The Life Issues Institute reports that ads are being run on Facebook in the United Kingdom that offer women assistance in finding nearby abortion facilities, including late-term abortion specialists. The ads demonstrate that there is no need to force objecting health care workers to facilitate abortion by referral or by providing abortionist contact information, as access to abortion can be easily facilitated by popular social media and websites.
Update on American HHS birth control mandate controversy
On 14 December, Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino’s Pizza, filed a lawsuit against the HHS regulation [Associated Press]. Five days later, a federal appeals court reinstated lawsuits filed by Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey that had been dismissed by a lower court. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals also ordered the Obama administration to report every sixty days on its progress in redrafting the regulation to accommodate employers with religious objections to providing insurance for birth control.[Life News] News of the Wheaton and Belmont decisions came too late for inclusion in a column in the New England Journal of Medicine, which outlined the litigation and the issues.The federal Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court ruling that Hobby Lobby must comply with the mandate because it does not impose a “substantial burden” on the exercise of freedom of religion by the company’s owner. [The Hill] In contrast, O’Brien Industrial Holdings of Missouri was granted an injunction by an appeals court that prohibits the federal government from enforcing the regulation. The decision overturns a lower court ruling [The Foundry, 3 December]. A similar injunction was granted to the Griesedieck family‘s American Pulverizer Company in Minnesota [National Review] Commenting that there is no “trust us changes are coming” clause in the U.S. Constitution, a federal judge in New York upheld the right of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York to proceed with its lawsuit against the mandate. [Becket Fund, 6 December] Meanwhile, the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic religious order that provides nursing care to the elderly poor in 30 American cities, is considering the possiblity of leaving the United States if the current regulation stands. [LifeSite News]
Irish Archbishops challenged on claims of conscience about abortion
Archbishops are absolutely wrong about conscience
The Irish Times
27 December, 2012
OPINION: Catholic bishops who attribute an absolute value to conscience are trying to force others to accept their position on abortion.
The Catholic archbishops of Armagh, Dublin, Cashel and Emly, and Tuam released a public statement on December 18th that included this general principle: “No one has the right to force or coerce someone to act against their conscience. Respect for this right is the very foundation of a free, civilised and democratic society.”
I do not think they believe that. Nor do I.
Conscience could mean many things but it is usually understood as referring to the judgment of an individual about significant moral and religious matters. Unfortunately it is possible for someone to decide in “their conscience” that politically-motivated murder is acceptable in some circumstances, and the archbishops presumably do not mean the conscience of a murderer obliges a democratic state not to interfere in their behaviour, no matter how well-intentioned it may be. . . [Read on]
“Normalisation of cruelty” and the ‘ethics of the profession’
A court in the United Kingdom has awarded £410,000 ($663,000) in damages to 38 plaintiff families for an extraordinary cataloque of neglect, abandonment and abuse at the National Health Service’s Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, England. The incidents occurred between 2002 and 2009. Britain’s Health Secretary said that the case illustrates “the normailisation of cruelty.” One elderly patient was left unwashed for 11 weeks and another was starved to death. [RTE Question More; The Telegraph]
Court rules against Costa Rican ban on in vitro fertilization
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has ruled that the Costa Rican law prohibiting in vitro fertilization violates the American Convention on Human Rights(Murillo et al. v. Costa Rica. The Costa Rican law is intended to protect human life, including embryonic ife, from the moment of conception, which is guaranteed by the Convention. A preliminary commentary by Piero A. Tozzi, J.D. indicates that the court “elevated secondary rights – such as the right to privacy, a right to personal
autonomy, and a right to sexual and reproductive health – above the right to
life.”