Can the ACLU and the courts order Catholic hospitals to perform abortions? Next on FOT

In Michigan the ACLU has filed a lawsuit asking the court to order Catholic hospitals to provide abortion services to women seeking them. Does the government have the legal authority to do that? Or is this just another example of how anti-Christian activists are trying to marginalize the Church?


Attorney Erin Mersino

Joining Deacon Mike Manno and Gina Noll this week is a true “Defender of the Faith,” Erin Mersino, senior trial counsel at the ThomasMore Law Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Erin was one of the first attorneys to obtain an injunction against the Obama Administration’s HHS mandate and was named “Defender of the Faith” by the national Catholic business group Legatus. Erin’s defense of religious freedom includes her representation of 23 plaintiffs challenging the HHS Mandate, and her defense of Father Ray Leonard, the contract Naval Chaplain who was banned from celebrating Catholic Mass during a government shut-down and threatened with arrest if he volunteered to celebrate Mass or if he entered the Chapel.

In addition to Erin we will have our monthly visit from Todd Erzen our media critic who will comment on the press coverage of Pope Francis’s U.S. visit and Gina will re-cap her trip to Philadelphia to see the pope.

It all happens at 9 a.m. (central) on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM; and streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com. The program will be rebroadcast at 9 p.m.

Faith On Trial is sponsored by Attorney Rick McConville, Coppola McConville, Coppola, Carroll, Hockenberg & Scalise PC 2100 Westown Parkway, West Des Moines, 515-453-1055; Confluence Brewing Company, off the Bike Trail just south of Grey’s Lake, 1235 Thomas Beck Road, Des Moines, and Financial Planner Rob denHartog, wealth management advisor at Northwestern Mutual Life, NW conrner of 128^th Street and Hickman Rd. 515-210-4472.