Advocates warn New Jersey law could criminalize prayer outside abortion clinics
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill on Aug. 20 signed a bill that criminalizes “interference” with “reproductive” or “gender-affirming” care, a law that opponents say has serious implications for freedom of speech.
The law criminalizes inflicting “emotional harm” against those seeking or providing “reproductive health care services.” It also bans filming and sharing videos within 100 feet of an abortion clinic.
Under the new law, an officer can “order the immediate dispersal of a gathering that substantially impedes access to or departure from an entrance or driveway to a reproductive or gender-affirming health care facility during the business hours of the facility.”
The measure is a type of “bubble” law, which creates zones around abortion clinics where free speech is limited in “buffer zones.”
Violations of the law could be punished by up to 18 months’ imprisonment and/or a $ 10,000 fine.
New Jersey Right to Life Executive Director Marie Tasy criticized the law, describing its provisions as “inherently subjective” and the law itself as “a serious danger to free speech.”
“Peaceful sidewalk counseling, prayer, holding signs, or simply offering help and alternatives outside a facility can easily be labeled ‘intimidation’ by someone who claims to feel threatened, leaving pro-life advocates open to criminal charges that are difficult to disprove and chilling constitutionally protected expression,” Tasy said.
Catholic diocese leads campaign against abortion amendment referendum
The Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, is leading a campaign to oppose an amendment referendum that could create a right to abortion in the state constitution as well as another measure that would remove a same-sex marriage ban in the state.
The campaign Catholics Vote No is opposing the ballot measure titled the “Virginia Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment” as well as the “Virginia Remove Constitutional Same-Sex Marriage Ban Amendment.”
Arlington Bishop Michael Burbidge describes the measures as “very serious legal threats to human life and marriage” in a video statement.
“If written into Virginia’s Constitution, these unjust amendments would be extraordinarily difficult to reverse,” the campaign website states. The abortion amendment would “effectively” make Virginia “a sanctuary for abortion and commercial abortion businesses,” it states.
“Basic health and safety standards that protect women from harm would be eliminated, parents would be pushed out of life-altering decisions involving their family and children, and unregulated abortions would be possible, performed even on healthy babies up to the moment of birth for any reason with no limits,” the campaign says.
Live Action says it will keep referring to abortion as ‘killing’
The pro-life group Live Action has said it will not stop calling abortion “killing” after a pro-abortion group threatened the organization with legal action.
Live Action made the declaration in response to a cease-and-desist letter sent by the abortion-supporting legal group Amplify Legal. The dispute is over claims made by Live Action in multiple articles about abortion cases where the unborn baby had a serious life-threatening diagnosis.
“Each of our clients has described the decision to end their wanted pregnancy as the most compassionate choice for their own health, future fertility, and family’s wellbeing,” the letter read, arguing that Live Action News “repeatedly [wrote] about our clients intentionally ‘killing’ their babies.”
In its response Live Action said it would not follow the request to “delete years of reporting and commentary on the most contested moral and political question in American public life.”
“We are fighting for a culture and legal system that respects every human life and refuses to treat the sick, disabled, or unborn as disposable,” said Live Action Founder and President Lila Rose in a statement. “Legal threats against our First Amendment right to speak will not change that mission.”
Catholic dad Mark Houck continues pro-life work after federal legal battle
Catholic father Mark Houck is joining CatholicVote’s development team as a gift officer, the group announced this week.
Houck and his family are adjusting to life after their home in rural eastern Pennsylvania was raided by 20 armed federal agents in the early hours of Sept. 23, 2022. Houck was arrested in front of his family and interrogated for six hours. The incident led to nearly four years of legal battles, which concluded with the family earning a seven-figure settlement for damages.
“I am still very much unpacking spiritually what happened to us — very profound and certainly God is revealing his ultimate plan for us through it all, CatholicVote being the latest direction he has taken us,” Houck told EWTN News.
“We are so happy to be with an organization that shares our passion for our faith, the pro-life cause, and, of course, advocacy in the public square.”
Houck’s role in the organization "will extend beyond that [of a gift officer],” CatholicVote spokeswoman Laurie Olsen told EWTN News. He will “have a voice in all our pro-life efforts,” she said.
Houck, meanwhile, told EWTN News: “We measure success by one soul at a time.”
“Save a soul, you save your own soul. It is that one soul that gets me going and up early to head into Philadelphia and serve the common good with sidewalk advocacy,” he said.
Federal court strikes down Indiana abortion parental-consent law
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled on Aug. 18 against an Indiana law that prevents doctors from providing abortion assistance to minors without parental consent.
The 54-page ruling struck down a law that required parental consent to aid or assist a minor in obtaining an abortion. The ruling said that the parental-consent law violated the First Amendment.
