Bills in states proposed in reaction to controversial federal birth control mandate

Following a hearing held by a committee of the Idaho legislature, Rep. Carlos Bilbao will revise a bill he has proposed to prevent a federal birth control regulation from forcing objecting employers to provide insurance for surgical sterilization, contraceptives, and embryocidal drugs. [Deseret News]  Senator John Moolenaar has introduced the Religious Liberty and Conscience Protection Act in the Michigan state legislature [Midland Daily News].  It is a broad protection of conscience bill that covers individual health care providers and facilities,both with respect to direct participation and direct or indirect payment for objectionable procedures. Bills have also been proposed in Missouri and Arizona to counter the federal regulation.  If the bills pass, the federal government may go to court to have them struck down in order to enforce the federal law.  [ABC News]

 

Transgender kids get puberty-blocking drugs, sex-changing hormones; MDs say numbers are rising

Washington Post

Associated Press

CHICAGO – A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.

It’s an issue that raises ethical questions, and some experts urge caution in treating children with puberty-blocking drugs and hormones.

An 8-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, “I a boy” and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the child as a boy and is watching for the first signs of puberty to begin treatment, his mother told The Associated Press. . . [Full text]

 

 

UK human rights chairman wants freedom of religion restricted

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, has said that religious believers should not be free to adhere to their own tenets when acting in the public domain.  “Once you start to provide public services that have to be run under public rules, for example child protection, then it has to go with public law,” he said.  He agreed with the court ruling that forced the closure of all Catholic adoption agencies in Britain because they objected to adoption by persons identified as homosexual.  [The Telegraph]

 

President of Spanish medical college won’t accept government pressure on abortion

Dr. Carmen Rodriguez, the president of the Asturias Medical College, the official physician’s association for the region of Asturias in the north of Spain, told a local paper that society can make laws concerning abortion, but cannot force physicians to participate in them. [LifeSite News]

 

Objecting Spanish physician granted injunction

Dr. Manuel Resa, a physician who has resisted attempts to force him to participate in abortions, has been granted an injunction by Superior Tribunal of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia in Spain.  He appealed to the Tribunal after a lower court refused to grant the injunction.  This means that Dr. Resa will not be forced to participate in abortion pending the outcome of his civil suit on seeking recognition of his freedom to refuse to facilitate abortion.