death and destruction of the family and the culture of these peoples of which they pretend to ‘help,’” Magaña said.
Ivone Mieles, director of Pro-Life Ecuador, said in a statement that the nomination of Power “leaves us much to think about,” warning that she could bring back the Obama administration’s advocacy for abortion and LGBT causes.
“So, this woman who worked in the Obama administration comes back to reactivate in a way what Trump stopped,” Mieles said. “So, it is scary for Latin America, in that sense, the influence that organizations, among others, like Planned Parenthood, will have.”
Mieles said that his country is in a vulnerable position, dependent on development assistance. With Power in the Biden administration, “surely the attack and the influence will be more aggressive,” he said.
Luis Losada Pescador, director of campaigns for CitizenGO, said in a statement to ACI Prensa that the Biden presidency will bring about “a serious reversal for the pro-life and pro-family cause.”
“[I]t would allow the use of federal funds to finance abortion outside the United States and the return of ‘LGBT diplomacy’ in an ideological interference incompatible with respect for the sovereignty of other countries,” Pescador said.
Pescador added that he is preparing for the U.S. to now “promote abortion under the euphemism of ‘sexual and reproductive rights,’” adding that civil society leaders will need to denounce it.
As UN Ambassador, Power gave speeches on LGBT rights, noting actions that the Obama administration had taken in furtherance of that end.
At a 2015 address at Harvard University on LGBT rights, Power touted U.S. participation in “the first-ever Ministerial event on LGBT rights” during the 2013 UN General Assembly.
In a 2016 speech to the Human Rights Campaign, Power explained how a 2011 memorandum by President Obama weaved LGBT rights into the “DNA” of U.S. foreign policy and “into the work we do to advance human rights and human dignity around the world.” She said this policy consisted not only of fighting the criminalization of homosexuality by foreign countries, but of sending resources to LGBTI groups.
When remarks by Pope Francis on civil unions were made public in October, Power tweeted that the pope’s purported support for civil unions “will ultimately have a profound impact on how gays and lesbians are treated around the world.”
The Vatican later clarified that Pope Francis’ remarks, made in a 2019 interview and included in a documentary that aired in 2020, were referring to a specific 2010 same-sex marriage bill in the Argentine legislature; as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio had opposed it. The Vatican clarified that Bergoglio did support certain legal coverages for same-sex persons living together, which he referred to as “a law of civil union.”
After her time in the Obama administration, Power has also supported legal abortion.
In an interview with the Irish Times, Power stated her support for legal abortion in Ireland as part of the “Repeal the 8th” campaign in 2018.
Last summer, when the Supreme Court sided with abortion clinics against Louisiana’s regulations, Power tweeted “Good for #SCOTUS to uphold clear precedent” and called Louisiana’s law “impossibly restrictive.”
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