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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 14, 2022 / 14:12 pm (CNA).
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill protecting the unborn from abortion after 15 weeks gestation on Thursday. During his remarks… […]
Maryland House of Delegates Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, a Democrat, at a MD Dems Women’s Diversity Leadership Council event, Dec. 4, 2019. / Edward Kimmel via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Annapolis, Md., Apr 11, 2022 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
A Maryland law set to take effect July 1 will allow non-physicans to perform abortions, and allot $3.5 million per year for “abortion care” training in the state.
“By enacting this law, Democrat lawmakers have now de-medicalized abortion and removed abortion from the spectrum of health care,” Laura Bogley, the director of legislation for Maryland Right to Life, told CNA. “As a result, many more women will be injured or killed by substandard abortion practices without any protection under Maryland law.”
Maryland House and Senate members, the majority of whom are Democrats, voted April 9 to override Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of House Bill 937, the Abortion Care Access Act.
Among other things, the act establishes an “Abortion Care Clinical Training Program” to “protect access to abortion care by ensuring that there are a sufficient number of health professionals to provide abortion care.”
Maryland’s Department of Health, the bill reads, will contract with a nonprofit coordinating organization to administer the program and grants for “abortion care training programs” at at least two community-based provider sites.
This organization will support “abortion care clinicial training” to “qualified providers” — providers who are broadly defined as any physician, nurse practitioner, nurse-midwife, licensed certified midwife, physician assistant, or any other individual who is “licensed, certified, or authorwise authorized by law to practice in the state” and “for whom the performance of an abortion is within the scope of the individuals’ license or certification.”
Each fiscal year, the act reads, the governor must allot $3.5 million in the state’s budget to this program.
The legislation comes as the Supreme Court prepares to issue a ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that directly challenges Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973. If Roe is overturned, abortion law could be left up to each state.
“Abortion activists in the Maryland Democrat Caucuses are no longer pretending that they want abortion to be safe, legal and rare. They only care that abortion is legal and lucrative,” Bogley told CNA, before later adding, “So the question for Maryland voters is why should we be forced to pay for abortions under Medicaid or through higher health insurance premiums?”
Abortion insurance coverage
The act instructs insurers, nonprofit health service plans, and health maintanence organizations providing labor and delivery coverage under state policies or contracts to cover “abortion care services” without “a deductible, co-insurance, co-payment, or any other cost-sharing requirement.”
Abortion for minors
The act states that a “qualified provider” may not perform an abortion on an unmarried minor unless the provider gives notice to the parent or guardian, with broad exceptions. The provider is not required to give notice if the minor does not live with the parent or guardian, or if “a reasonable effort to give notice to a parent or guardian is unsuccessful.”
A qualified provider may also refrain from giving notice if it might lead to physical or emotional abuse of the minor, if the minor is “mature and and capable of giving informed consent to an abortion,” or if such notice would “not be in the best interest of the minor.”
Unborn viability
The act defines “viable” as “that stage when, in the best clinic judgment of the qualified provider . . . there is a reasonable likelihood” that an unborn baby could survive outside the womb.
The state cannot prohibit a woman from obtaining an abortion before her unborn baby reaches viability, or at any point in pregnancy if it is necesary for her life or health or if her baby “is affected by genetic defect or serious deformity or abnormality,” the act says.
How many states are doing this?
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive research organization once associated with Planned Parenthood, 36 states currently require abortion to be performed by a licensed pysician.
That includes four states where abortion must be performed by a licensed physician, but only for surgical abortion (versus abortion by pill): New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Rhode Island. In Mississippi, the law limits abortion provision to OB/GYNs.
The group listed Washington, D.C. and 14 states as not requiring a licensed physician: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia.
Beginning in July, that list will include Maryland.
A pro-life eucharistic procession around a Planned Parenthood facility in Denver, Colo., April 9, 2022. / André Escaleira, Jr./Denver Catholic
Denver, Colo., Apr 11, 2022 / 16:00 pm (CNA).
Amidst the refrain of Hail Marys in the background, hun… […]
Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan. (Official portrait)
Denver Newsroom, Apr 8, 2022 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
After the Michigan governor sued Thursday asking a court to find that the state constitution includes the right to abortion, the state’s … […]
People praying at an abortion clinic. / Diocese of Saginaw, CC BY ND 2.0.
Madrid, Spain, Apr 7, 2022 / 15:00 pm (CNA).
Spain’s Senate voted Wednesday in favor of a bill amending the country’s penal code to criminalize “harassment” of women ente… […]
Right to Live members protest a bill that would criminalize prayer near abortion clinics in Madrid’s Plaza de la Marina Española, April 6, 2022. / Right to Live
Madrid, Spain, Apr 6, 2022 / 14:05 pm (CNA).
The Right to Live platform in Spain held a protest Wednesday in front of the the country’s Senate of a bill that would criminalize “harassment” of women entering abortion clinics.
The bill was introduced in May 2021 by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party’s coalition. It would criminalize “harassing women going to clinics for the voluntary interruption of pregnancy.” Anyone promoting, favoring, or participating in demonstrations near abortion clinics would be subject to penalties.
Penalties for what would be deemed harassment would include jail terms of three months to a year, or community service from 31 to 80 days. Depending on circumstances, an individual could also be barred from a particular location for between six months and three years.
The Right to Live protest was held April 6 in Madrid’s Plaza de la Marina Española, as the Senate was due to consider the bill.
“We want to remind by our presence, that by voting yes to this amendment to the Penal Code, thousands of mothers are going to be sentenced to the worst decision of their lives by depriving them of essential help; and thousands of babies are going to be sentenced to a cruel death. And that blood will stain your hands,” the pro-life platform said in a statement.
In the exposition of motives for introducing the bill, the PSOE characterized the “harassment” of pro-life witness at abortion clinics as “approaching women with photographs, model fetuses, and proclamations against abortion … the objective is for the women to change their decision through coercion, intimidation, and harassment.”
The socialist parliamentary group said it “considers it essential to guarantee a safety zone” around abortion clinics.
Under the bill, pro-lifers could be prosecuted without the aggrieved person or their legal representative being required to file a complaint.
The Congress of Deputies voted to take up consideration of the bill in September by a vote of 199 to 144, with two abstentions. Only the two largest opposition parties, the People’s Party and Vox, voted against it. The Congress of Deputies pass the bill by a 204-144 vote Feb. 3.
Both the People’s Party and Vox have expressed on several occasions their willingness to have recourse to the Constitutional Court, stating that the bill violates fundamental rights and public freedoms of assembly, expression, and personal beliefs.
Several locales have in recent years considered or adopted “buffer zones” around abortion clinics that limit free speech in the protected areas.
The Northern Ireland Assembly is considering such a proposal, and Scotland’s Green Party has urged the adoption of one.
Proposals for buffer zones around abortion clinics throughout England and Wales were rejected as disproportionate by the then-British Home Secretary in September 2018, after finding that most abortion protests are peaceful and passive.
The typical activities of those protesting outside of abortion clinics in England and Wales “include praying, displaying banners and handing out leaflets,” Sajid Javid noted.
In England, a buffer zone was imposed by Ealing Council, in west London, around a Marie Stopes abortion clinic in April 2018. The zone prevents any pro-life gathering or speech, including prayer, within about 330 feet of the clinic.
The Ealing buffer zone was cited by Javid as an example of a local government using civil legislation “to restrict harmful protest activities,” rather than a nationwide policy.
The March for Women and Life in Toledo, Spain, April 2, 2022. / Comunicación Cáritas Toledo
Toledo, Spain, Apr 4, 2022 / 13:54 pm (CNA).
More than 1,000 people made their way through the streets of Toledo, Spain on Saturday to recall and public… […]
A red-brick row house (C) is seen where DC Metro Police said they found five fetuses inside where anti-abortion activists were living earlier this week in the Capitol Hill neighborhood on April 01, 2022 in Washington, DC. Nine people, some of wh… […]
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey speaks at an awards luncheon in Scottsdale, Ariz., June 17, 2019. / Gage Skidmore via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Denver Newsroom, Mar 31, 2022 / 15:00 pm (CNA).
The Catholic bishops of Arizona this week expressed gratitude at… […]
A pro-life ad at a bus stop in Spain. / ACDP
Madrid, Spain, Mar 28, 2022 / 15:00 pm (CNA).
Thousands of people participated in the March for Life held Sunday in Madrid. The march terminated at the Plaza de Cibeles, where a stage was set up for … […]
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