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… […]
Washington D.C., Apr 11, 2018 / 09:48 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) will not run for reelection this November, he announced on Wednesday. Ryan’s departure confirms rumors that began swirling in mid-December 2017. He will retire in January, at the conclusion of his term.
Ryan, who is a Catholic, was first elected to Congress in 1998, and became the speaker of the house in October of 2015. He has become known for his conservative views and was Mitt Romney’s running mate in the 2012 presidential election.
In his speech announcing his retirement, Ryan cited his three teenage children as one of the main reasons why he would be leaving Congress. His eldest daughter is 16 years old, he said, the same age he was when his father passed away.
“What I realize is, if I am here for one more term, my kids will only have known me as a weekend dad,” he said.
“I just can’t let that happen.”
Regardless, Ryan insisted that he has “no regrets” from his tenure in Congress, and that he put all of his being into his work. He insisted that the current political climate did not influence his decision to retire from Congress.
On Twitter, President Donald Trump offered praise for Ryan, even though the two have butted heads in the past. Trump said that Ryan was a “truly good man” who will “leave a legacy of achievement that nobody can question.”
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Speaker Paul Ryan is a truly good man, and while he will not be seeking re-election, he will leave a legacy of achievement that nobody can question. We are with you Paul!</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=”https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/984066131303583746?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>April 11, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also offered praise for Ryan, saying in a statement that, “Despite our differences, I commend his steadfast commitment to our country. During his final months, Democrats are hopeful that he joins us to work constructively to advance better futures for all Americans.”
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-conversation=”none” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>.<a href=”https://twitter.com/NancyPelosi?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@NancyPelosi</a> reacts to Paul Ryan's retirement. <a href=”https://t.co/ceagNZpH48″>pic.twitter.com/ceagNZpH48</a></p>— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) <a href=”https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/984072202344640514?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>April 11, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Ryan has talked about his Catholic faith numerous times during his two decades in Congress. He spoke at this year’s March for Life in Washington, D.C. and has spoken out in favor of religious freedom and pro-life legislation.
He has clashed with leaders of the U.S. bishops on other issues, notably the 2017 tax reform bill. Ryan championed the bill, while leaders of the U.S. bishops’ conference called parts of it “unconscionable,” saying it “appears to be the first federal income tax modification in American history that will raise income taxes on the working poor while simultaneously providing a large tax cut to the wealthy.”
Ryan did not announce what his plans are once he leaves Congress.
Washington D.C., Apr 10, 2018 / 04:21 pm (CNA).- While Pope Francis’ latest apostolic exhortation focuses on joy and holiness in everyday life, one passage has drawn sharp reactions from Catholics on the left and the right.
“Our defense of… […]
Cincinnati, Ohio, Apr 10, 2018 / 02:19 pm (CNA).- A county-run needle exchange program hosted in a Catholic hospital’s parking lot has stopped distributing condoms, following action from Archbishop Dennis Schnurr and the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
“This matter was addressed and favorably resolved last week, as soon as it came to the attention of the archdiocese,” Mike Schafer, director of the archdiocese’s communication and mission promotion department, told CNA April 9.
“Condom distribution is no longer part of the Hamilton County Public Health Harm Reduction Program, run from their van parked in the Mercy Health – Clermont Hospital parking lot,” he said. “Archbishop Schnurr engaged with Mercy Health leadership on this issue, with the resulting decision being to disallow condom distribution on hospital property.”
The archdiocese was unaware that condom distribution was part of the Hamilton County Public Health Program until the fact was brought to its attention by CNA inquiries, said Schafer.
Mercy Health is not owned or operated by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Rather, its sponsors include the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, and the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor. The system has hospitals in Ohio and Kentucky.
The Mercy Health – Clermont Hospital in Batavia, Ohio had been hosting in its parking lot a van that was part of a county-run needle exchange program. As part of its harm reduction strategy, the program offered condoms, as well as injection equipment and other health services, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
“After engaging in further discussion with Archbishop Schnurr from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, we have asked the Hamilton County Health Department to discontinue the availability of condoms in the van,” Mercy Health spokesperson Nanette Bentley told CNA April 10. “The Hamilton County Public Health Department needle exchange program van will continue to serve the community, providing needle exchange and access to testing and resources.”
In April 3 comments to CNA, Bentley had described the program as “a harm reduction program aimed at reducing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV and Hepatitis C.”
“The program includes needle exchange, access to testing and condoms as a holistic approach to harm reduction,” she had said, noting that clients would enter the Hamilton County Public Health property when they entered the van. The van was staffed only by county employees.
Previous news reports on the exchange program noted that condoms were distributed at the Mercy Health location, but not in a similar program hosted at two facilities of the Kentucky-based St. Elizabeth Healthcare system. That health system is sponsored by the Diocese of Covington.
The National Catholic Bioethics Center, which handles inquiries on Catholic bioethics issues, has always argued against condom distribution, Catholic bioethicist John Brehany, the center’s director of institutional relations, told CNA.
“One reason is that Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae teaches that every sexual act must retain its essential openness to procreation,” he said. In addition, “if someone has a dangerous disease, really, the better ethical action is not to expose someone else to it at all.”
Washington D.C., Apr 10, 2018 / 10:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic pews in the US are emptying, according to data from a recent Gallup survey, which showed that Mass attendance is down to a 39 percent weekly average over the past 10 years.
From 2005-… […]
Washington D.C., Apr 10, 2018 / 05:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic University of America played host last week to a symposium celebrating the 50th anniversary of Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae, reflecting on the prophetic nature of the document, and on the lessons it still offers.
“In 1968, our university was at the center of a controversy regarding the document in the church in the United States,” said Catholic University of America President John Garvey during the symposium. “The fact that 50 years later, we’re hosting a conference to draw attention to what we now see as the wisdom Paul VI might be seen as a sign of the times.”
Humanae vitae took the world by storm when it was published in 1968. In the height of the sexual revolution, then-Pope Paul VI wrote that the use of prophylactics and hormonal birth control – which had only been on the market in the United States for less than a decade, and wasn’t legal for unmarried women until just three years prior – was morally unacceptable in the marital act.
“Consequently,” wrote Paul VI, “it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.”
The encyclical was not universally well-received, and former CUA professor Fr. Charles Curran led a dissent of nearly 100 theologians who were opposed to the content of Humanae vitae. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington described the nation’s capital as one of the “largest flashpoints of opposition” to the document.
The majority of the speakers at the symposium argued that in retrospect, Pope Paul VI was a man ahead of his time, and was able to accurately discern the negative effects that widespread contraceptive use would have on society.
Despite its rather unique history with the encyclical, CUA Dean of Theology and Religious Studies Fr. Mark Morozowich told CNA he considers it a “natural thing” for the college to have played host to the symposium.
“We view ourselves as a theologate–that is, working in lock step with USCCB and under, certainly, the direction of our own shepherd, Cardinal Donald Wuerl,” he explained. The university in the past has played host to similar conferences concerning other encyclicals, as well as one on the anniversary of the Protestant reformation.
Planning for the conference took about a year and a half, said Fr. Morozowich. He was part of the team who selected the speakers and the topics for the symposium.
“I think it is an important thing to understand the historical milieu out of which that document came, and out of which the very sort of reactions with all the tumult and society that was going on, explained Morozowich.
One of the major themes touched on by the speakers at the symposium was the prophetic nature of the encyclical, particularly in light of last year’s viral “#MeToo” movement, through which people shared stories of being sexually assaulted and harassed. Morozowich told CNA that he believes #MeToo is a sign of larger problems concerning the sexual revolution.
“It was a document that many are hailing today as being prophetic,” he said. “I think the #MeToo movement is a real symbol of the failure of the sexual revolution. It was a failure of liberation for feminists, because it wasn’t the real, concrete entering in to a dignified relationship. So when we look at Humanae vitae, it’s calling for clarity about what human sexuality is.”
One conference attendee said that she believed that the encyclical had an important message for modern women: that they don’t need to change themselves with hormones or implants in order to suppress their fertility. What’s more, she said, Humanae Vitae is a message of hope.
“Humanae vitae has a critical message today for all women, because Humanae vitae affirms that women are good as they are,” said Kat Talalas, communications director at Women Speak for Themselves.
“At a time where men and women increasingly feel alienated from each other, Humanae vitae affirms the good of married love. It shares the hopeful message that the romance of total unity open to new life is what we are made for, and can help provide the love, creativity, and connectedness human beings crave.”
Honolulu, Hawaii, Apr 9, 2018 / 04:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Hawaii became last week the most recent US state to legalize assisted suicide, and the islands’ bishop has written about the shortsightedness of permitting some residents to end their lives.
“I find it ironic that the act of taking one’s life, which people have been doing quite autonomously for thousands of years, is now only to be sanctioned if one has the permission of one’s ‘health’ care provider, the State legislature and the governor,” Bishop Larry Silva of Honolulu wrote in a March 28 editorial as the bill was being considered.
“My wonder at this apparent contradiction is compounded when I think of how, until now, we have prided ourselves on helping people not take their own lives. We have suicide prevention programs and hotlines, and have always considered suicide a tragedy that wreaks havoc on so many survivors who feel grief and frustration that they were not able to prevent this ‘autonomous’ decision from being made.”
The “Our Care, Our Choice Act” was signed into law by Governor David Ige April 5. Hawaii’s Senate passed the bill 23-3 March 29, and the House of Representatives had approved the bill earlier this year by 39-12.
A similar bill has passed the Hawaii state Senate in 2017, but failed in the House.
The law allows a terminally ill person to receive a prescription for a lethal medication if two doctors find that the person has fewer than six months to live and is mentally competent. The patient must undergo a mental health evaluation to determine that they are not “suffering from conditions that may interfere with decision-making, such as a lack of treatment of depression,” according to the AP.
The patient must make two requests for the life-ending medication, with a 20-day waiting period between requests, and sign a written request witnessed by two people, one of whom cannot be related to the patient.
A doctor may dispense the medication, but it may only be self-administered.
The law includes criminal penalties for tampering with a request for lethal medication or coercing such a prescription.
Ige emphasized the freedom of choice the law will provide for terminally ill patients.
“It is time for terminally ill, mentally competent Hawaii residents who are suffering to make their own end-of-life choices with dignity, grace and peace,” he said. “It does make sense to give the patient a choice to request the medication, obtain it and take it, or ultimately change their mind.”
Bishop Silva pointed out that under the law, the death certificate of one who commits assisted suicide will list as the immediate cause of death their terminal disease.
“In other words, it will lie about the real immediate cause of death, which is freely and deliberately ingesting a poison into one’s system,” he wrote. “If we call it another name besides suicide, then it may become respectable. Under no circumstances should we call it what it is, since certain insurance benefits may not be available to one’s estate if one commits suicide. So let’s also lie to the insurance company by calling it ‘death with dignity’ or some other title that will make it sound more respectable.”
The bishop also wrote that “As a spiritual leader, I also must raise the question of whether someone who deliberately, with documentable soundness of mind and determination of will, violates God’s basic commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ may be flirting with a fate worse than a debilitating terminal illness … God does allow us the autonomy to make such decisions, but he warns us of the dire consequences – and relentlessly attempts to turn us away from such self-destructive decisions.”
Bishop Silva said, “While our State Legislature may not base its decisions on eternal consequences, it should still think beyond the individual terminally ill person. What of family members who will have to live with the weight of their own consciences regarding this very unnatural process?”
He also questioned the law’s effects on those suffering depression: “Won’t this suggest to them that if life becomes too burdensome, checking oneself out of it sooner than later is a legitimate option?”
“If this door to choosing death is opened, will insurance companies and health care facilities continue to provide very expensive but ingenious treatments, developed over generations by scientists, technicians, and medical personnel? Or will the ‘bottom line’ lead them to refuse these expensive treatments because the patient has the choice of a much quicker and less expensive death?”
The bishop also raised the question of conscience protections for medical personnel and pharmacists who consider suicide to be gravely immoral.
Bishop Silva’s editorial echoed concerns about assisted suicide which have been raised by Pope Francis.
In June 2016, the Pope called assisted suicide a feature of the “throwaway culture” which offers a “false compassion” and treats a human person as a problem.
“True compassion does not marginalize anyone, nor does it humiliate and exclude – much less considers the disappearance of a person as a good thing,” the Pope told the directors of the orders of physicians of Spain and Latin America. He criticized “those who hide behind an alleged compassion to justify and approve the death of a patient.”
In addition to Hawaii, physician-assisted suicide is legal by law in the District of Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont, and Colorado; and in Montana through a state supreme court ruling. A bill to legalize assisted suicide is under consideration in Indiana.
In September the New York State Court of Appeals upheld the state’s ban on assisted suicide.
Cincinnati, Ohio, Apr 8, 2018 / 06:00 am (CNA).- A clean needle exchange program that distributes condoms is hosted in the parking lot of an Ohio Catholic hospital, and one Catholic bioethicist thinks the system can do better.
“I would say Catholics are called to more. At a minimum, Christ articulated a higher standard for moral life than what other people are doing,” Catholic bioethicist John Brehany told CNA April 4, addressing the needle exchange aspect in particular.
The hospital statement justifying the practice stressed harm reduction.
“It seems to me that they have a good motive,” Brehany said. “They want to help people, they want to help people avoid harm. That’s understandable, is that good enough? Is that what Christians are called to do?”
Brehany is director of institutional relations at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, which handles inquiries on Catholic bioethics issues. He has a doctorate in healthcare ethics, a licentiate in sacred theology and is past executive director of the Catholic Medical Association.
The Mercy Health Clermont Hospital in Batavia, Ohio is hosting in its parking lot an Exchange Project program that offers condoms as well as injection equipment and other health services, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.
“First and foremost, the needle exchange services program is a harm reduction program aimed at reducing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV and Hepatitis C,” Mercy Health spokesperson Nanette Bentley told CNA April 3. “The program includes needle exchange, access to testing and condoms as a holistic approach to harm reduction.”
“When clients enter the van, they enter the property of Hamilton County Public Health,” Bentley said. “The van is staffed solely by employees of Hamilton County Public Health and all services are provided by those employees.”
“Mercy Health – Clermont Hospital provides a central location for the van to offer its harm reduction program but does not provide any services on the van,” she added, saying that Mercy Health provides “many other medical and preventive services for patients with substance abuse issues.”
In Kentucky, the St. Elizabeth Healthcare system hosts the needle exchange program in parking lots at its Covington hospital and at St. Elizabeth Urgent Care in Newport. However, these programs will not distribute condoms.
“St. Elizabeth Healthcare is dedicated to caring for our patients’ medical needs without compromise of the Catholic Church’s teachings concerning birth control,” Guy Karrick, a spokesman for St. Elizabeth, told The Cincinnati Enquirer. “We are going above and beyond for our community to get a program in place as quickly as possible.”
St. Elizabeth considers hospital property to be bound by Catholic teaching, such as the U.S. bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.
“Catholic health institutions may not promote or condone contraceptive practices,” one directive reads.
Karrick did suggest the program might be best off on health department grounds.
Brehany said he couldn’t adequately assess the entire program since he did not have all the details. He also stressed that issues of cooperation in evil are among the most complex in moral theology. While some Church teachings are clear and settled, others are not. For instance, the use of contraception in marriage is clearly forbidden, but Church teaching on the ethics of using condoms to reduce the transmission of disease outside of marriage is less developed.
In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI told journalist Peter Seewald that while condoms could not be considered “a real or moral solution,” their use by homosexual prostitutes might be considered “a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility.”
Benedict later clarified that “naturally the church does not consider condoms as the authentic and moral solution” to the spread of AIDs or other other sexually-transmitted diseases.
“At the National Catholic Bioethics Center, when it comes to the question of justifying the use of condoms to prevent disease transmission, we’ve always argued against that,” Brehany told CNA. “One reason is that Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae teaches that every sexual act must retain its essential openness to procreation.”
In addition, he said, “If someone has a dangerous disease, really, the better ethical action is not to expose someone else to it at all.”
Dr. Lynne Saddler, district director of the Northern Kentucky Health Department, voiced gratitude for the partnership with St. Elizabeth’s, the Catholic system that barred condom distribution.
Although the National Harm Reduction Coalition of New York City praised St. Elizabeth’s participation in the program, it advocated that the system add condom distribution “as part of a comprehensive HIV prevention strategy for a particularly vulnerable population.”
Dr. Judith Feinberg, who ran the first needle exchange program in the Greater Cincinnati area in 2014, said the program was about doing anything possible to keep people safe.
“The whole point is to prevent disease, and the condoms are part of preventing disease,” she said.
According to Brehany, the issue of cooperation in evil is “complex” and must be evaluated on several factors including intent and the nature of one’s involvement with another person’s unethical action. Catholic teaching, especially as taught in St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” rejects both a utilitarian mode of thinking and an ethical approach based only on good intentions or good consequences.
Further, those cooperating in moral evil must always be aware of whether their cooperation might cause others to believe that a practice is morally allowed.
“Adequately discerning the effect of our actions on other people’s faith is always a consideration in issues of cooperation,” said Brehany.
As for needle distribution, while Church teaching is less developed, he suggested that a clean needle distribution would be more justifiable if the goal included weaning someone off drugs, rather than intending to help them maintain their drug use in a manner that merely reduced the risk of spreading disease.
CNA sought comment from the Cincinnati archdiocese, but was referred to Mercy Health.
The Mercy Health system has hospitals in Ohio and Kentucky. Its sponsors include the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, and the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor.
The St. Elizabeth Healthcare system is sponsored by the Diocese of Covington. It operates six facilities in northern Kentucky.
Washington D.C., Apr 7, 2018 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishops in both the US and Mexico have criticized the Trump administration’s plan to send National Guard troops to the southern border of the United States.
“The new measures on the border US-MX. Once again a senseless action and a disgrace on the administration,” tweeted Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller of San Antonio April 5.
“These measures manifest represion, [sic] fear, a perception that everyone is an enemy, and a very clear message: we don’t care about anybody else. This is not the American Spirit.”
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an order Wednesday to deploy the National Guard.
“A key and undeniable attribute of a sovereign nation is the ability to control who and what enters its territory,” said Trump in the April 4 memo. “The situation at the border has now reached a point of crisis. The lawlessness that continues at our southern border is fundamentally incompatible with the safety, security, and sovereignty of the American people. My administration has no choice but to act.”
The Pentagon stated Thursday that a “security support cell” was being developed to aid coordination between the Homeland Security and the Defense departments. The expected financial costs, number of troops, and time frame have not been announced, but the Pentagon said the cell will support U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
Both the Obama and Bush administrations had ordered the National Guard to attend to the border, but critics of the deployment have questioned the reasons behind this recent move when illegal border crossing is, broadly speaking, at historically low levels.
Fiscal Year 2017 saw nearly 304,000 people caught trying illegally to cross the border, the lowest number of since 1971. The number of apprehenions in March (37,393) is more than double from a year ago, but is less than in 2013 and 2014.
The Mexican bishops’ conference tweeted against the militarization of the border, expressing concern that the move may put more Latin Americans at risk.
“It is extremely risky for our Mexican and Latin American people, to have a semi-militarized border. #JesusChrist #migrant, could be executed again for trying to cross #frontier.”
Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso wrote April 5 that it is his understanding that “the National Guard is a military force intended for the protection of our nation. They assist in times of natural disasters or respond to an armed threat from a foreign military force.”
“I am left with many questions to which there appear to be no reasonable answer,” he continued. “To what threat are the citizen soldiers of our powerful nation responding? Why are we placing a military force on the border when the vast majority of those in our country without documents are here because they have overstayed their visa? Why are we further militarizing a border that we share with a peaceful neighbor at a time when undocumented immigration across our border is at a low ebb? Is our nation reacting to a ragtag group of Hondurans who are fleeing for their lives seeking refuge? They are fleeing from a nation controlled by narco-trafficking gangs flush with cash provided by our nation’s insatiable appetite for illegal drugs.”
The bishop noted that many of those entering the country are seeking asylum, “following international asylum laws which our country had a major role in writing, to assure that people fleeing persecution and organized violence would be able to find safe refuge.”
“Have we become so fearful and hypocritical that we would expect a country like Lebanon to accept a number 30% the size of their population from Syria, but we ourselves cannot accept a fraction of one percent of those fleeing from the countries with the highest homicide rates in the world?” he asked. “If you were a Honduran whose children were being raped and told that they would have to do the gang’s bidding or die, what would you do?”
Bishop Seitz urged that Trump “stop playing on people’s unfounded fears.”
“I live on the border and my city is year after year one of the safest in the country. These troops are being asked to leave their families and their employment to come to our border where they can do battle against the wind. They will find no enemy combatants here, just poor people seeking to live in peace and security. They will find no opposition forces, just people seeking to live in love and harmony with their family members and neighbors and business partners and fellow Christians on both sides of the border.”
“I pray that our President will reconsider this rash and ill-informed action,” he concluded.
Cleveland, Ohio, Apr 6, 2018 / 05:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After an in vitro fertilization clinic in Ohio lost more than 4,000 eggs and embryos, one of the couples is suing the clinic, asking a court to recognize an embryo as a person.
Wendy Penniman was one of many people to file a lawsuit against University Hospitals Fertility Center after a malfunctioning cryogenic tank increased temperatures the weekend of March 3.
“We are asking the court to declare that an embryo is a person and that life begins at conception,” said the Penniman’s lawyer, Bruce Taubman, according to News 5 Cleveland.
Having first filed a lawsuit March 12, Taubman filed an additional complaint March 30, asking for a declaratory judgment on the legal status of an embryo. If embryos are recognized as persons, wrongful death suits could be brought against the fertility center.
Taubman has referred to a 1985 Ohio Supreme Court case, Werling v. Sandy, in which the court held that a viable fetus is a person.
“In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court held that an embryo is not a person, but that was solely for the purposes of obtaining an abortion,” said Taubman, according to News 5 Cleveland.
“I see this case ending up in front of the Ohio Supreme Court, and I would like to think that they are going to follow my line of reasoning and declare an embryo a person.”
But Harvard Law Professor Glenn Cohen told News 5 Cleveland, “Ohio has already had a case where they basically said you can’t use this statute unless you’re talking about a viable fetus, and this is so much earlier than that.”
The Pennimans chose to use IVF after suffering 11 miscarriages. Through the clinic, the couple had two children and was hoping to have a third with another one of the frozen embryos.
Having a degree in biochemical engineering herself, Penniman felt betrayed to hear how the lab handled liquid nitrogen and the malfunction.
Reportedly, an employee had turned off the alarm system so none of the staff offsite had been notified, and an issue occurred with the tank’s autofill valve, which replenishes the freezers with liquid nitrogen to keep the embryos cool.
“You think to yourself, ‘How can this be going on behind the scenes?’” said Penniman, noting that the clinic should treat embryos and eggs with the same care as other patients.
“They trusted them with the most important thing they have: the future of their families. With the flip of a switch, they’ve lost the future,” Taubman added.
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