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“I hope that, as soon as possible, we can return to a situation of normality — which means peace, stability, security — and that, therefore, foreign personnel can return to the country and can also live their faith without limitations,” sai…
Read More“We demand respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and the laws that govern them; we demand that priority be given to the right to land and property for all Paraguayans,” the nation’s bishops said in a message to the nation&rsquo…
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Nov 30, 2021 | Church, Featured, News, Weekly Headlines |
One month after the election of Joseph Biden I met personally with the Archbishop of Detroit, Allen Vigneron. I knew that he had been appointed to head a working committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)—a committee formed to address how the bishops would deal with a Catholic president who advocates legalized […]
Posted by bcadmin | Nov 30, 2021 | Church, Featured, News, Weekly Headlines |
Whenever I come across Groucho Marx’s advice about never wanting to join a club that would have someone like him as a member, I immediately think of the Roman Catholic Church, whose admission standards are considerably more relaxed. In fact, so wildly promiscuous is Old Mother Church that even Groucho Marx would be welcome. She […]
Posted by bcadmin | Nov 30, 2021 | Archbishop Felix Machado, Catholic Church, Church in Asia, Church in India, India, lead, News |
An archbishop in India says a new church in his diocese is practicing a “kind of deception” by calling itself the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ.
Read MoreReading I Rom 10:9-18
Brothers and sisters:
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
you will be saved.
For one believes with the heart and so is justified,
and one…
On November 29, Pope Francis issued a message to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the International Organization for Migration.
In his message, the Pope criticized the effects of Covid-related lockdowns on migrants. “On the one hand, in t…
Read MoreIn an audience with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Pope Francis approved the promulgation of decrees that advance nine sainthood and beatification causes.
Read MoreThe Pope’s apostolic journey to Cyprus and Greece begins on December 2.
“I come with joy, precisely in the name of the Gospel, in the footsteps of the first great missionaries, especially the Apostles Paul and Barnabas,” the Pope …
Read MoreAt the conclusion of his November 28 Angelus address, Pope Francis expressed his deep sorrow at the death of migrants in recent days.
“I think of those who died crossing the English Channel, those on the borders of Belarus, many of whom are chi…
Pope Francis received members of the Pauline Family on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the death of their founder, Blessed James Alberione. The Pauline Family includes five religious congregations, one lay association, and four secular insti…
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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 3, 2022 / 09:00 am (CNA).
The U.S. Supreme Court heard a historic case on Dec. 1, 2021 that directly challenges Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. On May 2, 2022, a purported first draft of the decision leaked, which if genuine suggests that the court is poised to overturn Roe and return the question of abortion legalization to the states. If that happens, more than a dozen states will immediately outlaw abortion.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. What is the case about?
The case, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, involves a 2018 Mississippi law restricting most abortions after 15 weeks. “Dobbs” stands for Thomas E. Dobbs, who serves as the state health officer of the Mississippi State Department of Health. Jackson Women’s Health Organization provides abortion in Jackson, Mississippi, and is the only abortion clinic in that state.
The case centers on the question of “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional,” or whether states can ban abortion before a fetus can survive outside the womb. The case challenges two landmark abortion cases that Mississippi calls “egregiously wrong”: Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
2. Why does the case challenge Roe and Casey?
In Roe v. Wade, the court ruled that states could not ban abortion before viability, which the court determined to be 24 to 28 weeks into pregnancy. Nearly 20 years later, the court upheld Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The 1992 ruling said that while states could regulate pre-viability abortions, they could not enforce an “undue burden,” defined by the court as “a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.”
Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, the subject of the Dobbs case, bans abortion weeks before the point of viability.
“Under the Constitution, may a State prohibit elective abortions before viability? Yes,” Mississippi argues in its brief. “Why? Because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion.”
3. Who argued the case before the court?
Three people spoke before the justices in December. Scott G. Stewart, the solicitor general of Mississippi, was given 35 minutes to represent the state. For Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Julie Rikelman, litigation director of the Center for Reproductive Rights, was given 20 minutes. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar had 15 minutes to argue in support of Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
4. How can Americans hear or read the arguments that were made?
The Supreme Court website offers an audio recording and transcripts of the arguments.
5. How did the draft decision leak? Is it genuine?
CNA has not been able to independently verify if the draft opinion is genuine, and the court’s decision will not be final until it is published. The purported draft was obtained by the D.C.-based news site Politico from an as-yet unidentified source. Several legal observers and reporters have offered their opinions that the draft likely is genuine, and the internet is replete with speculation as to who may have leaked the draft, and why. No concrete answers have been forthcoming.
Leaks from the Supreme Court are rare. Observers are saying that the leak constitutes a serious breach of trust in the Supreme Court’s process.
It’s impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff. This leak is the gravest, most unforgivable sin.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) May 3, 2022
6. What does the leaked draft say, and does it reflect the court’s final opinion?
The leaked draft shows the court siding with Mississippi, as well as a thorough repudiation of Roe and Casey.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. writes in the purported 98-page draft document, which is labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
The Politico news report said that four other justices had joined Alito in the majority, three are preparing dissents, and Chief Justice John Roberts — often a swing vote — has not yet settled on a side.
Whether or not the draft is genuine, it is currently impossible to say whether it reflects the court’s final judgement, as votes and language in the drafts can change. Again, the court’s opinion will not be final until it is published, and it is not yet clear whether the court will publish the final opinion early, or stick to the expected date of roughly late June.
7. What will happen if the court does, ultimately, overturn Roe?
Whatever the court ultimately decides, the consequences for the country will be enormous.
If Roe and Casey are overturned, abortion law would be left up to each individual state. The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive research organization once associated with Planned Parenthood, predicts that 26 states would certainly or likely ban abortion.
If the Mississippi law is struck down, and Roe and Casey are affirmed, it would be a devastating setback for the pro-life movement, which has pinned its long-term legal strategy on someday having a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, as is the case today.
Part of a continuing series examining the U.S. Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a direct challenge to the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion throughout the United States. This story has been updated since its original publication on Nov. 30, 2021.
Read MoreOn November 25, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s Secretary of State, addressed Global e-Mobility Forum , a series of webinars sponsored by Poland’s National Centre on Climate Change.
“We must recognize that environmental th…
Read MorePope Francis has donated an oxygen-generating machine to a Catholic hospital in Baghdad. “The oxygen produced is not used only at Saint Raphael, but also to supply other hospitals, including state hospitals and hospitals in other cities,” a…
Read MoreAll of the evidence from the first few centuries of Christian writers either explicitly points to a threefold structure (one bishop, assisted by elders and deacons) in the early Church or is too vague to draw any reliable conclusions (usually because t…
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Nov 30, 2021 | Catholic-Orthodox Relations, Church in Europe, Cyprus, immigrants and refugees, lead, News, Papal Trips, Pope Francis |
Days before Pope Francis’s visit to Greece and Cyprus, one Cypriot priest has said the trip is a sign of encouragement for both the island’s small Catholic flock, and is a sign of the pope’s constant attention to the world’s peripheries.
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Nov 30, 2021 | Abortion, Church in the US, Diocese of Biloxi, Diocese of Jackson, lead, Mississippi, News, Roe v. Wade, SCOTUS, USCCB |
When the Supreme Court hears arguments this week in a Mississippi case that challenges current abortion precedent, the state’s Catholic bishops will watch closely in anticipation of what could be a major victory for the pro-life cause.
Read MoreI posted this a while ago but share it again because of its impact. Main Street media will not let this news get out. This short news report is on the success of the Amish controlling Covid and their resistance to government, vaccines and hospitals. Very interesting and their experience may teach us all a […]
The post The Amish and Covid – What We Can Learn appeared first on Defenders of the Catholic Faith.
Read MorePosted by bcadmin | Nov 30, 2021 | Catechetics, Church calendar, Featured, liturgical year, News |
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ becomes alive and visits us, touches us, and enters us through His Mystical Body, the Church! In the most full sense of the word, Jesus becomes alive in us through the Eucharist. All the actions of the Church and the members of the Mystical Body of Christ converge at […]
Posted by bcadmin | Nov 30, 2021 | Advent, Advent wreath, Best of Week, Faith & Spirituality, Featured, News, Sophia Excerpts |
The events that come to mind when we say “Christmas,” “Easter,” and “Pentecost” are so tremendous that their commemoration cannot be celebrated in a single day each. Weeks are needed: first, weeks of preparation, of becoming attuned in body and soul, and then weeks of celebration. This process goes back to an age when people […]
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