‘The quiet part out loud’: Bill Maher says abortion ‘kind of’ is murder

On Friday’s episode of his HBO show, comedian Bill Maher said abortion “kind of is” murder. “I’m just okay with that,” he added. “I mean there's 8 billion people in the world. I'm sorry, we won't miss you.” “Is that not your position if you're pro-choice?” Maher asked. “Bill Maher said the quiet part out loud about abortion,” one X user wrote.  READ

Multiple Texas universities ditch ‘diversity’ programs

Multiple universities in the University of Texas (UT) system have recently announced the firing of their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) staff, in order to comply with state law. Conservative scholar and prominent DEI critic Christopher Rufo praised UT’s decision. “The ‘pink slip revolution’ has begun,” he wrote on X Friday.  READ

News from the Iowa Catholic Conference

There’s still time to send a message to your Senator in support of House File 2617, the “Baby Olivia” bill. HF 2617 requires middle and high school curriculum to include a video showing fetal development. The proposal would ensure students can see the miracle of life and how it develops in the womb.

The ICC also supports HF 2690, which relates to the "Medicaid for employed people with disabilities" (MEPD) program. It would allow employed people with disabilities who are married to retain more monetary resources (up to $21,000) before going over the limit and losing coverage. The ICC has supported similar bills which help people with disabilities and lessen any disincentive to marriage. The bill is eligible for consideration on the floor of the House.

Last week at the State Capitol

The governor has signed SF 2340, the "illegal entry by certain aliens” bill. It is scheduled to go into effect on July 1. The ICC opposed the bill and will collaborate with diocesan staff and community groups to help educate the public on the bill.

Some provisions of the law:

Makes it an aggravated misdemeanor for a person who has been previously denied admission or deported from the US to be in Iowa.

Does not allow police to make arrests on the school property, church grounds or hospitals.

Requires a judge, after a finding of probable cause for an arrest under the bill, to order the person released and to leave the country.

The governor also signed SF 2252, a corrective bill for the Iowa MOMS (More Options for Maternal Support) law. It will allow Iowa groups to apply to be the administrator of the program. This program connects expectant mothers with resources like counseling and baby supplies from pro-life organizations.

Arguments took place on Thursday in front of the Iowa Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of the state’s prohibition on abortions after a heartbeat can be detected. A decision is expected in June. We are hopeful the Court will send the case back to district court and ask it to apply a rational basis test so the law could go into effect in the meantime.

HJR 2006, a constitutional amendment proposal opposed by the ICC, passed the Senate by a vote of 31-13. It has already passed the House and waits for possible future action in the legislature next session. If approved by the legislature during the next two years and then ultimately ratified by the people of Iowa, it would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to increase the personal or corporate income tax. Another constitutional amendment proposal requiring a single tax rate will be considered in a House committee this week.

HF 2586 was passed by the Senate by a vote of 30-14 and returned to the House for consideration. The bill includes a process for school staff to receive professional permits to carry weapons and offers public school staff qualified immunity from liability for the application of reasonable force at the school. This is intended to help schools get insurance coverage when they arm staff. The bill was amended to eliminate grants for School Resource Officers. Democrats called for alternatives such as an "extreme risk protective order” allowing people to go to court to temporarily remove a person’s gun rights, and additional funding to lower teacher-student ratios in public schools.

The Senate also passed HF 2276 by a vote of 42-3 and sent it to the governor. The bill provides for maternity group homes to be zoned as residential property, much like group homes for people with disabilities. This solves an issue which has come up where there has been opposition to a maternity group home receiving a conditional use permit to move into a neighborhood.

A Senate subcommittee approved HF 2672, which would allow counties to eliminate the forestry tax credit. The ICC has opposed the bill as we encourage care for the environment and encourage legislators to look ahead to the coming decades and ask themselves if it’s a good idea to disincentivize forestry. Trees are a water and air quality tool. We know that Iowa is losing trees at an alarming rate to storms, diseases, and pests.

Some farmers spoke in favor of the bill because they believe they are paying more property taxes than necessary because other people with forestry acres get a tax credit.

U.S. bishops file legal brief against criminalizing homelessness

The USCCB filed an amicus brief in the case of City of Grants Pass, OR v. Johnson et al. The City of Grants Pass has made it a crime to be homeless. This conflicts with principles of both western tradition and Catholic teaching, which have long held that punishment should be proportionate to an offense and that persons who lack shelter should be aided, not punished.

DDF releases document on human dignity

The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s has released a new document, “Dignitas infinita,” which commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and reaffirms "the indispensable nature of the dignity of the human person in Christian anthropology.”

The document includes a number of key themes from recent papal teaching. Abortion, euthanasia and surrogate motherhood are listed as violations of human dignity alongside war, poverty and human trafficking.

Planned Parenthood exposed for ‘transitioning’ children in Missouri, forced to turn over documents

Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion chain, has expanded heavily into the ‘gender transition’ industry since 2021, prompting action from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

JEFFERSON CITY (LifeSiteNews) — On Thursday, Missouri courts ordered Planned Parenthood’s St. Louis affiliate to hand over documents pertaining to its subjection of minors to “gender transition” procedures.

The Missouri Circuit Court for the 22nd Judicial Circuit ruled that, while the attorney general’s office was not entitled to “federally protected documents under the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act” (HIPAA), it agreed that it had “broad investigative powers” and therefore Planned Parenthood St. Louis had to produce “any and all documents not protected by HIPAA.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced on Thursday that his office “will get to the bottom of how this clandestine network of clinics has subjected children to puberty blockers and irreversible surgery, often without parental consent. There is no more important fight than to ensure Missouri is the safest state in the nation for children. No stone will be left unturned in these investigations.”

The press release added that Bailey “is now 3/3” in lawsuits to force facilities involved in “transitioning” minors to comply with the state’s investigations.

While Planned Parenthood is best known as the nation’s largest abortion chain, the case highlights that it is also deeply involved in the LGBT movement. It advertises itself as a “safe and welcoming place to get transgender/nonbinary hormone therapy [sic],” including estrogen, anti-androgen, testosterone, and puberty blockers. Its expansion into the “transitioning” industry has risen substantially since 2021.

Last year, it was reported that a Planned Parenthood location in New Jersey provided estrogen to an autistic teenager after less than a half-hour of consultation, without his parents’ knowledge or consent.

A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them. Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, whereas reinforcing dysphoria often fails to resolve, and may even exacerbate, mental strife by perpetuating delusion and neglecting the actual root causes.

Yet such “services” are highly lucrative, as illustrated by a 2022 exposé about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money” – as much as $40,000 per patient for “chest reconstruction” and more than $20,000 for vaginoplasty.

Bailey has long been fighting the underage “transition” industry. Last year, he sued Southampton Community Healthcare, one of the state’s last remaining health centers, for continuing to “transition” minors in violation of the state’s Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act.

Caitlin Clark's number 22 will no longer be used by the Iowa Hawkeyes women's basketball!

 

Carmelite nuns challenge New York abortion mandate

Nuns are leading the challenge against New York’s abortion provision mandate in a case set to appear before the New York Court of Appeals next week. In 2017, the New York state government issued a mandate requiring all private insurance companies that offer maternity care coverage to cover abortion costs for clients in New York. Four years later, the Diocese of Albany, along with Anglican and Catholic nuns, other dioceses, Christian churches, and religious ministries sued the state over the mandate. The Catholic nuns in the lawsuit are Carmelites who minister to the elderly at a nursing home.  READ

Report from UK says ‘misinformation’ and ‘weak evidence’ used to justify ‘trans’ for kids

A new report from the United Kingdom revealed that the medical industry’s justification for giving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors is based on “remarkably weak” evidence stemming from “poor quality of the published studies,” and “misinformation." At the same time, the industry exhibits “expectations of care” that are “far from usual clinical practice,” Dr. Susan Berry writes.  READ

Rainbow wolves: a new report from the Catholic Accountability Project

The Catholic Accountability Project (CAP) has released a new report entitled "Rainbow Wolves" which investigates New Ways Ministry (NWM), an organization that aims to dismantle Catholic teachings on sex, the family, and marriage. Following the Vatican’s release of the controversial document Fiducia Supplicans, NWM was one of the pro-LGBT groups within the Church that joined the secular media in celebrating the document, claiming it was a “step” toward the Church embracing same-sex “marriage.”  READ

This week on Faith On Trial:

Podcast is now up, you can listen here:https://faith-on-trial.simplecast.com/episodes/stephen-holt-julianne-fleischer-4-12-2024-GtOT_dd1

Elementary School Principal Denies Student Request to Start an Interfaith Prayer Club After Allowing Pride Club a Week Earlier

Issaquah, WA—First Liberty Institute today sent a letter to officials with the Issaquah (WA) School District on behalf of two elementary school students, L.A.W. and J.W., and their parents, demanding the students be allowed to start an interfaith prayer club at school. The school actively promotes more than a dozen non-religious clubs, including a Pride Club and the Green Team. 

You can read the letter here. 

“Denying the formation of a religious student club while allowing other clubs violates the Constitution,” said Kayla Toney, Associate Counsel at First Liberty Institute. “School officials at Creekside Elementary are engaged in religious discrimination against an eleven-year-old girl who simply wants to pray, feel support from other religious friends, and do community service. In Coach Kennedy’s case just a short drive away in Bremerton, the Supreme Court held that students and staff can pray at school—and to prohibit them violates the First Amendment.” 

L.A.W. and J.W. have friends from many different faiths who also feel marginalized. L.A.W. had an especially difficult experience as a religious student in fifth grade. Because of her experience, L.A.W. decided to start an interfaith prayer club so that students like her could have a place after school where they feel safe and welcome, and where they can bring students together to serve their community. L.A.W. and her mother met with Creekside Principal Amy Allison twice in February, but Allison claimed that all the funding for school clubs was allocated in October, so the club would not be allowed to meet. A Pride club, however, was launched and promoted by teachers just a week before L.A.W. met with the principal. Principal Allison told L.A.W. that her only option for the prayer club was to pay for space like outside groups. 

Creekside Elementary School is in Sammamish, WA, just a short distance from Bremerton High School, where Coach Joe Kennedy was fired for praying on the football field after each game. Coach Kennedy won his right to pray on the field in a 6-3 Supreme Court decision. The Court’s holding in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District made clear that the First Amendment protects the right of students and employees to express their faith in public schools. 

The letter states, “The Court in Kennedy explained that . . . the First Amendment ‘doubly protects religious speech.’ These First Amendment protections extend to elementary school students expressing their sincere religious beliefs through voluntary clubs—including L.A.W. and J.W. Yet the Issaquah School District flouted its First Amendment obligations when Creekside refused to allow a student-led interfaith prayer club. Its unlawful action violates both the Free Exercise Clause and the Free Speech Clause.”

About First Liberty Institute

First Liberty Institute is a non-profit public interest law firm and the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious freedom for all Americans.

College athletic conference: no men in women’s sports

The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announced that men are not allowed to compete in women’s sports. “For us, we believed our first responsibility was to create fairness and competition in the NAIA.... We also think it aligns with the reasons Title IX was created. You’re allowed to have separate but equal opportunities for women to compete,” NAIA president Jim Carr said. The NAIA governs 241 small schools and universities. It is separate from the better-known NCAA, which governs larger universities.  READ

Vatican Document Is At One With Science

By Bill Donohue, Catholic League president

 

The Vatican Declaration on Human Dignity, Dignitas Infinita, shows once again that the teachings of the Catholic Church are at one with science. Ironically, this comes at a time when many elites in the scientific community are out of step with well-established scientific truths. To be specific, the conviction that the sexes are interchangeable and not fixed by nature is not based on science. It is based on politics.

 

The document affirms that “Every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter.”

 

The saliency of this principal finds expression in the Church’s rejection of ideological colonization. Gender theory not only plays a central role, it “is extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.” Similarly, gender theory “intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”

 

To deny sexual differences, the Vatican says, is to eliminate “the anthropological basis of the family.” This can lead to a situation where it becomes acceptable to dictate “how children should be raised.” It needs to be emphasized that “biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated.”

 

Pope Francis’ exhortation on this issue, Amoris Laetitia (2016), is cited in the document. “We cannot separate the masculine and the feminine from God’s work of creation, which is prior to all our decisions and experiences, and where biological elements exist which are impossible to ignore.” Importantly, the Vatican statement also says that “sex-change intervention” is problematic because it “risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”

 

To the average person, especially Catholics, this document makes perfect sense. But unfortunately we live in a world where many elites are in a massive state of denial.

 

Just this week, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota announced—to great fanfare—that puberty blockers have harmful effects, including cancer, and that it is not at all certain that they can be reversed (as the “gender-affirming” cheerleaders in medicine have claimed). This was hardly breaking news to most people, but to the anti-science crowd, it was bad news.

 

The Associated Press latest style book, now available, advises journalists not to use the term “female” anymore because it “can be seen as emphasizing biology and reproductive capacity over gender ideology.” Another triumph of politics over science.

 

Meanwhile, the female coach of the South Carolina women’s basketball team, which won the championship on Sunday, said that men should be allowed to compete against women in women’s sports. “If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports, or vice versa, you should be able to play.” Let’s see how everyone reacts if a flood of men want to play on her team next year.

 

The Catholic Church is not at war with science. But many of the elites in the scientific community are. Worse, they have influenced legions of others in elite positions. The biggest losers are women, or what journalists used to call females.

Federal court: Biden admin cannot force Catholic pharmacist to carry abortion drugs

A federal court recently affirmed that pharmacies are free to operate according to their religious beliefs and do not have to dispense chemical abortion drugs against their wills. On April 5, a U.S. district court declared State of Texas and Mayo Pharmacy v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “moot.” The case had been ongoing since approximately late 2022. Mayo Pharmacy owner Dr. Kevin Martian is a pro-life Catholic. READ

Justices warn Florida pro-abortion amendment ‘misleads’ voters

Voters in Florida will be asked in November to decide whether a “right” to abortion – at any time prior to viability, and at any time “when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider” – should be codified in the state’s constitution. The three dissenting justices, however, wrote the amendment “misleads” voters, “fails to convey the breadth of what the amendment actually accomplishes,” and includes in its language numerous “undefined terms,” such as “viability,” “health care provider,” and “patient’s health.”  READ

ANALYSIS: WISCONSIN’S ‘ZUCKERBUCKS’ BAN JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

Election integrity experts stated that while Wisconsin voters’ approval of a ban on private money to administer elections last week was a good start, the fight against “Zuckerbucks” continues. “The other side will keep trying to muddy the waters and we will keep trying to clean it up,” former Virginia Attorney General and Trump administration official Ken Cuccinelli told the Daily Signal. “This is about stabilizing elections going forward.” READ