US

Washington D.C., Apr 13, 2018 / 04:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic leaders have said that the dramatic decrease in the number of Syrian refugees accepted by the United States is of great humanitarian concern.

While the United States government is in the midst of condemning and investigating recent suspected chemical warfare attacks reportedly carried out by the Syrian government, the number of Syrian refugees accepted by the United States has declined dramatically this year.

According to the State Department, the United States has accepted only 11 Syrian refugees so far this year, compared with 790 over the same period in 2016.

More than 10 million Syrians have been displaced from their homes over the course of a civil war that has been ongoing for the past seven years. Many of these refugees have overwhelmingly flooded neighboring countries such as Jordan and Lebanon.

“The precipitous decline in the number of Syrians the United States is resettling is extremely concerning,” Bill O’Keefe, vice president for government relations and advocacy for Catholic Relief Services, told CNA.

“…millions of Syrians remain displaced, caught in a web of violence and proxy wars,” he added. “The United States has traditionally taken the most vulnerable refugees, including Syrians, who have suffered terrible trauma or would be unable to go home. These refugees are the neighbors Jesus told us to love in the Gospel. We can safely welcome thousands of these women, men, and children to our country.”

In 2016, the United States resettled more than 15,000 Syrian refugees, and just over 3,000 in 2017. If the current rate is maintained, fewer than 50 Syrian refugees will be resettled in the United States in 2018.

For 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump set the total number of refugees that would be accepted by the United States at 45,000, and travel bans and other obstacles have slowed immigration even further.

Edward Clancy, director of outreach for Aid to the Church in Need, USA, told CNA that U.S. immigration policies have also been particularly unfair to Christian refugees in previous years.

“The number of Christian refugees has been very low compared to their representation in the population, so we’re speaking out on behalf of Christians with no voice in the Middle East…we’ve made it part of our mandate to support the Christian community in the Middle East in these areas of refugees, food shelter, pastoral care, whatever is needed,” Clancy told CNA.

Clancy noted that many churches in the United States have been very generous at the local level in supporting and welcoming new refugees, but he urged Catholics and Christians to get in touch with their representatives to voice their concerns about policies affecting Syrian and other refugees.

“If they feel that something needs to be done, then they should contact their congressman or senator to say that we have to make sure that these people have every opportunity for life, because that’s what it comes down to,” Clancy said.

“They’re leaving…mainly just to stay alive. Almost all of them want to stay home, they want to stay where they come from, they don’t want to move, they’re being forced to do so, so we should be understanding of that,” he said.

Bill Canny, executive director for Migration and Refugee Services for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), told CNA that the number of refugees the United States was accepting from Syria in past years was already small in comparison to the millions who were forced to flee their homes.

The U.S. Bishops had advocated for an annual refugee cap of at least 75,000 for the United States for 2018, before the Trump administration announced it would be 45,000, Canny added.

“We were already only able to help a few, and not being able to do that is very disconcerting,” Canny told CNA.

The USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Service is one of nine national resettlement programs, working with the Catholic Charities network throughout the country to help resettle refugees, including Syrians. Most refugees arrive in the United States simply wanting a dignified life and are eager to be contributing citizens, Canny noted.

“They want good education for their children, they jump on work opportunities, I think that in a matter of a few months at least 75 percent of refugees get a job and start working,” he said. “These are people who have suffered badly, languishing in either refugee camps or urban slums oftentimes, who deserve another chance.”

He added that refugees who enter the United States were already subjected to the strictest vetting, and that additional security measures were not necessary.

“While we respect safety concerns and we know it’s the government’s right to keep us safe, we don’t think the refugee program is an avenue of danger to our citizens, due to the extensive security checks that have been done for a number of years,” Canny said.

Furthermore, the issue of refugee resettlement should be of particular concern to Christians because the Gospel compels them to care for the poor and the needy, Canny noted.

“Certainly it’s a core responsibility of our faith, from exhortations in the Old Testament to welcome the stranger, to make sure that one cares for newcomers, and of course from the New Testament and the teachings of Christ,” he said. “Matthew 25 compels us to help the neediest, and certainly refugees are really the neediest.”

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Washington D.C., Apr 13, 2018 / 04:14 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A group of prominent Church officials from El Salvador visited the United States this week to urge a reconsideration of recent changes to immigration policy.

In January 2018, the Department of… […]

Greensburg, Pa., Apr 13, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Catholic liberal arts college in Pennsylvania is hosting its seventh biennial Catholic Arts Competition and Exhibition to move artists and buyers towards diverse, original, and beautiful Chri… […]

Washington D.C., Apr 13, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After a record-high year of death sentences implemented around the world in 2016, a new report released by Amnesty International shows an overall decrease in capital punishment during 2017.

Ho… […]

Washington D.C., Apr 12, 2018 / 04:23 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Inspired by recent student walkouts over gun control, hundreds of high school and college students across the US took part in a pro-life walkout on Wednesday.

According to pro-life group Students for Life of America (SFLA), more than 400 students and student organizations told SFLA that they planned on participating in the April 11 walkout, though the actual number is likely higher, as students did not have to register with the group to participate.

“Across the country, pro-life students and groups stood up for the 321,384 babies killed by Planned Parenthood every year, against the violence of abortion, and in support of pregnant and parenting students,” SFLA president Kristan Hawkins said in a statement.

“In pictures worth millions of words, we saw students walking out, praying, and chalking pro-life messages to bring attention to the fact that one-fourth of our generation has been snuffed out of existence because of legalized abortion,” she added.

Participants were encouraged to use #Life and #ProLifeWalkout to document their participation on social media. Like the March for Our Lives walkout, the pro-life walkout lasted 17 minutes, during which time students mourned the 10 babies who would be killed by abortion within that time frame.

So proud of the more than 60 students who participated in the #ProLifeWalkout from my high school. We are the #ProLifeGeneration. @Students4LifeHQ pic.twitter.com/qgmN88lFlh

— Blake Barclay (@blakebarclayusa) April 11, 2018

The idea for the pro-life walkout came from Brandon Gillespie, a student at Rocklin High School in Rocklin, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento.

Gillespie said in March that the idea for the pro-life walkout came to him after his history teacher, Julianne Benzel, discussed the national gun control walkouts in her classroom. Benzel asked her students whether the same privileges would be afforded to students if they wanted to walk out over issues like abortion, or if a double standard existed. She was then placed on paid administrative leave following complaints about her discussion of the issue.

“If you’re going to allow students to get up and walk out without penalty, then you’re going to have to allow any group of students that wants to protest,” Benzel told Fox & Friends.

After hearing of Gillespie’s plan to hold a pro-life walkout, Students for Life created a website promoting the idea to schools throughout the nation.

“I also want to thank Brandon Gillespie at Rocklin High School for inspiring this national walkout and for not letting his school intimidate him out of hosting his walkout. The tremendous, truly grassroots interest we have seen in the walkout is further proof that the Pro-Life Generation is the majority and is strong and growing,” Hawkins said.

The website for the walkout included a list of high schools and colleges that registered with SFLA for the walkout, which included public and private schools from throughout the United States.

Proud to stand with Morality High School students during their time of silence for the their classmates lost to abortion and women hurt at during the #ProLifeWalkout! pic.twitter.com/CJekGhuGFr

— Bethany Janzen (@BethanySFLA) April 11, 2018

“…it’s time for the #ProLifeGen to stand up and say ‘Enough is Enough!’ We will no longer tolerate legal abortion in our nation, which has killed more than a fourth of our generation,” the walkout website stated.

“We will no longer watch as our leaders in Washington continue to fund our nation’s largest abortion vendor, Planned Parenthood, with more than $500 million of our taxpayer dollars. We will no longer permit Planned Parenthood and their allies in the abortion industry to target our peers for their predatory business cycle.”

Hawkins added that SFLA was notified of several students who reported that they faced discrimination for participating in a pro-life walkout, while the gun control walkout was given special accommodations by many schools.

Life Legal Defense Foundation, a non-profit that defends pro-life clients, sent a letter to Gillespie’s high school, notifying the administration that they could face legal ramifications if they interfered with the pro-life walkout and treated participating students differently than those who participated in the gun control walkout.

SFLA and Life Legal have offered to provide legal assistance to any students who faced discrimination for their participation in the pro-life walkout.

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Washington D.C., Apr 12, 2018 / 01:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A new law aims to make it easier to prosecute websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking, such as Backpage.com.

President Donald Trump signed the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017” into law April 11.

Under the new law, the government will be able to prosecute the owners or operators of websites which knowingly assist, support, or facilitate “the prostitution of another person,” or who act with reckless disregard for the fact that their conduct contributed to sex trafficking. Users and victims will be able to sue those sites.

The new law clarifies that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which previously protected the operators of websites from legal liability for content posted by third parties, cannot be used as a defense to shield sites that knowingly promote sex trafficking and prostitution.

“[Section 230] was never intended to provide legal protection to websites that unlawfully promote and facilitate prostitution and websites that facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims,” the law reads.

Before the bill became law, federal authorities on April 6 seized Backpage, a massive classified ad site used largely for selling sex, which hosted ads depicting the prostitution of children. Ads posted on the site, which took in an estimated $135 million in annual revenue in 2014, were reportedly responsible for nearly three quarters of all cases submitted to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The site was the subject of an extensive Senate report into its practices of promoting prostitution and the trafficking of minors, which was released in January 2017.

The Department of Justice on April 9 announced the charging of seven individuals, including Backpage’s founder Michael Lacey, in a 93-count federal indictment which detailed the site’s reported practices of facilitating prostitution and money laundering. The indictment alleges that the defendants knew that the majority of the website’s “adult” ads involved prostitution, and that the site would “sanitize” the ads by removing “terms and pictures that were particularly indicative of prostitution” but continuing to run the ads.

Backpage also allegedly had a policy for several years that involved deleting words in an ad denoting a child’s age, and publish the revised version, which created a “veneer of deniability” for those trafficking the children.

“This website will no longer serve as a platform for human traffickers to thrive, and those who were complicit in its use to exploit human beings for monetary gain will be held accountable for
their heinous actions,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a release from the DOJ.  “Whether on the street or on the Internet, sex trafficking will not be tolerated.”

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO) introduced the bill, and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) added language to expand the scope of the bill to include advertisements for all forms of prostitution. In areas of the country where prostitution is legal, that fact can be taken into account in court as an affirmative defense.

Prostitution is currently illegal in all of the United States except in a few rural Nevada counties, but some estimates suggest there are over half a million people in the country in prostitution.

After the bill passed the Senate 97-2 with bipartisan support on March 21, a number of websites began to take down explicit content and online communities that promote pornography or prostitution. Craigslist shut down their Personals page on March 23, and Reddit removed several fora that users previously used to seek and advertise escort services and casual sexual encounters.

Critics of the law, including deputy Attorney General Stephen A. Boyd, voiced concern that some of its language – which would allow punishment for conduct that occurred before it was enacted – may be unconstitutional. Others have argued that it could have a chilling effect on free speech on the internet.

Santa Clara University Law Professor Eric Goldman said, in testimony to Congress in November 2017, that an amendment to Section 230 could lead to sites self-censoring any and all content that could be construed as sex trafficking, or, alternatively, dial down moderation so that they could less reasonably be accused of “knowing” that sex trafficking content existed on their site.

“If failing to moderate content perfectly leads to liability, some online services will abandon their efforts to moderate user content or even shut down,” Goldman said during the hearing.

“I really do fear the chilling effects,” said Mary-Rose Papandrea, a University of North Carolina Law Professor, during a symposium on April 6. “Because imagine you run a platform, and imagine now you are exposed to liability for everything a third-party posts on your website as soon as you’re told about it. What are you going to do? You’re going to take it down.”

“I worry this isn’t the end,” she continued. “We can carve out sex trafficking, and we can debate that…but my concern is what’s next.”

However, Mary G. Leary, law professor at The Catholic University of America, rejected this idea. She told CNA in an interview that the amendment to Section 230 is narrow enough that it only removes a website’s immunity if they knowingly enter into a venture with human traffickers, or if they intentionally promote prostitution.

“That is a very narrowly tailored, common sense bill. I think that any argument it will impair speech is just alarmist and misplaced,” she said.

Leary emphasized that criminal acts, such as prostitution and human trafficking, are not considered speech and have “never been protected by the First Amendment.”

“The Supreme Court has been quite clear that offers to engage in illegal activities are not protected speech,” she said.

Leary said testimony given to the Senate during the creation of the law singled out sites that are clearly “bad actors,” like Backpage, as opposed to the majority of websites that are “law abiding, good corporate citizens who want to end sex trafficking.” She said it is unlikely that most companies will simply look away and choose not to moderate content that promotes sex trafficking.

“That argument has not been proven by history,” she says. “There are many industries that, sadly, are places where sex trafficking takes place…hotels, travel and tourism, shopping areas, foster care facilities…these are places that have never had immunity. We have not seen them as an industry look the other way or pretend it doesn’t happen.”

In fact, she said, groups like the hotel industry have put together best practices to deal with illegal activities that take place on their premises. The new law does not require websites to police all content, but rather clarifies the purpose of Section 230, she said. There will be little effect for law abiding companies, because the law sets a high bar for prosecutors to prove that the company was knowingly and intentionally facilitating sex trafficking.

“What we will see are no longer companies out in the open, allowing and partnering with sex traffickers to sell women and children, with not only impunity but with absolute protection,” Leary said.  

Some online groups, such as the Women’s March, claim that the shuttering of sites that are used by people who are not being trafficked will drive the already shady business of prostitution even further underground, and make conditions worse for people who choose to sell sex for a living. Advocates in favor of prostitution have already created several new websites that are hosted overseas, in countries like Austria, to avoid the alleged self-censorship of American-hosted sites.

Critics, however, challenged the idea that prostitution is a profession of choice for women.

“Nobody says when they’re a little girl, ‘I want to grow up to be a prostitute,’” said Dr. Grazie Christie, Policy Advisor for The Catholic Association, speaking on EWTN’s Morning Glory.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a Washington D.C.-based group that supports the new legislation, has compiled a site detailing resources available to current workers in the sex industry to provide “housing, food, referrals, and other short-term emergency assistance.”

“We are also concerned for those who turned to prostitution out of despair, lacking any other financial resources, and who now do not know where to turn,” said Dawn Hawkins, executive director of NCOSE, in a statement. “We encourage the public to share these resources widely so that survivors of commercial sexual exploitation can seek healing and support.”

[…]

New York City, N.Y., Apr 12, 2018 / 10:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations encouraged global leaders to take a “human-centered approach to migration,” rather than reacting with “unsusta… […]

Philadelphia, Pa., Apr 12, 2018 / 12:49 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A new quasi-parish for Catholics interested in the Traditional Latin Mass will open in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia at a church that had been part of a 2014 parish merger.

“In respo… […]

Denver, Colo., Apr 11, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The director of a women’s clinic in Denver said that she has found an abortion pill reversal protocol to be safe and effective with her patients, following a recently published study on the procedure.

“Oftentimes in medicine, when we find that there is something that is actually making a difference and causing no harm, we will implement it into practice,” Dede Chism, a nurse practitioner and co-founder and executive director of Bella Natural Women’s Care in Englewood, Colo., told CNA.

The 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 due.

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.

“When it comes to saving the life of any human person, even when the chance is slim, isn’t it worth the effort, when the benefits outweigh any risk?” Chism said.

Medical abortions have become an increasingly common method of abortion in the United States, making up 30-40 percent of all abortions.

Medical abortions involve the taking of two pills – the first pill, mifepristone (RU-486) blocks the progesterone hormone, which is essential for maintaining the health of the fetus. The second pill, misoprostol, is taken 24 hours after mifepristone and works to induce contractions in order to expel the fetus.

Some women, after taking the first pill (mifepristone), experience regret and do not want to follow through with the abortion by taking misoprostol. Many doctors and providers, including Dr. Thomas Hilgers of the Pope Paul VI Institute, as well Chism, Delgado and Davenport, have found that they can improve the chances of a baby’s survival in these cases by flooding a woman’s system with more progesterone, in a hopes of overriding the progesterone-blocking effects of mifepristone.

The progesterone protocol is safe, Chism said, because it is a naturally occurring hormone in pregnant women that has been used for the treatment of pregnant women in various situations.

“What we’re trying to do is to bring the mom to a healthy progesterone level,” Chism said, whether that’s during an abortion pill reversal or monitoring a pregnant woman with low progesterone levels.

“We do this exact same thing in mom’s who’ve had early miscarriages that have a hard time conceiving and maintaining pregnancy,” she noted. “It’s common that women may not have enough progesterone on the back half of their cycle even to support a pregnancy, so what we’re trying to do is get them to a healthy progesterone level.”  

Because progesterone is known to be safe for pregnant women and unborn babies, the progesterone abortion pill reversal procedure is “common sense,” Chism added.

Critics of Delgado’s study argued that the peer-reviewed journal in which it was published is biased, because of its ties to the pro-life organization Watson Bowes Research Institute. Delgado told the Washington Post that he acknowledged this concern, but thought that his study would not get fair consideration from other journals due to political bias.

Delgado also told the Washington Post that he believed more research should be done, but that there should be nothing to stop doctors from using the progesterone protocol in the meantime.

“It hadn’t been studied formally in a big way, but we saw it was saving lives and had no alternatives. Were you going to wait when someone was dying in front of you?” he said.

“(T)he science is good enough that, since we have no alternative therapy and we know it’s safe, we should go with it,” he added.

Chism noted that the Bella clinic has treated several women who have sought abortion pill reversals. The progesterone protocol has been effective in women who have come in as soon as possible after taking the first dose of mifepristone, she said.

“We are currently in the midst of caring for a patient who took the abortion pill.  She is 4 weeks and 3 days from taking that first pill.  We were able to begin the reversal protocol in less than 24 hours from her initial dose. We did have a few scary days initially with bleeding and threatened loss of pregnancy, but she is now very stable with a normally growing baby,” she said.
 
“I think the fact that we have now over 300 successful reversals is evidence that it works,” she added. “This isn’t make-believe and it isn’t coincidental.”

Chism added that it is common practice in medicine to share information about protocols that have yet to undergo even more rigorous prospective studies, if they have been shown to be safe and effective in case studies.

Some critics also argued that the study was unnecessary since only a small percentage of women actually seek and follow through on abortion pill reversals.

“We’re not causing harm, and even if the possibility of saving a baby is small, even if the population who desires it is small, is it not worth it to recognize it?” Chism countered. “Isn’t it beautiful that there could be a possibility that just maybe could change and help you out when you’ve made a decision that you’ve regretted?”

Telling women that a safe and effective protocol exists is a matter of informed consent, Chism added.

“To tell someone that there is (no reversal), that this medical abortion is permanent and irrevocably irreversible, that’s not a true statement,” she said. “To be able to tell a patient that it may be possible in some circumstances to reverse an abortion pill, I think that is simply informed consent.”

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Washington D.C., Apr 11, 2018 / 01:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced questions from lawmakers about his company’s censorship of Catholic content during his two-day congressional hearing following the revelation that milli… […]