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Bishop Barron leads prayer vigil at Planned Parenthood, calls for end to ‘culture of death’

March 1, 2024 Catholic News Agency 3
Bishop Robert Barron speaks to EWTN’s Colm Flynn about evangelizing the culture today. October 2023. / Credit: Word on Fire

CNA Staff, Mar 1, 2024 / 17:30 pm (CNA).

Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, Bishop Robert Barron last week hosted a prayer vigil outside a local Planned Parenthood, an effort the prelate said was meant to “pray for the conversion of hearts and minds to protect the most vulnerable in our society.”

The bishop posted photos of the Rochester-area event to his Twitter account on Tuesday afternoon. “Friends, on Friday evening I prayed outside a Planned Parenthood with a number of other individuals who tirelessly devote their time and prayers to the unborn,” he wrote.

“We must continue to pray for the conversion of hearts and minds to protect the most vulnerable in our society and to stand firm in protest against the culture of death,” the bishop said. 

Peter Martin, the director of communications for the diocese, told CNA that Barron “joined the seminarians from the Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary (Winona) for an hour of prayer as a part of the 40 Days for Life in Rochester.”

“This has been an annual event in our diocese and the bishop and seminarians join each year to pray for an end to abortion,” Martin said.

The participants “are there to pray for all those involved, in particular, for the lives of the unborn and their mothers.”

Barron, who founded the Catholic media company Word on Fire prior to his elevation to the bishopric, has regularly used his expansive platform to advocate for the unborn and speak against abortion.

The bishop recently engaged with California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna in a wide-ranging discussion that touched in part on abortion. Khanna is pro-abortion and voiced his opinion during the conversation that abortion “should be for the woman and her doctor” to decide. 

The politician suggested that too much attention is paid to late-term abortions, which he called “exceedingly rare cases.”

“Even if that were the case, that is still a lot of babies being murdered from our perspective,” Barron responded. “And how is that ever acceptable in a decent society?”

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News Briefs

Pennsylvania Supreme Court opens the door to public funding for abortion

January 30, 2024 Catholic News Agency 1
Justice Christine Donohue of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered that the case, which was previously dismissed, be reargued before the state’s Commonwealth Court. / Credit: Public Domain|Wikimedia

CNA Staff, Jan 30, 2024 / 17:05 pm (CNA).

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on Monday revived a 2019 lawsuit brought by a number of abortion providers in the state that challenges, on discrimination grounds, a longtime state law barring public funding for most abortions. 

In a 219-page ruling Jan. 29, the state high court reversed an earlier dismissal of the lawsuit, sending it back to the Commonwealth Court, one of the state’s two appellate courts. 

At issue is Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act, in place since the 1980s, which restricts the use of state and federal funds for abortion except “when necessary to avert the death of the mother” or in cases of rape or incest. 

The abortion providers bringing the lawsuit had argued, among other things, that Pennsylvania’s policies regarding the use of federal funds unfairly singled out women, since “there is no medical condition specific to men for which medical assistance denies coverage.”

The Commonwealth Court had previously dismissed the lawsuit in 2021 on the grounds that it was bound by Pennsylvania Supreme Court precedent; the state Supreme Court had previously upheld the abortion restrictions in 1985.

The majority ruling this week found that Pennsylvania’s law barring public funds for most abortions “discriminates against those women who choose to exercise their fundamental right to terminate a pregnancy” and that abortion providers have standing to sue the state over the policy. 

The ruling does not immediately change abortion policy in Pennsylvania. Rather, the state Supreme Court ruling sends the case back to the Commonwealth Court for further review. Abortion is presently legal in Pennsylvania up to 24 weeks in pregnancy, or later in pregnancy if the life of the mother is at risk.

Seventeen states use public state funds to pay for abortions, despite a federal policy known as the Hyde Amendment that since 1976 has prohibited the use of federal tax dollars to pay for abortion. States that want to pay for abortions through their Medicaid program could do so using their own funds and are not reimbursed by the federal government.

The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, which advocates for policy in the state on behalf of the Catholic bishops, said it is working on a formal response to the state Supreme Court’s ruling. 

In a brief statement to CNA on Tuesday, Eric Failing, the conferences’s executive director, noted that it is “a complex case with a lot of decisions so we are going through it very carefully.”

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