Tom Monaghan, the founder and former owner of Domino's Pizza, is suing the federal government over a controversial mandate that requires him to violate his Catholic faith in his business decisions.
The lawsuit described the contraception mandate as "an unprecedented despoiling of religious rights" that both "attacks and desecrates a foremost tenet of the Catholic Church."
It pointed to Thomas Jefferson's statement that "No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority."
Filed Dec. 14 by Thomas More Law Center, the lawsuit challenges a federal mandate requiring employers to offer health insurance covering contraception, sterilization and early abortion drugs, even if doing so violates their firmly-held religious beliefs.
More than 110 business owners, non-profit organizations and religious charities have sued over the mandate, arguing that it violates their constitutionally-guaranteed right to religious freedom.
At age 75, Monaghan is best known for founding Domino's Pizza in 1960. He sold the pizza company in 1998 and no longer has any active affiliation with it. However, he remains the owner of Domino's Farms, the property management company for a Michigan office park that is home to more than 50 corporations, professional firms, non-profits and entrepreneurial businesses.
Monaghan and Domino's Farms were both listed as plaintiffs in the recent lawsuit, which explained that they are committed to "a common mission of conducting their business operations with integrity and in compliance with the teachings, mission, and values of the Catholic Church."
The legal challenge noted that Domino's Farms offers its tenants a Catholic bookstore and on-site Catholic chapel, which has Mass four times per day.
In accordance with Church teaching, Monaghan and his company believe that all human life is sacred, bearing the image and likeness of God from the moment of conception, it added.
They also agree with Church teaching on the nature and purpose of human sexuality, it said, explaining that they view contraception, sterilization and abortion as "gravely immoral practices" rather than true medicine or health care that provides for the well-being of persons.
The lawsuit observed that Monaghan is a pro-life Catholic who "has devoted his life and resources to Catholic philanthropic causes," including the promotion of Catholic education and charity.
He has founded numerous Catholic organizations, including Ave Maria University, Ave Maria School of Law and Legatus, a group for business leaders to bring together faith, family and business.
In his business practices, Monaghan "is guided by his religious beliefs" and "follows the teachings of the Catholic faith as defined by the Magisterium," the legal document stressed.
As part of this commitment to live out his "deeply held religious beliefs" in all aspects of his life, Monaghan offers a health insurance plan that specifically excludes coverage of contraception, sterilization and abortion, it said, noting that Domino's Farms has never offered coverage of these products and procedures.
However, the mandate threatens the ability of Monaghan and Domino's Farms to remain in business, since failing to comply with it would result in "ruinous fines that would have a crippling impact on their ability to survive economically," it explained.
Monaghan and his company are now asking the court to grant them an injunction blocking the enforcement of the mandate. So far, two for-profit businesses have been denied an injunction, while four have secured one.
Such an injunction is necessary, the lawsuit said, so that Monaghan and Domino's Farms may continue "to conduct their business in a manner that does not violate the principles of their religious faith."
Contact: Michelle Bauman
Source: CNA/EWTN News
Nurses in a big city hospital never know what a day's shift will bring – straightforward cases or medical miracles, major crises or minor first aid. Whatever her station, whatever the duty of the moment, a nurse tries to ready herself for anything. But some things, you just can't see coming.
It was Beryl Otieno Ngoje's turn to work the desk in the Same Day Surgery Unit at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), in Newark. She was busy with the usual administrative duties – filing charts, handing out forms to the patients, answering visitors' questions – when another nurse hurried up beside her.
"Oh, something just happened, you won't believe it," the woman said, visibly excited. "I have it in my hand." She held up a clenched fist, palm up. "I have it in my hand," she said again.
"What do you have in your hand?" Beryl asked, bemused at the woman's demeanor.
"Do you want to see?"
"Yes," Beryl said – and instantly regretted it.
The other nurse opened her hand to reveal the tiny, tiny form of a baby, just aborted.
"I felt like somebody had just hit me with something in my face," Beryl remembers.
She began to cry, to the consternation of her coworker.
"I'm sorry – I didn't know you were going to react like that," the woman said.
It was a moment that seared Beryl's soul and haunted her memory, and it would come back often, in the days ahead. For the other nurse was not just a co-worker, but her manager... with the power to hold not just an unborn baby, but Beryl's career in the palm of her hand.
The dozen-or-so nurses of the UMDNJ Same Day Surgery Unit – like nurses at any other hospital – are a lively mixture of backgrounds and personalities. Beryl, a native of Kenya, is a quiet ICU specialist who's been with the hospital for over 15 years. Fe Esperanza Racpan Vinoya, a veteran of the ER and ICU, is from the Philippines, and speaks with cheerful delight about her love for music and for her church. Lorna Mendoza has been a nurse for 25 years, at University for more than a dozen, and takes both her work and her Christian faith very seriously.
"We high-five each other," Beryl says, "Most of us are there 12 hours, and that is a good portion of your day. It is important that you get along and feel relaxed and free."
Because: "you get to socialize a lot," Fe says. "You're less busy here than in the ER."
The nurses of Fe's unit are responsible for monitoring, medicating, and placating patients going into and coming out of surgery. That means a lot of bedside comfort, encouragement, and interaction with both patients and their families, so conversations between coworkers tend to be quick exchanges in the hallway or on break. What the nurses share, more than close friendship, is delight in and commitment to a job they love.
"It's a noble job," says Fe. "Very fulfilling... a healing profession. Everything you do for the patient just makes them feel better, and satisfies my entire being, because I've helped someone."
"A lot of people don't realize... we usually see somebody at their worst," Beryl says. "They're not perky, happy – they're ailing and hurting. They just want somebody to be there. I can make a difference. I can help in whatever little way. I find that very gratifying."
All operations on this unit are elective – that is, the patient chooses to have a specific procedure done: a tonsillectomy, a hernia repair, the removal of cataracts. And, sometimes, an abortion.
Not the kind of abortion where the mother's life is in danger, Beryl says. "They just choose to end it. These are people who go to the doctor and say, 'Look, I don't want this pregnancy.' The age range is mostly teenagers – 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds – and a lot of times, they come back."
"To some, it's like contraception," Fe says. "Five or six times, you see them there."
If she ends up talking to those patients, she says, "I always tell them, 'I'll be praying for you, and I hope that this is the last time I'll see you doing this kind of procedure.' I can see in their faces how guilty they feel, the guilt in their hearts." Many say, "Yes, definitely this is my last time."
And yet, so often, they come back.
Fe knows, all too well, about that guilt in their eyes. Twenty years ago – still new to America, still learning the language and culture, just getting the hang of her first nursing job – she found she was pregnant. But her doctor said the number of rubella antibodies in her blood was too low, and posed far too great a risk for the baby. He urged her to get a therapeutic abortion.
Fe and her husband pressed the doctor repeatedly – was this absolutely necessary? He assured them it was, and, out of their depth in a new country, they didn't realize they had any choice. Fe soon found herself in a clinic, surrounded by half-a-hundred teenagers, all waiting their turn to abbreviate the life in their wombs. Fe sat with her husband and sister.
"We were the only ones crying," she says.
Right up until the moment of the procedure itself, Fe was on the phone with her doctors, trying to get their okay not to end her baby's life. But her pediatrician and the specialist were adamant, and she went through with what they told her to do. The decision has troubled her ever since.
"I wasn't able to sleep for a long time," she says. "It took me years to just feel that, okay, it's done. I asked for forgiveness. The Lord knows my heart, that I didn't want to have that happen."
Within a year, Fe was pregnant again. She is now the mother of three... yet her thoughts linger, sometimes, on the one she lost. The experience makes it that much harder, she says, to watch the young teenagers come through to eliminate a child just because it might complicate their lives. She knows how their hearts will be haunted in ways they can't imagine now.
Which is why she was horrified to learn that she was being ordered to help with their abortions.
The change came in September of 2011, with the news that a peer was being promoted. Though employed in the same unit as Fe, Beryl and the rest, this particular nurse had long been assigned to a special team that carried out the abortions without any involvement or assistance from other nurses on the Same Day Surgery floor. The abortion team had always drawn its staff from nurses who had expressed no qualms about helping end a child's life.
Promoted from that team to a supervisory position over all the nurses, the new assistant manager announced that – since she and others had to help with abortions – she saw no reason why every nurse shouldn't help. Hospital officials agreed, and passed a new, mandatory policy to make it so. The assistant manager quickly set up a training program that would give each nurse on the unit hands-on experience in how to assist with and clean up after abortions.
"As long as you work here," she told the 12 nurses who openly protested, "you're going to have to do it. If you don't, you're going to be fired or transferred out."
"We were all shocked," Fe says. "All these years I've been a nurse, I was never told to help kill children."
But the managers remained adamant. Hospital administrators supported them. When the nurses brought up a long-standing, in-writing agreement exempting them from taking part in abortions apart from a medical emergency, officials told them "an emergency" would hereafter be defined as any situation in which the patient was "bleeding." And every birth involves bleeding.
"I knew we were going to lose our jobs," says Lorna, who, at one point, amid the flurry of discussions with the managers, was asked to provide a patient with a bedpan. Retrieving it, she found an aborted baby inside. Horrified and sobbing, she called for help, telling the manager who responded, "I don't know what to do with this. I can't do this." She soon found herself in the office of the vice president of nursing, where she was accused of refusing to help patients and threatened with termination. She wasn't the only one called in.
"Our jobs were hanging by a string," Beryl says. "We were like, 'All right. If they're going to fire all 12 of us, fine. But this is against what we believe God wants us to do.' We didn't come into this profession to do [abortions]. We told them we weren't comfortable with it and didn't feel they should force us. And if that meant our jobs, well... God was going to provide."
When even their own union declined to help them, Fe wrote a letter to hospital officials saying that she and her coworkers would not participate in abortions. She passed it around for the other nurses; 15 signed it. She gave the letter to her manager, who took it to the director of nursing.. Response was swift. A meeting was called for the next day, with each of the signing nurses, the labor board, a union official, the managers, and "an expert on ethics" scheduled to be on hand.
The day of that announcement, Pastor Terry Smith, of Life Christian Church in West Orange, New Jersey, returned from a trip. A staff member told him that one of his parishioners – Fe – had called, shared what was happening at the hospital, and asked for advice. The pastor immediately phoned Len Deo, president of the New Jersey Family Policy Council.
"I'll be all over this," said Deo, who hung up and called Alliance Defending Freedom. Shortly afterward, staff attorney Matt Bowman was on the phone with a local allied attorney, Demetrios Stratis, enlisting him to help defend the nurses. The two immediately called Fe.
"I remember... I was driving and speaking to them three-way," says Fe, who had just been convincing herself the nurses' case was hopeless. "I didn't know a thing about conscience law – it was very, very new to me." The two told her she had a legitimate case, and offered to defend her. Best of all, Stratis said he could be on hand for her meeting with the managers the next day.
"Is there a catch?" Fe asked. Visions of sky-high attorneys' fees danced in her head.
"No catch," Stratis said. "We're pro bono lawyers." Fe drove home in a daze.
Next morning, she met Stratis at the hospital entrance. She took him upstairs to the Same Day Surgery Unit and introduced him to the nurses on duty and others waiting for the meeting. Twelve of the 15 immediately agreed to have him and Bowman represent them in the case.
"A godsend," Beryl says. "We had no idea which way to go. It was like something from heaven just dropped in our lap at the right time. It boosted our morale a lot." It did considerably less for the morale of the nurse managers and others gathered for the meeting, who had not reckoned with the nurses hiring outside counsel.
"Who are you?" a manager asked Stratis.
"He's our attorney, and he is going to speak on our behalf," replied Fe. Everyone split into huddles – Stratis and the nurses in one room, administrators in another. After a few minutes, the nurse manager came to cancel the meeting, but not before Stratis made it clear that he would be defending "my clients' legal right not to be forced to participate in terminating a pregnancy."
"It was like we had been talking to a brick wall, and that brick wall just got smashed," Fe says. "We were very happy after that. It gave us a sense of hope."
Stratis and Bowman reminded hospital officials – face to face and in writing – that their new policy transgressed both state and federal laws that make it illegal to compel medical professionals to violate their conscience by forcing them to help with a non-emergency abortion. With their actions, the hospital was not only risking a lawsuit, but more than $60 million in federal funding. Still, administrators stubbornly contended that all abortions in the Same Day Surgery area – each scheduled weeks in advance – were "emergencies."
"These surgeries are, by definition, elective, outpatient procedures," Bowman says. "If they weren't, the ER is just 30 seconds away." Plus, he points out, "these are pre- and post-operative nurses. They're not even supposed to be there for a surgery, whether it's abortion or not."
To get around that, he says, the abortion team "would give a woman a pill that induced labor, give it in the pre-op area, and leave her there. After a couple of hours, she'd start going into labor." And now, she was outside the surgical area – in a section for which the 12 pro-life nurses were responsible.
With the hospital unwilling to budge, Alliance Defending Freedom filed suit on behalf of the 12 nurses to defend their legally protected right of conscience. Their managers, meanwhile, insisted on including the 12 in abortion training, which included interactions with abortion patients and handling dead babies. Three were forced to take part before the nurses enlisted Bowman and Stratis. Once hired, though, the two quickly obtained an injunction that prevented other nurses from having to undergo training the following day.
One of the three forced to train did not quite accomplish, perhaps, what her managers had in mind. During her shift, a patient expressed reluctance to go through with the procedure. The nurse talked with her awhile, then – at her request – quietly brought in the woman's husband. After a bit, the woman dressed and they left... having decided not to have the abortion.
For weeks, the 12 nurses worked in a decidedly tense environment. "It was scary," Beryl says. "We prayed a lot. We came into work and stepped off the elevator and said, 'God just let the day go by well, without incident' – because we had our incidents. It was very, very uncomfortable." The 12 drew strength, she says, from each other, from praying friends, and from their faith that, "Our God is greater than this."
As a court date drew nearer, the hospital came up with another threat: if the 12 would not help with abortions, administrators would hire nurses who were willing to do so. Soon, officials intimated, there might not be work enough for everybody... in which cases those nurses willing to do anything might well enjoy greater job security than those only willing to do most things.
Amid all the tension, threats, and growing media coverage, the judge in the case stunned everyone by suddenly announcing, in a preliminary hearing, that a settlement had been reached.
"We had gotten everything [the 12 nurses] requested," Stratis says. "We'd gotten the hospital to agree not to force them to perform these abortions. There would be no retaliatory measures against them, and they could feel free and sleep at night, knowing that the next day they would not have to be trained on the abortion process or help a woman kill an innocent child."
"I was crying – really crying," says Lorna, who heard the news from one of the other nurses. "And very thankful. The next day, I went to work, and all of us were hugging and very happy."
"Before, I used to think that some prayers won't be answered," Fe says. "Sometimes, I'd feel very hopeless. But with this case, I saw how the Lord moves... providing the resources, the people who would help us out. It just strengthened my faith. I really thank God for Alliance Defending Freedom."
"I'm not sure I know where we'd be today if it wasn't for them, really," Beryl says. "We were up against some really big guns, and Alliance Defending Freedom was determined to support us."
"This case took an emotional toll on all of these nurses," Stratis says. "To stand up, to be part of a lawsuit against their employer, is very, very hard to do. There was a lot at stake. Some were the sole breadwinners for their family. Being faced with termination of their job or standing up for their faith... that is a very, very difficult decision, especially in these economic times."
But "I couldn't do what they were asking me to do," Beryl says. "I could not. You go against what you believe, what are you? What's left? Just a shell of what you are."
Spoken like a woman whose conscience is in good hands.
Source: Alliance Defending Freedom
Musical Reminder of Christ Child Encourages Women to Choose Life for their Babies
Sometimes a song can save a life. That's what happened one year during the Pro-Life Action League's annual "Empty Manger" Christmas Caroling Day at abortion facilities in Chicago and the western suburbs.
"We were singing 'Silent Night' at American Women's Medical Center when a young woman came out of the clinic," said the Pro-Life Action League's executive director, Eric Scheidler. "She approached one of our pro-life counselors and said we got her thinking about Mary and Baby Jesus. She just couldn't go through with her abortion." The counselor directed the young mother to a nearby pregnancy center for help.
The Pro-Life Action League hopes for similar life-saving results during this year's 10th annual "Empty Manger" Christmas Caroling Day on Saturday, December 22. "These beloved Christmas carols remind us all of the hope and joy brought into the world by a newborn baby," said Scheidler. "We want to share that hope with the mothers entering these abortion clinics. We want them to know that just like Baby Jesus, their unborn babies are a gift, too."
Last year, 130 carolers participated in this annual event, and similar caroling tours were held at abortion facilities throughout the country, with even more groups signing on this year. "We encourage more pro-lifers to join this national event," said Scheidler. "Simply download and print out our caroling booklet and gather a few friends to sing carols at the abortion facilities in your area."
Two simultaneous caroling tours will take place the morning of December 22, one visiting five abortion facilities in Chicago and the other visiting four in DuPage County. Maps and more information, including other caroling sites across the country, are available at ProLifeAction.org.
At each abortion facility, pro-life carolers will gather around an empty manger, which symbolizes both the hope that new life can bring as well as the emptiness left behind when an unborn child is killed by an abortion—especially at Christmas time.
"Empty Manger" Christmas Caroling Tour, Saturday, December 22, 2012:
CHICAGO CAROLING TOUR:
• 9:00 Family Planning Associates, 659 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago
• 9:45 Planned Parenthood, 1200 N. La Salle Dr., Chicago
• 10:30 All Women's Health Center, 2000 W. Armitage Ave., Chicago
• 11:15 American Women's Medical Ctr., 2744 N. Western Ave., Chicago
• 12:00 Albany Medical Surgical Ctr., 5086 N. Elston Ave., Chicago
DUPAGE CAROLING TOUR:
• 9:00 ACU Health Center, 736 N. York Rd., Hinsdale
• 10:00 Aanchor Health Center, 1186 Roosevelt Rd., Glen Ellyn
• 11:00 Access Health Center, 1700 75th St., Downers Grove
• 12:00 Planned Parenthood Aurora, 3051 E. New York St., Aurora
VISUALS/AUDIO:
• Pro-life carolers gathered around Christmas crèche-style empty manger
• Christmas caroling
• "White Christmas" weather
• Pro-life signage
• Possible opposition counter-protest
• Backdrop of abortion facilities
More details available at ProLifeAction.org
Contact: Tom Ciesielka
Source: Pro-Life Action League
A federal appeals court has delivered an important victory to religious nonprofit organizations that oppose the Obama administration's abortion/contraception mandate.
In the first ruling on the mandate at the appellate level, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the federal government Dec. 18 to keep its promise to issue a new rule to protect the religious liberty of two colleges and other religious nonprofits. The three-judge panel told the Obama administration to report back every 60 days on its commitment to publish a notice of a proposed rule by March 31 and to issue a final rule before August.
The D.C. Circuit Court also said it expected the administration to fulfill its pledge not to enforce the current rule against Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in suburban Chicago, and Belmont Abbey College, a Roman Catholic institution in North Carolina, as well as other religious nonprofits.
"We take the government at its word and will hold it to it," the panel said in its three-page order.
The appeals court issued the order in response to lawsuits by Wheaton and Belmont Abbey against a rule by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that mandates employers provide workers with health insurance covering contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs. The rule is part of the implementation of the 2010 health care reform law, which has been dubbed Obamacare.
The abortion/contraception mandate went into effect Aug. 1 of this year, but the Obama administration established a one-year "safe harbor" from that date intended to accommodate the concerns of nonprofit religious entities. Neither the "safe harbor" nor the D.C. Circuit Court's order applies to for-profit companies with owners opposed to the mandate.
Religious freedom advocates praised the court's order.
Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention called it "a tremendous day for religious freedom and freedom of conscience," adding he was "extremely pleased but not surprised" at the court's action.
"It shows clearly that when the federal government oversteps its bounds and denies the First Amendment free exercise and freedom of conscience rights of Americans that those citizens can successfully appeal to the federal court system to be the protector of those divinely endowed and constitutionally guaranteed rights," said Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission which signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Wheaton and Belmont Abbey.
Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said the court "has now made it clear that government promises and press conferences are not enough to protect religious freedom. The court is not going to let the government slide by on non-binding promises to fix the problem down the road."
The D.C. Circuit Court's order came only four days after Duncan and government lawyers presented oral arguments before the panel of judges. During the arguments, the Obama administration lawyers promised the judges the government would not enforce the current rule against religious nonprofits and would provide a new rule to guard their religious freedom.
Wheaton and Belmont Abbey appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court after federal judges dismissed their lawsuits separately, partly because they ruled neither school had standing to sue. The appeals court, however, ruled the schools had standing. The three-judge panel also decided not to return the cases to the federal judges for further action but to hold them until a new rule is issued.
In addition to the challenges by the two colleges, 40 other lawsuits have been filed against the HHS for a rule that requires employer coverage of drugs defined by the Food and Drug Administration as contraceptives, even if they can cause abortions. Among such drugs are Plan B and other "morning-after" pills that can prevent implantation of tiny embryos and "ella" which -- in a fashion similar to the abortion drug RU 486 -- can even act after implantation to end the life of the child.
While the religious exemption to the rule provided by HHS covers churches, it is insufficient to protect religious hospitals, schools and social service ministries, as well as some churches, critics have pointed out.
Four Baptist schools -- Louisiana College, Houston Baptist University, East Texas Baptist University and Criswell College – are among the institutions or businesses that have filed lawsuits against the mandate.
Among others suing the federal government are Hobby Lobby, Christian publisher Tyndale House, Colorado Christian University, Geneva College, Priests for Life and the EWTN Catholic television and radio network.
The ERLC joined 10 other evangelical organizations in a brief filed by Christian Legal Society in support of the appeals by Wheaton and Belmont Abbey on religious liberty grounds.
Contact: Tom Strode
Source: Baptist Press
Arts and crafts giant Hobby Lobby will appeal to the nation's highest court after an appeals court ruled the federal contraception mandate does not impose a "substantial burden" on the owners' religious freedom.
"The Green family is disappointed with this ruling," said Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is handling the case.
He explained that the Christian family that owns and operates Hobby Lobby must now "seek relief from the United States Supreme Court."
"The Greens will continue to make their case on appeal that this unconstitutional mandate infringes their right to earn a living while remaining true to their faith," Duncan said.
On Dec. 20, an appeals court denied the plaintiffs' request for a temporary injunction to block the federal contraception mandate from being enforced against them while their case moves forward in the court.
The mandate requires employers to offer health insurance covering sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause early abortions. As Christians, the Greens are morally opposed to funding any type of abortion, including those caused by "morning after" and "week after" pills.
In its decision, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the mandate did not impose a "substantial burden" on the Greens' religious freedom because it only forces them to fund "someone else's participation" in an activity that their religion condemns.
Started in a garage in Oklahoma City in 1972, Hobby Lobby now has more than 500 stores in 41 states. Its owners, the Greens, have said that they seek to serve God through all of their endeavors, including their business decisions.
The company donates considerable amounts to charity, maintains a minimum wage that is much higher than the federal requirement and closes all of its stores on Sundays, sacrificing profit to allow its employees to rest and worship with their families.
A lower court ruled last month that as a "secular, for-profit" corporation, Hobby Lobby does not have a constitutional right to freedom of religion, even if its owners see its management as part of their call to Christian stewardship.
Forty-two separate lawsuits challenging the mandate have been filed on behalf of religious schools, hospitals and charities, for-profit businesses and individual states. Rulings in the cases have been split. Among for-profit businesses, four have been granted preliminary injunctions and two have been denied them.
Hobby Lobby is the largest business to file a lawsuit challenging the mandate. If it is not granted relief from the regulation, it will be forced to pay $1.3 million per day in fines for refusing to comply with the objectionable provision.
The company will now turn to the Supreme Court to ask for an injunction protecting its right to religious freedom.
"It is by God's grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has endured," said David Green, founder and CEO of the company. "Therefore we seek to honor God by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles."
Contact: Michelle Bauman
Source: CNA/EWTN News
Religious freedom advocates applauded a federal appeals court's decision to hold the government accountable for revising its controversial contraception mandate.
Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, called the decision "a win not just for Belmont Abbey and Wheaton, but for all religious non-profits challenging the mandate."
"The D.C. Circuit has now made it clear that government promises and press conferences are not enough to protect religious freedom," he said in a Tuesday statement responding to the ruling.
On Dec. 18, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said that it will hold the government responsible for following through on its promises to issue a proposed revision of the federal contraception mandate for objecting religious organizations by March 2013.
The mandate requires employers to offer health insurance plans that cover sterilization and contraception, including some drugs that may cause early abortions. Exemptions to the mandate were only granted to a small number of religious employers that meet the government's requirements of existing to teach religious values and primarily hiring and serving members of their own faith.
After a wave of protest from non-exempt individuals and organizations, the government announced a one-year "safe harbor" to delay the enforcement of the mandate against objecting non-profit religious groups. It said that it would create an "accommodation" for their religious freedom during this time.
However, critics have said that the early suggestions put forth by the Obama administration are inadequate. And while the plan for an accommodation was announced in February, the government has not yet issued its formal proposal with the details of the new rule, and its promise to create one was not legally binding.
More than 40 lawsuits have been filed against the mandate, drawing split rulings from district courts. Among for-profit businesses that are not protected by the safe harbor period, four out of six have been granted a preliminary injunction blocking the mandate from being enforced against them.
Several lawsuits filed by religious non-profit groups – including Belmont Abbey and Wheaton Colleges – were dismissed by district courts as premature because of the government's promise to amend the mandate.
However, a federal judge in New York determined on Dec. 6 that a case by the local archdiocese was mature despite the government's promise, noting, "There is no 'Trust us changes are coming' clause in the Constitution."
In making its Dec. 18 decision, the appeals court observed that the government had said during oral arguments that it would "never" enforce the mandate in its current form against morally objecting religious institutions.
"There will, the government said, be a different rule for entities like the appellants," the court noted, "and we take that as a binding commitment."
The judges also pointed to the government's statement that it would issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the new rule by the end of March 2013 and would publish the Final Rule before August 2013.
"We take the government at its word and will hold it to it," they said, ordering the Obama administration to report back every 60 days on the progress of the accommodation. The colleges' lawsuit will be postponed during this time.
The ruling was hailed by supporters of religious freedom around the country.
Maureen Ferguson, senior policy advisor for The Catholic Association, applauded the court for fighting the "disinformation" surrounding the mandate and showing the serious threat to religious freedom facing religious employers.
Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life and a graduate of Wheaton College, called the decision "a first step toward halting the anti-life coercion in the healthcare law."
Duncan, who argued the case before the appeals court, explained that the decision offers hope to all of the religious plaintiffs throughout the country.
"The court is not going to let the government slide by on non-binding promises to fix the problem down the road," he said.
Contact: Michelle Bauman
Source: CNA/EWTN News
Though new studies confirm a link between abortion and breast cancer, that information is not being widely reported.
Karen Malec of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer tells OneNewsNow the studies [PDF] conducted in France and China between 2009-2011 confirm that breast cancer cases are related to the number of abortions a woman has. LifeNews.com reports that the authors examined information on disease diagnosis, demographics, medical history, and reproductive characteristics of the patients involved. They also looked at a number of other factors.
"There have been 71 studies now that have been published, epidemiological studies showing a statistical relationship between having an abortion and having an increased breast cancer risk," Malec notes.
Even so, she says, most women remain uninformed about it because many cancer-related not-for-profit organizations look the other way.
"They are ignoring it, and they're misrepresenting the research," the pro-lifer laments. "It's simply not good for fundraising to tell women that their abortions may be responsible for their breast cancers. It's a very emotional issue."
At the same time, the standard medical text shows that childbearing protects women because it has a significant defensive effect. Dr. Joel Brind, a professor at Baruch College in New York City, has compiled a statistical review of previous studies confirming the link between abortion and breast cancer, and the French and Chinese studies of late tend to confirm his findings.
Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow.com
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix demonstrated that just because one is a brilliant scientist, that doesn't mean he or she is also a good ethicist.
And now, we have another example: Sir John Gurdon, who won the Nobel Prize for early work on cloning frogs, has come out in favor of human reproductive cloning. From the Daily Mail story:
'I take the view that anything you can do to relieve suffering or improve human health will usually be widely accepted by the public – that is to say if cloning actually turned out to be solving some problems and was useful to people, I think it would be accepted,' he said. During his public lectures – which include speeches at Oxford and Cambridge Universities – he often asks his audience if they would be in favour of allowing parents of deceased children, who are no longer fertile, to create another using the mother's eggs and skin cells from the first child, assuming the technique was safe and effective.
'The average vote on that is 60 per cent in favour,' he said. 'The reasons for "no" are usually that the new child would feel they were some sort of a replacement for something and not valid in their own right. 'But if the mother and father, if relevant, want to follow that route, why should you or I stop them?'
I don't know why so many scientists take such a crass utilitarian view of things, but let's unpack this for a moment. First, polls show overwhelming opposition to reproductive cloning. Be that as it may, note how Gurdon doesn't appear to care about the impact on the future cloned child of being a "replacement." Only the feelings of the parents matter. This is in keeping with the growing belief that people not only have the right to a baby, but to have a baby by any means they want, and indeed, the baby they want–in this example, custom manufactured.
But let's dig a little deeper. What kind of experiments would it take for reproductive cloning to be "safe?" Here's how biologist and stem cell researcher, David Prentice (now with the Family Research Council). put it back in 2003 when I interviewed him for my book Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World:
Scientists would have to clone thousands of embryos and grow them to the blastocyst stage [one week] to ensure that part of the process leading up to transfer into a uterus could be "safe," monitoring and analyzing each embryo, destroying each one in the process. Next, cloned embryos would have to be transferred into the uteruses of women volunteers [or implanted in an artificial womb]. The initial purpose would be analysis of development, not bringing the pregnancy to a live birth. Each of these clonal pregnancies would be terminated at various points of development, each fetus destroyed for scientific analysis. The surrogate mothers would also have to be closely monitored and tested, not only during the pregnancies but also for a substantial length of time after the abortions.
Finally, if these experiments demonstrated that it was probably safe to proceed, a few clonal pregnancies would be allowed to go to full term. Yet even then, the born cloned babies would have to be constantly monitored to determine whether any health problems develop. Each would have to be followed (and undergo a battery of tests both physical and psychological) for their entire lives, since there is no way to predict if problems [associated with gene expression] might arise later in childhood, adolescence, adulthood, or even into the senior years.
Does that sound moral or ethical to anyone? It is manufacturing human life and then treating it as if it were nothing more meaningful than potter's clay.
Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: National Review
