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 […]
Apparently, Nebraska’s Attorney General has decided not to appeal an injunction issued against enforcement of a Nebraska law requiring health screenings for women seeking abortions. The AG believes that there is little prospect of successfully defending the law. Nebraska’s other new law banning abortions after 20 weeks based on the view that such a ban […]
Louisiana recently passed The Ultrasound Before Abortion Act, which requires ultrasounds before abortions are performed but doesn’t require that the woman view the ultrasound images. The Bioethics Defense Fund helped draft the law. For more information about the law, see http://bdfbuzz.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/ultrasound-bills-touted-in-wash-post-column/ On August 6, 2010, the law was challenged in federal court. For reaction to the lawsuit, see http://www.lifenews.com/state5330.html UPDATE: The […]
The Public Discourse website has posted additional analysis of the abortion/health care controversy. See this analysis by Helen Alvare http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/07/1468 and this analysis by the editors of Public Discourse. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/07/1449 Richard M.
Christopher Tollefsen’s essay with that title was posted on The Public Discourse blog earlier today. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/08/1485 Only a small portion of the essay deals with abortion but the essay is well worth reading for its timely reflections on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Richard M.
The Pontifical Academy for Life is preparing a new document on the the impact of abortion on women. http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=16589 There has been greater awareness of this issue in recent years. The Supreme Court addressed this issue in Gonzales v. Carhart, and this caused a huge uproar. (I discussed this briefly in my paper at the 2007 […]