A US appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit against a Catholic hospital that refused a woman an abortion. The Mercy Health Partners facility in Muskegon, Michigan, had faced legal action for “denial of medical care” after Tamesha Means suffered pregnancy complications at 18 weeks but was not advised during her treatment to consider abortion as one option. The case was pursued after an earlier dismissal – which ruled that a negligence claim would “impermissibly intrude upon ecclesiastical matters” – and now the Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has upheld that decision on the basis that negligence had not been proved.
Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans in 122 cities have taken part in marches in defence of traditional marriage. The marches were organised in response to moves by President Enrique Peña Nieto to have same-sex marriage recognised in the nation’s Constitution. The group behind the marches, Frente Nacional Por La Familia (National Front for the Family) warned that the president’s plans will be far-reaching and damaging for families. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Catholic Church said the move on same-sex marriage was a betrayal on the part of a president who had courted Church support in the past.
Christians in Egypt have said they are “at breaking point” amid ongoing violent attacks on them by Muslim extremists. A report in the New York Times reveals that the Christian community faces regular house burnings, attacks on Christians in the streets and hate graffiti on church walls. “We are at a breaking point,” Bishop Makarios of the city of Minya said. “People can’t put up with any more of this.” Meanwhile, the government-appointed imam charged with maintaining peace between communities insists there is no problem. “No one has been killed,” Imam Mahmoud Gomaa said. “No one has even been wounded. There’s no conflict. The problem is really with the journalists writing about it.”
The US Commission on Civil Rights has stated that anti-discrimination laws outweigh religious freedom in its latest report. According to the body’s report on Peaceful Coexistence: “Civil rights protections ensuring non-discrimination, as embodied in the Constitution, laws, and policies, are of preeminent importance in American jurisprudence…Religious exemptions to the protections of civil rights based upon classifications such as race, colour, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity, when they are permissible, significantly infringe upon these civil rights.” In one strong entry in the report, Chairman Martin Castro stated: “The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia or any form of intolerance.”
Tens of thousands of lives have been saved by Ireland’s Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, the Pro-Life Campaign (PLC) claims. A report commissioned by the group aimed to challenge assertions made by pro-abortion advocates that the amendment merely results in women travelling abroad for abortions. It found that in 2014, some 5.2% of pregnancies in Ireland were ended by abortion (performed outside the jurisdiction), while the rate in Sweden was 24%, 21% in England and Wales and 18% in Spain. “At a very conservative estimate there are tens of thousands of Irish people alive today precisely because of the protection that the Eighth Amendment gives to the unborn,” the report states. Even at the lowest of these rates, the report adds, there would have been 229,000 abortions between 1994 and 2014, meaning “121,000 Irish citizens would not have been born”.
Churches in the US state of Massachusetts may be forced to accommodate transgender access to toilet facilities under a new anti-discrimination law. Coming into effect on October 1, the new legislation has been supplemented with a ‘Gender Identity Guidance’ booklet to better explain the responsibilities of businesses and “agents of places of public accommodation”. The guidance goes on to make clear that even places of worship may at times fall into the latter category. “Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public,” the guidance notes. The religious freedom law group Alliance Defending Freedom has reacted by arguing that the law and its interpretation clearly violates the First Amendment on freedom of religion.
A US academic has challenged a New York Times article which downplayed the value of adult stem cell therapies to point out that “over 1.5 million patients have had their lives saved and health improved by adult stem cell transplants”. David Prentice PhD, Research Director of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, was prompted to speak out after an article penned by Times journalist Gina Kolata that trials with adult stem cells are “still in the earliest phase”. Dr Prentice referenced published research in which stem cell transplants are hailed as both life-saving and cost-effective, and he said articles downplaying stem adult stem cells only serve to “confuse, not illuminate, the facts about stem cell therapies”.
Catholic Bishops in America have criticised moves by the government to allow for human/animal hybrid research. Reacting to news that the National Institute of Health is willing to fund such research, the Bishops issued a statement in which they described the proposal as unethical and one which threatens to destroy human embryos. “The bottom line is that the Federal government will begin expending taxpayer dollars on the creation and manipulation of new beings whose very existence blurs the line between humanity and animals such as mice and rats,” the Bishops stated. “In doing so, the government is ignoring the fact that federally funded research of this kind is prohibited by Federal statute and is also grossly unethical.”
Health officials have sounded a warning after a new report revealed Ireland’s rate of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) has surged. Latest figures from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre show that Ireland has recorded 6,975 cases of STI so far in 2016, a figure 847 higher than for the same period in 2015, a 13.8% jump. More troubling, when confined to cases of HIV, that infection category showed a 30% hike from 2014 to 2015. In 2016, there were 326 new cases of HIV, 71 over the previous year. The main STI cases in Ireland involve chlamydia, herpes and gonorrhoea. Sexual health centres across Ireland are now increasing their screening hours and urged people concerned about possible infections to get checked as soon as possible.
A hotel run by Arizona State University (ASU) has been forced to remove the Bible from hotel rooms following an action by an atheist group. The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) targeted the hotel arguing that the presence of Bibles in hotel rooms caused offence. The state’s Attorney General, Madeline Ziegler agreed and wrote to the university to warn that making Bibles available “sends the message that ASU endorses the religious texts”. She added that state-run universities have an obligation to remain neutral on religion. This is not the first time the FFRF has sought the removal of Bibles. In 2014, it caused their removal from rooms at hotels linked to Iowa State University and the University of Wisconsin.
