Supreme Court blocks lower court’s restrictions on abortion pill as case proceeds

By Kate Scanlon OSV News

The U.S. Supreme Court said April 21 it would block a lower court’s restrictions on an abortion pill, leaving the drug on the market while litigation over the drug proceeds.

The Supreme Court froze a lower court’s ruling to stay the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug. The Justice Department and Danco Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company that manufactures the abortion pill mifepristone, previously asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the case after an appeals court allowed portions of the ruling by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas to take effect.

The order was an apparent 7-2 vote, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito publicly dissenting. A coalition of pro-life opponents of mifepristone, the first of two drugs used in a medication or chemical abortion, had filed suit in an effort to revoke the FDA’s approval of the drug, arguing the government violated its own safety standards when it first approved the drug in 2000. However, proponents argued mifepristone poses statistically little risk to women using it for

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uBiden announces reelection bid, setting up 2024 showdown with GOP rivals. President Joe Biden said April 25 that he will seek a second term in the White House. In a video message titled “Freedom,” Biden said, “When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are.” “The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer,” Biden said. “I know what I want the answer to be. This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for reelection.” The announcement was expected, but followed months of speculation from critics and allies alike as to whether Biden, 80, would launch a reelection campaign. Biden, a Democrat who is just the second Catholic president in U.S. history, frequently discusses the role of his faith on issues like labor, immigration and the environment. Biden routinely attends Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation. But his positions on some issues, perhaps most notably his platform supporting legal abortion, including his call to end a prohibition on taxpayer funding for abortion, have come under fire from many Catholics.

uDeSantis lowers Florida’s threshold to impose death penalty, signs legislation criticized by state’s Catholic bishops. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill April 20 that will eliminate the state’s requirement that juries in capital punishment cases agree unanimously to recommend death sentences. The legislation, which has met criticism from the state’s bishops, lowers the number of jurors needed to hand down a death sentence to the lowest threshold of any U.S. state, from 12 to eight. In an April 20 statement on his approval of the legislation, DeSantis said, “Once a defendant in a capital case is found guilty by a unanimous jury, one juror should not be able to veto a capital sentence.” But in an April 13 statement after the Florida Legislature passed the legislation, Michael Sheedy, Florida Catholic Conference executive director, called it “stunning” that Florida lawmakers “would weaken a common-sense law passed just six years ago that required unanimous agreement by a jury in order to sentence someone to death.” uCatholic priests martyred during Paris Commune are beatified. Five Catholic priests were beatified April 22 in France, 152 years after they were seized as hostages and shot in the street by rebels of the Paris Commune. abortion early in pregnancy, and claim the drug is being singled out for political reasons. The Supreme Court’s decision maintains the status quo while the case plays out.

In an April 21 statement, President Joe Biden said he would continue “to stand by FDA’s evidence-based approval of mifepristone, and my Administration will continue to defend FDA’s independent, expert authority to review, approve, and regulate a wide range of prescription drugs.”

“The stakes could not be higher for women across America. I will continue to fight politically-driven attacks on women’s health,” Biden said. “But let’s be clear — the American people must continue to use their vote as their voice, and elect a Congress who will pass a law restoring the protections of Roe v. Wade.”

Erik Baptist, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the groups challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, said in a statement that “As is common practice, the Supreme Court has decided to maintain the status quo that existed prior to our lawsuit while our challenge to the FDA’s illegal approval of chemical abortion drugs and its removal of critical safeguards for those drugs moves forward.”

The revolutionary Commune was declared March 18, 1871, a year after worker groups in Paris had refused to accept France’s surrender to an invading Prussian army and standardized wages, commandeered empty housing for the homeless and turned the city’s factories into cooperatives. Its leaders also targeted France’s predominant Catholic Church, abolishing religious education and using places of worship as political clubs. “The story of these martyrs offers a warning for today, but also a message of hope from a Christian perspective,” said Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. “The circumstances to which they fell victim — with several dozen other people also massacred by revolutionaries in their violent folly — constitute a tangled and complex history. It mixes all kinds of issues, overlapping conditions, social ideologies and anti-religious sentiments, appeals to truth but also rivers of lies that poison mankind.” uProgress made protecting minors, but adults remain vulnerable to clergy abuse, say experts. The Catholic Church in the U.S. has made progress over the past two decades in confronting sexual abuse against minors within the Church, but has only begun to address the vulnerability of adults to sexual abuse by clergy, religious and lay leaders, experts told OSV News. “We’ve accomplished a tremendous amount in the area of (creating) safe environments,” said Suzanne Healy, chairwoman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Review Board, a lay-led group that advises the bishops on preventing sexual abuse of minors. At the same time, “there’s still a lot more work to be done” in extending safeguards to adults, she said. The newly revised papal reform, “Vos Estis Lux Mundi,” which specifically includes “vulnerable adults,” presents “a new frontier” for the Church, said Deacon Bernard Nojadera, executive director of the USCCB’s Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection, explaining that pastoral counseling and spiritual direction are particular areas of vulnerability to address. Other survivors’ advocates told OSV News that better reporting and information sharing regarding abuse investigations — possibly in the form of a national database — is needed. uCardinal: Papal commission begins building safeguarding culture in Curia. The heads of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection

“Our case seeking to put women’s health above politics continues on an expedited basis in the lower courts,” Baptist said. “The FDA must answer for the damage it has caused to the health of countless women and girls and the rule of law by failing to study how dangerous the chemical abortion drug regimen is and unlawfully removing every meaningful safeguard, even allowing for mail-order abortions. We look forward to a final outcome in this case that will hold the FDA accountable.”

In an April 22 statement, Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, called the Supreme Court’s interim order “a tremendous disappointment, both for the loss of innocent preborn life from chemical abortion, and for the danger that chemical abortion poses to women.”

“It is wrong to allow the FDA’s greatly diminished health and safety standards for mifepristone to remain in place,” the bishop said. “The FDA acted unlawfully when it first approved, and later relaxed safety requirements for prescribing and dispensing the drug. It is our hope and prayer that the Court will eventually overturn the FDA’s improper actions.” of Minors and a section of the Dicastery for Evangelization have signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at improving assistance to victims of abuse as well as bishops and local churches both in mission countries and emerging communities. U.S. Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston, president of the commission, and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, pro-prefect for “the first evangelization and the new particular churches” section of the dicastery, signed the agreement of collaboration at the Vatican April 21. The enhanced collaboration will include sharing resources, information and formation and “promoting concrete structural change to build a culture of safeguarding,” according to Vatican News April 21. Cardinal O’Malley said Pope Francis’ new mandate calls for the papal commission “to promote a culture of safeguarding in all the dicasteries of the Curia. The agreement with the Dicastery for Evangelization is just the first step of building that culture and “we’ll be working with other dicasteries in a similar fashion.” uPope appeals for end to violence in Sudan. Pope Francis has appealed for an end to violence in Sudan and a return to dialogue.

“I invite everyone to pray for our Sudanese brothers and sisters,” he said after reciting the midday “Regina Coeli” prayer with about 30,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square April 23. The pope had already expressed his concern about Sudan after the midday prayer April 16; fighting between forces loyal to two different generals has led to the deaths of hundreds of civilians since April 13. The power struggle has brought violence, shootings and bombings to the capital Khartoum and elsewhere. Electricity, internet and access to food and water have been cut off for many of the people. Pope Francis said April 23, “Unfortunately, the situation in Sudan remains grave, and therefore I renew my appeal for an end to the violence as soon as possible and for a return to the path of dialogue.” uJudges block Texas executions in day hailed by Catholic leaders as victory for life. Texas was without any scheduled executions April 21 after judges intervened in capital punishment cases to allow two men on death row a new opportunity to clear their names. A Texas judge on April 19 canceled the scheduled execution of a death-row inmate in the state after a new appeal in the case claimed he was wrongfully convicted on false testimony from two key witnesses in his 2001 trial. The same day, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of another Texas death-row inmate, Rodney Reed, in his efforts to seek DNA testing that his appeal argues may prove his innocence. The Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty is morally inadmissible and that the Church is committed to its global abolition. Jennifer Carr Allmon, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, told OSV News that “it’s the first time in my life and in my career that we have had a day in Texas where abortion is illegal and there are no scheduled executions on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website.” Allmon said she believed the mood on capital punishment is shifting in Texas, which has a reputation for being one of the biggest death penalty states. “We had a really exciting day,” she said. “It felt like life was winning, which was really encouraging.” uCatholic leaders, laity join in ‘Linking Arms for Change’ to push for gun safety in Tennessee. Thousands upon thousands of people in Nashville, Tennessee, representing multiple faiths and backgrounds, came together April 18 to create a three-mile human chain from Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center to the Cathedral of the Incarnation to the Tennessee State Capitol, in honor of the victims of The Covenant School shooting and to urge legislators to pass multiple gun safety measures. Among the thousands were Bishop Mark Spalding and several clergy and laity from around the Diocese of Nashville. The Diocese of Knoxville held a similar event simultaneously that encircled Market Square in downtown Knoxville. The event was put together by Voices for a Safer Tennessee, a newly formed “nonpartisan statewide coalition dedicated to prioritizing gun safety and advocating for common sense gun laws to make communities across Tennessee safer for all of us,” according to the official website, safertn org. Erin Hafkenschiel Donnelly, whose family members are parishioners of Christ the King, is a founding member of the coalition. She was in a meeting March 29, two days after the shooting in which six people, including three 9-year-old children, were killed, when she found that she couldn’t focus on the topic at hand. “I just kept focusing on the school and the families and feeling like we had to do something,” Hafkenschiel Donnelly said.