Here is Wesley Smith’s commentary on a recent murder/suicide in Montana and the efforts of Compassion and Choices” to use the incident to promote “aid in dying.” http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2010/09/04/compassion-and-choices-uses-murdersuicide-to-advertise-doctor-prescribed-death-in-montana/ An 81 year old man shot his 81 year old wife (who had cerebral palsy) and then set their house on fire and then shot himself. According to the […]
Author: Richard Myers
Richard S. Myers, the Vice-President of UFL, is Professor of Law at Ave Maria School of Law, where he teaches Antitrust, Civil Procedure, Conflict of Laws, Constitutional Law, and Religious Freedom. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Kenyon College and earned his law degree at Notre Dame, where he won the law school's highest academic prize. He began his legal career by clerking for Judge John F. Kilkenny of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Myers also worked for Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Washington, D.C. He taught at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law before joining the Ave Maria faculty. He is a co-editor of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives (Catholic University of American Press, 2004) and a co-editor of Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy (Scarecrow Press, 2007). He has also published extensively on constitutional law in law reviews and also testified before Congressional and state legislative hearings on life issues.
Married to Mollie Murphy, who is also on the faculty at Ave Maria School of Law, they are the proud parents of six children - Michael, Patrick, Clare, Kathleen, Matthew, and Andrew. http://www.avemarialaw.edu/index.cfm?event=faculty.bio&pid=11705E7D4E0111010366
Missouri’s new law requiring informed consent (in more detail than had been required) prior to an abortion went into effect on August 28.http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2010/09/02/missouri-abortion-landscape-changes-new-law/ Here is Wesley Smith’s commentary. http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2010/09/02/new-missouri-law-requires-informed-consent-about-fetal-humanity-before-abortion/ Richard M.
I just saw the schedule for the 2010 Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture. The Symposium, which will be held October 28-30, will address the topic of “Human Dignity and the Future of Health Care.” The line-up of speakers looks quite impresive. See http://www.baylor.edu/ifl/index.php?id=75356 Richard M.
On August 17, 2010, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that a guardian for a mentally disabled person is not permitted to refuse life-saving medical treatment when the disabled person is not suffering from an end-stage medical condition or is not permanently unconscious. Here is a link to the opinion. http://oldsite.alliancedefensefund.org/userdocs/HockenberryOpinion.pdf The Court found that Pennsylvania […]
The “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” (H.R. 5939) was introduced by Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Dan Lipinski (D-IL) in late July 2010. http://chrissmith.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=201572 The Act would permanently ban taxpayer funding of abortion. Here is information about a letter supporting the bill written by Cardinal DiNardo, who is the Archbishop of Gaveston/Houston and the Chariman of the Committee […]
On Tuesday, August 24, voters in Alaska approved a law requring parental notice 48 hours before a teenager under age 18 has an abortion. Here is report from the National Right to Life Committee, http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/Aug10/nv082510.html , and one from LifeNews.com, http://www.lifenews.com/state5372.html Richard M.
A federal district court judge has enjoined the Obama Administration’s effort to fund embryonic stem cell research. The judge found that such efforts are prohibited by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. Here is a report from the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/health/policy/24stem.html Here is a report from LifeNews.com, http://www.lifenews.com/bio3145.html , and one from the Bioethics Defense Fund.http://bdfbuzz.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/victory-federal-court-strikes-down-obama-embryonic-stem-cell-funding-guidelines/ Richard M.
At the 2008 UFL conference at Marquette, Sam Calhoun presented a critique of the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart. An expanded version of that paper has just recently been published in the Mississippi Law Journal. The article is entitled “”Partial-Birth Abortion’ is Not Abortion: Carhart II’s Fundamental Misapplication of Roe” and it is […]
On the Mirror of Justice blog, Rick Garnett has an interesting post on the Becket Fund’s threat to sue HHS if it succumbs to pressure from the ACLU to push Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. See http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/08/the-becket-fund-stands-up-to-aclu-for-catholic-hospitals.html Richard M.
Wesley Smith has a good post on the continuing controversy over pharmacists and conscientious objection in the state of Washington. See http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2010/08/06/protecting-pharmacist-conscientious-objectors-in-washington/ Washington’s law requiring pharmacists to dispense prescriptions, including Plan B contraceptives (the so-called morning after pill), was challenged in federal court. The Ninth Circuit (in Storman’s Inc v. Selecky) upheld the constitutionality of the law and rejected […]