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Babies could be killed 28 days after birth under proposed Maryland law, attorney warns

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland (LifeSiteNews) – Legislation proposed in the Maryland Senate would allow babies to be left to die for as long as the first 28 days after birth, according to analysis from a pro-life attorney.

Senate Bill 669 is also known as the Pregnant Person’s Freedom Act of 2022, but the problems go beyond the use of “person” in place of accurate references to women having babies. Senator William Smith, a Democrat, sponsored the legislation, which will have a hearing on March 15.

“[T]he bill also proposes a revision of the fetal murder/manslaughter statute that would serve to handcuff the investigation of infant deaths unrelated to abortion,” American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) attorney Olivia Summers wrote in her analysis.

This is because the legislation prohibits investigations and criminal prosecutions for women and medical professionals for a “failure to act” in relation to a “perinatal death.”

“In other words, a baby born alive and well could be abandoned and left to starve or freeze to death,” Summers wrote, “and nothing could be done to punish those who participated in that cruel death.”

She said that the language used is unclear, so the law could be interpreted to “prevent investigations into the death of infants at least seven days AFTER their birth, and may extend to infants as old as four weeks!”

The Maryland Code does not define “perinatal,” Summers said. A 2020 law does define “perinatal care” as the “provision of care during pregnancy, labor, delivery, and postpartum and neonatal periods.”

A definition on MedicineNet, a website owned by WebMD, defines it as “the 20th to 28th week of gestation” to “1 to 4 weeks after birth.”

Summers, with the ACLJ, noted in her analysis that the state already has a safe haven law that allows parents to leave a newborn baby with a responsible adult without fear of prosecution.

“Under the Safe Haven law, a distressed parent who is unable or unwilling to care for their infant can safely give up custody of their baby, no questions asked,” the Maryland Department of Human Services explains. “Newborns can be left at hospitals or law enforcement stations.”

“There is absolutely no reason for Maryland Senate Bill 669’s attempt to prevent someone who lets their baby die from being investigated,” Summers said. ”This bill just further exposes the complete lack of regard abortion advocates have for innocent human life.”

“If they truly want to protect life and women, then legislators could simply extend the length of the safe harbor provision already in place,” she said.

Senator Smith, the bill’s sponsor, did not provide a comment on the ACLJ’s analysis of the legislation. The office responded to the initi

This week’s Faith On Trial program: legal battle over physician assisted suicide

Joining Deacon Mike and Gina this week was Chris Schandevel, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) who just yesterday argued against physician assisted suicide in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. The case involved a challenge to a Massachusetts law that prohibited assisting with a suicide as a violation of an individual’s constitutional “right” to assistance with his suicide. Mr. Schandavel gave us his report on how yesterday’s oral arguments went, how ADF got involved, and what we might expect to see from the court.

You can listen to the entire program by following this link:

https://www.iowacatholicradio.com/faith/episode/c7e7de9c/physician-assisted-suicide-31022

In addition, after Mr. Schandevel’s segment the deacon and Gina briefly discussed several news items that we might hear about later: the state raid of a child care center where two and three year olds were separated and asked about their mask use from San Diego, California, and a bill in the Maryland legislature which would allow “post birth” abortions up to a month after a baby’s birth. So stay tuned for upcoming issues.

Faith On Trial is heard every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Iowa Catholic Radio 1150 AM and 94.5 FM Des Moines, 88.5 FM Adel, and 90.9 FM Creston, and streams on IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can hear this program and any that you may have missed. 

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Biden embraces his commitment to killing

By Judie Brown, American Life League

Biden’s White House recently announced a meeting with pro-abortion leaders. In that announcement, the following statement was made: “In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Biden declared that the constitutional right affirmed by Roe v. Wade is under attack as never before and reiterated his commitment to protecting women’s access to health care.”

Those words are merely an attempt to hide the fact that this administration supports the murder of babies. I say this because, unlike other crimes against humanity that are acknowledged because they are heinous, abortion is never defined by the secularists, by elected officials, or sadly by many church leaders as the crime it actually is: murder.

What we as pro-life Americans really need to do is take a reality check and determine what we can do to help our fellow human beings see this truth. This is absolutely mandatory in the new era of doublespeak that we hear and read, not to mention see, everywhere we turn. The babies need voices that speak truth.

Imagine what the White House could have done had it said that Biden reiterated his commitment to allowing women to murder their children under the guise of healthcare. One would think that if Biden ever really believed the tenets of the faith he claims as his own, he would know this instinctively, but of course that would require intellectual honesty. And as we have seen, that is a commodity in very short supply these days.

Today it is becoming more urgent than at any point in the last 50-plus years for us to be explicit in our messaging because, as we see, more and more babies are dying without a surgeon ever raising a scalpel. The latest headlines tell us that more than half of all abortions are done via the ingestion of deadly chemicals.

Some say this is so because the pandemic compelled more expectant mothers to do their dirty deed at home instead of traveling to an abortionist’s place of business. And as if by magic, as soon as states began recognizing this tragedy and made efforts to end it through legislation, the propagandists went into overdrive.  

Yet, whether the baby is killed by a birth control pill, an abortion pill, or a surgical implement, the fundamentals do not really change. The result is still the same: A baby dies. And that is where we need to continue focusing our efforts. Two people—two distinctly separate human beings—are involved in any pregnancy: the mother and her preborn child. Both of these individuals deserve to be acknowledged, loved, and taken care of in the very best way possible.

And while some tell us that abortion is a loving act, the reality is that abortion results in one dead person and one wounded person. No amount of rhetoric or high-priced advertising will change that. So why do people like President Biden find it so hard to see the truth?

The simple answer is that consciences dulled by the willful acceptance of evil are dead to truth. Such people do not realize that they truly need to be forgiven for the errors they propagate. A wise man who studied this phenomenon once wrote:

Some put themselves in a state of unforgiveableness because they refuse to accept God’s conditions for forgiveness, i.e., the willingness to admit their wrong doing. If a person is sick and admits it, there is some hope that the cause of his sickness can be discovered and remedied. But if a person is sick and insists that he is well, if he refuses to acknowledge that he might be ill, there is not much the Divine Physician can do for him. The worst thing in the world is not sin. It’s the denial of sin by a false conscience. The unforgivable sin is the denial of sin.

Into this reality of the modern world and its acceptance of killing babies as a human right come those of us who know the truth and who live our lives defending that truth regardless of the cost.

Biden embraces evil and its darkness, while we pray that God uses us to shine the light of truth.

This week (3-10) on Faith On Trial

Chris Schandevel

Across the United States, as well as the rest of the world, there is a serious anti-life campaign to legalizer physician assisted suicide and euthanasia. One such effort is going on this week in Massachusetts where the state’s Supreme Court (Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts) heard a case which could lead to the state’s law prohibiting physician assisted suicide being declared unconstitutional. Arguing in defense of the law at Wednesday’s oral arguments was Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Chris Schandeval, who will be our guest on Thursday.

Faith On Trial is heard every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM and 94.5 FM Des Moines; 88.5 Adel, and 90.9 Creston, and streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can hear this program or any that you may have missed.

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1939 redux, not ready again

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – Anybody who remembers anything about history must feel like they are living through the American Revolution and the pre-war period of European history while watching the daily news. And even though it was a bit before my time, I can almost hear Edward R. Murrow’s broadcast opening, “This is London….”

Unfortunately, for far too many of our students today, the lessons of history are lost in favor of a mixture of progressive theology and pointless woke ideology. Today’s events are a stark reminder of just why our schools need to treat history as a major ingredient of the academic curriculum at all levels in every discipline.

In 1939 the European peace — what there was of it — was shattered when a megalomaniac named Adolf Hitler, the chancellor of Germany, invaded Poland despite his assurances to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, dean of the school of diplomatic appeasement, and Britain’s European allies that he would take no further military action against his neighbors. He even gave Chamberlain a signed paper that guaranteed “peace in our time.”

Well, needless to say, Chamberlain didn’t last too long as prime minister after that. In came Winston Churchill and World War II in Europe was on. But what gave Chamberlain the idea that der Führer would agree to a European peace?

Hitler already had his eye on expansion well before he invaded Poland, claiming that German citizens were being separated from “the fatherland” by the redrawing of European boundaries after World War I. Thus he leveled claims on several European territories. Even before his troops entered Poland, he sent his army into the industrial Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles then into an area in Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland, where he claimed over three million German nationals lived.

During this time Herr Hitler was threatening or had sent troops into, among others:

Austria, Bohemia, Lithuania, and Moravia, all the time telling his European counterparts that each one was the last he would demand. He later even signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, which he later violated, much to the dictator’s ruin. And, of course, in between he was conducting the crudest of warfare while killing Jews, Gypsies, and anyone else he considered inferior or an enemy.

Now look at today’s headlines. Here we are confronted by another megalomaniac, this one named Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, who has now started wars of annexation against, among others, Chechnya, Georgia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, North Caucasus, and Crimea. And he did so by making similar claims to those made in the 1930s: These are historic Russian lands populated by Russian people.
And now Ukraine.

Now I understand the desire of the European democracies and the United States not to rush into a ground war against a nuclear power. But what I don’t understand is why the world leaders have not learned the lesson from history that you cannot achieve peace by appeasing a bully as was done in the 1930s and is now being done by the modern Adolf Schicklgruber in Moscow.

Part of the problem is that confronting a bully is something unpleasant, or something — most importantly today — that will cause a re-evaluation of plans and goals. In short, it is inconvenient and as long as we want to stick our heads in the sand and just let the world go on its merry way, we are enabling these modern little tyrants to push the boundaries to the point where honest men will finally react.

For some reason our leaders, warned of the disaster awaiting Ukraine, took the Neville Chamberlain School of Diplomacy to heart and refused to act to take command of the situation, especially in the knowledge that in 1994, at the urging of the West, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal for an agreement by the United States, Great Britain, and Russia to guarantee Ukrainian independence.

But they didn’t learn the Chamberlain lesson and now it is coming back to wreak havoc around the globe. First and foremost they should have sized up Putin’s trump card: energy. He survives by selling energy to the world and our leaders have not only allowed him to do so, but to appease their supporters in the Progressive Left they have conducted a war on “evil” fossil fuels.

Had our energy production not been disrupted by the short-sighted policies of the Biden administration, we would be producing more than enough oil and natural gas to fill all of our needs with plenty left over to assist our European allies. Instead we are left to buy from Putin which allows him to finance his criminal war in Ukraine. One will hope that the current administration will recognize the error of its energy decisions and make a change in course.

Somehow, however, I’m not optimistic that it will, and the State of the Union Address gives no suggestion that it will do so. We were not ready for this, despite the claim otherwise.

If it does, it might at least ameliorate some of the damage it has already done. Unfortunately, that is not the biggest problem right now. The decision to delay sending weapons to Ukraine when we first realized there would be war will, unfortunately, come back to bite the Ukrainian people, who desperately need the assistance.

But one thing we can do to assist: Pray for the brave resistance. In victory or defeat they are giving the world a lesson in courage; President Volodymyr Zelensky will stand in history with the likes of our own George Washington, Patrick Henry, and the Sons of Liberty. Hopefully their actions will be taught to the generations to come.

Hopefully the world leaders will get their acts together. In 1939 it was too late to avoid the calamity of war. Had members of the establishment of the day stiffened their spines, Hitler might just be only a footnote of the past.

But I think we still have time, limited as it might be, to avoid disaster, to avoid following in the footsteps of Neville Chamberlain and remembering the words “This is Kyiv. . . .”

·         + + (You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

 

Iowa governor signs bill banning ‘transgender’ males from women’s sports

DES MOINES, Iowa (LifeSiteNews) ­­– Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed legislation banning males who claim to be female from competing in women’s and girls’ school sports, making Iowa the eleventh state to enact such a law.

The Republican governor signed the bill at a ceremony Thursday, calling the measure “a victory for girls’ sports in Iowa.”

“No amount of talent, training or effort can make up for the natural physical advantages males

Gov. Kim Reynolds, R-Iowa

have over females. It’s simply a reality of human biology,” said Reynolds. “Forcing females to compete against males is the opposite of inclusivity and it’s absolutely unfair.”

The governor’s office noted that the bill, HF 2416, protects girls’ sports “at all school levels, including high school and collegiate levels in Iowa.”

HF 2416 requires sports and athletic events sponsored or sanctioned by public or private schools, including colleges affiliated with the NCAA or NAIA, to be designated as female, male, or co-ed. Athletes may only compete according to their biological sex, as documented by a birth certificate issued at or around the time of birth.

“Only female students, based on their sex, may participate in any team, sort, or athletic event designated as being for females, women, or girls,” the bill states.

Under the bill, students who suffer “direct or indirect harms” as a result of having to compete against a member of the opposite sex can sue schools or other educational organizations for damages. Students can also bring civil action if they face retaliation for reporting a violation.

“As a woman, a mother of three daughters, and now a grandmother of three young girls, it worries me that this bill is needed at all,” Reynolds said Thursday. “It’s hard to imagine how anyone who cares about the rights of women and girls could support anything less.”

HF 2416 passed along party lines and takes effect immediately.

Ten other states, including Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, have enacted similar laws in the past two years. In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem signed sports fairness legislation into law last month.

The issue has sparked national outrage as males who say that they identify as “transgender,” backed by pro-LGBT athletic associations like the NCAA, have taken dozens of athletic opportunities and championship titles from female athletes across the country in recent years.

Men significantly outpace females in athletic competitions due to inborn physical advantages, regardless of the use of transgender hormones,  studies have found.

AFT files SCOTUS brief on behalf of coach who was fired for silently praying after high-school football games

Washington, DC – Earlier this week, America First legal (AFT) filed an amicus brief at the Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District–a case involving a high school football coach who was fired for nothing more than praying silently at midfield after football games in the state of Washington. 

The Ninth Circuit held that the Establishment Clause compelled the school district to stop coach Kennedy from praying on the field after games, holding that the school district’s actions were necessary to prevent an establishment clause violation. The supreme court’s repeated misinterpretations of the establishment clause have been threatening the rights of religious believers in this country for decades. Alf’s brief asks the court to reconsider and overrule its establishment clause jurisprudence that has caused coach Kennedy, and others, to lose their jobs for exhibiting their first amendment rights. The points and arguments raised by fall’s brief include: 

- for the past 75 years, the supreme court has interpreted the establishment clause in a manner that flouts the constitutional language and imposes a separationist ideology that has no grounding in the constitution’s text or history. 

- the supreme court should recognize that its establishment clause decisions caused school officials to persecute coach kennedy—and that these cases are causing religious believers in other school districts to face similar threats from school administrators who are understandably concerned about the possibility of establishment clause litigation if they tolerate or allow any type of religious expression by school employees. And the court should take decisive action to redress this problem. 

America First Legal will continue to fight on behalf of Americans whose constitutional rights are being violated. 

Faith On Trial (3-3) in new Supreme Court Nominee

This week we had attorney Keisha Russell from First Liberty to discuss the president’s nomination of Judge Katanji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court. We had the discussion, but, unfortunately we had some technical difficulties in make contact on time with Keisha. We did get in a brief visit and we’re planning on having her back in a few weeks to discuss new developments in the Jackson nomination. Here is the link to this week’s program:

https://www.iowacatholicradio.com/faith/episode/1b6b6e6b/supreme-court-nomination-3322

Faith On Trial airs every Thursday at 9:30 a.m. CT on Iowa Catholic Radio.

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Court Checks Navy's Anti-Religious Bias

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

In recent years, the armed forces has done a very poor job protecting the religious liberties of men and women in uniform. When it comes to granting religious exemptions from the Covid-19 vaccination, the Army and the Navy have the worst record. The good news is that the Navy got its anti-religious bias checked this week by a federal court of appeals. 

There have been approximately 16,000 requests by members of the armed forces for a religious exemption from the vaccine, a mere 15 of which have been approved. The Air Force has approved nine of them; the Marines have granted six. No one in the Army or Navy has been approved. 

Regarding the Navy's flat-out denial of religious exemptions for anyone, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on February 28 that "Defendants have not demonstrated 'paramount interests' that justify vaccinating these 35 plaintiffs [which include Navy SEALs] against COVID-19 in violation of their religious beliefs." More than 99% of active-duty members of the Navy have been vaccinated. 

It is not as though the Navy does not believe in exemptions from the vaccine—it's just that it has a problem with those seeking an exemption on religious grounds. For example, regarding active-duty members, the Navy has approved at least 10 permanent medical exemptions, 259 temporary ones, and 60 administrative exemptions (e.g., in cases involving time in service until separation or retirement). 

Why the animus? Why is the Navy (and the Army) opposed to granting religious exemptions? Their hostility is as immoral as it is unconstitutional. 

As the Supreme Court has noted, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993 affords "greater protection for religious exercise than is available under the First Amendment." Indeed, the only way the Navy can succeed in its quest to deny religious liberty is to prove to the courts that it has a "compelling governmental interest" in invoking its rule. But that has been undercut in this instance by its willingness to grant exemptions on secular grounds. 

Unfortunately, elites in the military, following the elites in virtually every other sector of society, have been infected with the woke virus: they have become captive to the politically correct mavens who are steering the dominant culture. It certainly wasn't this way when I was in the Air Force in the late Sixties. 

We need real men in high stations in the armed forces. Real men stand their ground when bombarded with propaganda—they don't cave to invidious changes in the culture.  

Let the Department of Defense Public Affairs Office know of your concerns. I'm sure they would like to hear from you: 

osd.pentagon.pa.mbx.ce-public-inquiries@mail.mil

 

This week (3-3) on Faith On Trial

K

We’re back again this week after taking a mini hiatus last week to make room for our Spring Cars-A-Thon raising money for the station. If you have not given and would like to contribute, you can still do so at: IowaCatholicRadio.com.

Keisha Russel

This week we are going to follow up on President Biden’s nominee for associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who currently serves as a member of the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

What is her judicial record, and what does that tell us about her legal philosophy and how, if confirmed, her decisions might affect the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. Joining Deacon Mike and Gina this week to discuss all of this will be Keisha Russell, an attorney with First Liberty Institute.

All this happens this Thursday at 9:30 a.m. CT.

Faith On Trial is heard every Thursday morning at 9:30 CT on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM and 94.5 FM Des Moines; 88.5 Adel, and 90.9 Creston, and streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can hear this program or any that you may have missed.