US

Washington D.C., May 29, 2018 / 03:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A federal government proposal to remove Title X funding from programs and facilities that perform abortions has drawn considerable media attention, raising questions of whether such a move would impact women’s access to health care.

On May 18, President Donald Trump formally announced that his administration is proposing a new rule that would prevent Title X family planning funds from going to clinics that perform or promote abortions.

The move was lauded by pro-life advocates, while pro-abortion groups called it an attack on women that would be devastating to the availability of women’s healthcare.

Planned Parenthood, the largest performer of abortions in the U.S., would be eligible for continued Title X funding if it stopped doing abortions, or if separated – both physically and financially – its abortion facilities from the rest of its operations.

Outgoing Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards rejected the idea of the organization cutting ties with abortion during a meeting with White House personnel last year.

Planned Parenthood blasted the new proposal as “an attempt to take away women’s basic rights” and a move “would block patients from healthcare.”

But is this really the case?

Last year, according to its annual report, Planned Parenthood received over $543 million in taxpayer dollars. About $60 million of that funding comes from Title X. The remainder is from other government grants, including Medicaid payments for services.

The 13,000 federally qualified health centers outnumber Planned Parenthood’s 650 facilities by a ratio of 20 to 1.

However, government funding makes up only 37 percent of Planned Parenthood’s revenue. The organization also fundraises, and has claimed that the threat of defunding has increased its contributions from private donors. Planned Parenthood reported $98.5 million in excess revenue last year.

Over the last decade, Planned Parenthood’s government funding increased significantly: in 2006, the organization received $336.7 million in government money. While its public funding increased, however, the organization saw fewer patients and provided fewer overall services during that time frame. Prenatal care and cancer screenings offered from 2006-2016 decreased, while the number of abortions increased by more than 10 percent.

For this reason, and because many alternatives to Planned Parenthood exist for women’s health care, it is unlikely that women would be negatively affected the new proposal, said Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director who now works as a pro-life advocate.

“There over 13,000 federally qualified Health Centers that serve entire families and offer many more services than Planned Parenthood offers, not including abortion,” Johnson told CNA.

“Planned Parenthood is trying to scare women with their rhetoric, when in reality, women will have more options with greater affordability, instead of resorting to the abortion industry, where money is put above all other goals.”

The 13,000 federally qualified health centers outnumber Planned Parenthood’s 650 facilities by a ratio of 20 to 1. They do not perform abortions, but provide other medical care, and could be eligible for an increase in funding under the new Trump administration rule.

Given that these facilities provide more types of medical care than Planned Parenthood facilities, and are far more widespread throughout the nation, the changes to Title X are a smart move for women, Johnson said.

“Our government is wisely choosing to remove tax dollars from the nation’s largest abortion provider and redirect them to actual healthcare providers who seek to serve the same demographic of Americans,” she told CNA.

In recent years, Planned Parenthood has been mired in controversy.

While federal law prohibits federal funding from being used directly for abortions, a report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute and Alliance Defending Freedom suggested that, according to federal and state audits, taxpayer dollars were funding abortion-related expenses in several states.

Furthermore, a 2015 report from Alliance Defending Freedom said that Planned Parenthood clinics in several states had failed to report suspected cases of sexual abuse of minors, as they are required by law to do.

Undercover video reporting in recent years has also appeared to show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the transfer of aborted fetal tissue for money, a practice that violates federal law.

The organization has also drawn criticism for repeatedly claiming to offer mammograms, a statement that fact-checkers have repeatedly rejected.

Planned Parenthood claims that abortions account for only three percent of the total services they provide, although fact-checkers – at the Washington Post among others – have taken issue with that claim, pointing out that Planned Parenthood counts each small procedure like a pregnancy test or a pap smear as a service provided, but abortion accounts for much greater cost and revenue for the organization.

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Washington D.C., May 27, 2018 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the opioid crisis has left nearly half a million children in need of homes, Catholic leaders are calling their families and parishes to a work of mercy that is both pro-life and fruitful: supporting vulnerable children in foster care.

“Foster care and adoption is another way that God is calling couples to be open to life, and not just infertile couples, but couples that have biological children who can welcome another child into their family,” said Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas at an event on foster care after the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

Kathryn Jean Lopez, who hosted the May 24 event titled “Fostering A Culture of Hope,” told CNA she hopes it will get more Catholics around the country talking about foster care at a time when the opioid crisis has made it more urgent.

“It is key to our identity. We are adopted daughters and sons of the Father, and we shouldn’t have orphans in our midst,” said Lopez, who has written about pro-life issues for the National Review for two decades.

From 2000 to 2012, the number of babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, the withdrawal infants experience after their pregnant mothers’ drug use, increased by 383 percent, according the White House Associate Director of Drug Control Policy Charmaine Yoest, who also spoke at the National Review Institute event.

“I want the pro-life community to acknowledge more what is going on with the foster care crisis in this country. I feel very strongly that in a lot of ways it is connected to our desire to eradicate abortion,” said Lisa Ann Wheeler, the president of Carmel Communications. Wheeler has had five children, and has fostered 15.

For Sarah Zagorski, the connection between foster care and pro-life work is very clear.

“My mother consulted with an abortionist for my delivery,” said Zagorski. “She was a Hispanic woman, very vulnerable woman, who already had seven kids in and out of foster care. They were already experiencing abuse, neglect, you name it.”

After her mother chose life, Sarah said that “life got very complicated very quickly because I entered a family environment that was unstable.”

“Foster care saved my life, just like the choice that my birth mother made saved my life,” said Zagorski.

When Catholic couples adopt or foster a child, they are living out the Gospel call for a “radical welcoming of the stranger, the orphan,” shared Elizabeth Kirk, the keynote speaker at “Fostering a Culture of Hope.”

“Pope Francis stated … that the choice of adoption and foster care expresses a particular kind of fruitfulness in the marriage experience,” continued Kirk. “Pope Francis urged even those with biological children to find other expressions of fruitfulness that in some way prolong the love that sustains them. Christian marriages, he says, are fruitful by their witness.”

“Now is an important moment for the Catholic Church to step forward and really embrace fostering,” explained Kathleen Domingo, who led a foster care initiative in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles after Catholic Charities was driven out of foster care and adoption in California due to a lack of conscience protection laws.

“Fostering is definitely a work of mercy,” said Domingo, “and works of mercy are transformative.”

“Having families in your parish involved in fostering with the rest of the parish coming around them to surround them and support them, can be that transformative element that can help our parishes to overcome polarization,” she said.

There is a lot of untapped potential in our Catholic communities, according to Domingo, who together with Archbishop Jose Gomez launched a campaign to raise awareness of foster care needs in the Los Angeles archdiocese last October.

They organized presentations at just 15 parishes in the archdiocese, and “the response was overwhelming,” said Domingo.

“We had over 300 families in just 15 parishes come forward to register to get trained as foster families,” she continued.

Even if someone is not called to foster or adopt a child, there are many things that Catholics can do to support these children.

“You can do anything from cooking a meal to providing transportation or even taking some of those children into your home. You can serve as a mentor. You can work and find ways to get your church involved,” suggested Natalie Goodnow, a research fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.

One concrete way anyone can help is through respite care, recommends Goodnow. Respite care involves watching a foster family’s kids for a couple days to a week, allowing the foster parents to have a break.

People can also volunteer as “court appointed special advocates,” or CASA for short. Through CASA, a person is matched with a foster child’s case, and advocates for the child throughout the duration of their time in the child welfare system. Goodnow pointed out that there is no legal experience required to participate.

Another organization Goodnow recommends is “Safe Families for Children”, which supports struggling families at risk of being separated through foster care.

Tutoring and mentoring a teen in foster care can also make a transformative impact, said Goodnow, who continued:

“There is tremendous potential for the faith community to do even more. I don’t think that we have fully tapped into what this community is capable of.”

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Washington D.C., May 27, 2018 / 04:43 am (CNA).- Americans’ belief in a duty to accept refugees has dipped, according to a survey showing that white Evangelicals are among the least favorable to refugees.

While 50 percent of Catholics said they … […]

Wilmington, Del., May 26, 2018 / 04:20 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In his 1988 letter to the Director of the Vatican Observatory, Pope John Paul II called scientists who are members of the Church to “serve as a key resource” by providing a “… […]

Los Angeles, Calif., May 25, 2018 / 03:59 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Southern Poverty Law Center is wrongly targeting social conservative organizations as “hate groups,” and George Clooney, a major financial supporter of the law center, shoul… […]

Denver, Colo., May 25, 2018 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A new law will revise the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, after the commission gained attention when its decision in a free speech case involving a Christian cake baker was taken to the U.S. Su… […]

Washington D.C., May 24, 2018 / 04:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The United States is in need of another great awakening and religious revival, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas told the crowd at Thursday morning’s 14th annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

In his keynote address May 24, Naumann bemoaned the state of culture in the United States, and said it is necessary to re-embrace truth, as well as the living Christ.

Additional speakers at the event in Washington, D.C., included Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and Sam Brownback, US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom.

Naumann expressed concern over the “large number of Millennials” who either do not believe in God at all, or who instead consider themselves to be “spiritual, but not religious.” The archbishop said this new mentality of a non-religious spiritualism is akin to “a new paganism,” where the God of revelation has been transformed into a god or gods who are created to re-inforce individual desires.

“Our culture is indeed experiencing a crisis of faith that leads to a denial of truth,” said Naumann. “Once the relationship between man and God is severed, man becomes just a highly developed organism.”

Without this relationship with God, humans are simply objects with a value determined only by how useful they can be to others, explained Naumann, who is the incoming chairman of the US bishops’ pro-life committee.

A lack of relationship with God leads to hedonism, with “the pursuit of pleasure becoming the highest goal,” with people seeking to avoid suffering and death at all costs, he said. This further leads to a mentality that it is “acceptable to eliminate the one suffering,” whether it be someone who is elderly, unborn, or otherwise sick and unable to be cured effectively.

It is necessary to have a personal encounter with Christ in order to be able to live a virtuous life as Catholics, said Naumann.

“Without this personal encounter, our dogma and doctrine makes no sense,” he said.

The world has been plagued with sin since the Garden of Eden, but “God’s response to humanity’s rebellion is mercy,” and Christ rescued humanity when he became “one with us in all things but sin.”

“Like a special operations soldier dropped behind enemy lines, Jesus entered fully into our humanity, enduring unspeakable suffering because of our sin.”

Naumann ended his keynote with a call for the crowd of well over 1,000 people present to be “missionary disciples” who spread the word of the Risen Christ to everyone, particularly people on the peripheries of society.

“We are called to renew our nation, not primarily by enacting laws, but by announcing the joy and hope of the Gospel of Jesus to individuals in desperate need of its good news. It is our task to reclaim our culture one mind, one heart, one soul at a time.”

In his remarks at the prayer breakfast, Ryan emphasized the importance of Catholic social teaching, while Brownback discussed religious freedom as a “God-given right.”

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San Bernardino, Calif., May 24, 2018 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A state appellate court on Wednesday denied a request for an immediate stay of a ruling which said California’s assisted suicide law was wrongly passed in a special legislative session.

The May 23 decision by California’s 4th District Court of Appeal did give the state attorney general, Xavier Becerra, more time to provide arguments as to why the lower court’s ruling should be overruled.

Judge Daniel Ottolia of the Riverside County Superior Court had ruled May 15 that lawmakers had unconstitutionally passed the law in a 2015 special session of the legislature dedicated to health care funding.

Ottolia’s ruling was welcomed by the California Catholic Conference, whose executive director, Ned Dolejsi, said May 18 that “Our opposition to assisted suicide is no secret, but this legislation was also opposed by a broad coalition of doctors, nurses, seniors and the disabled community, who fought this bill for many, many reasons.”

“Health care professionals … questioned why the state was embracing doctor-assisted suicide as the standard of care for people who needed respect and support,” he said. “Others were offended at the way Medi-Cal patients – often refused coverage for palliative care – were offered coverage for lethal prescriptions instead.”

Dolejsi also noted that “At an oversight hearing in January to review the implementation of the End-of-Life Option Act, even though presented with clear evidence of poor data collection and other implementation uncertainties, legislators openly discussed ways that physician-assisted suicide could be expanded – especially to poor and minority communities.”

Under the law, lethal prescriptions may be given to adults who are able to make medical decisions if their attending physician and a consulting physician have diagnosed a terminal disease expected to end in death within six months.

The initial legislative effort to pass an assisted suicide bill failed in committee during the 2015 regular season. It was subsequently passed during a special legislative session later the same year which was called to address state health care funding shortages.

Opponents of the law have charged that it was rushed through the special session and lacks safeguards against abuse, such as an adequate definition of terminal illness.

In the first six months after the law took effect, 111 people in California committed assisted suicide under its provisions. Assisted suicide has also been legally sanctioned in Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia.

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Denver, Colo., May 24, 2018 / 03:15 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A video that frames a Colorado women’s clinic as a bogus, sub-par healthcare provider is libelous, said the clinic’s directors and lawyer, who are demanding that it be corrected.

Las… […]

Philadelphia, Pa., May 24, 2018 / 02:36 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In an effort to highlight the voices of young people ahead of the Synod on Youth this fall, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia is periodically offering his column space in the diocesan… […]