In a Friday night decision, the Supreme Court denied a Nevada church’s petition to block enforcement of Governor Steve Sisolak’s restrictions limiting religious gatherings to 50 people, regardless of the size of the building. Under Governor Sisolak’s orders, casinos, restaurants, and movie theaters are allowed to open at 50% capacity, rather than being limited to a strict number limit the way that churches are. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court allowed Nevada to continue to discriminate against churches by holding them to stricter limits than secular gatherings, thus communicating that to both Nevada and the majority on the Supreme Court, entertainment is more essential than the free exercise of religion.
In response to the Court’s refusal to block enforcement of Governor Sisolak’s orders, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel David Cortman said,
The First Amendment requires the government to treat religious organizations, at a minimum, the same as comparable secular organizations. When the government treats churches worse than casinos, gyms, and indoor amusement parks in its COVID-19 response, it clearly violates the Constitution. As Justice Alito noted, ‘The Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion. It says nothing about the freedom to play craps or blackjack, to feed tokens into a slot machine, or to engage in any other game of chance.’
One month after the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling,the ACLU has filed a lawsuit against a Catholic hospital that refused to perform a hysterectomy on a woman struggling with gender dysphoria.St. Joseph Medical Center was founded in 1864 by Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and has continued to operate in accordance with their beliefs for over 150 years. Because of those beliefs, the hospital canceled Jesse Hammons’s hysterectomy as it would have removed a healthy organ and left her sterilized. The ACLU argues that, in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling, the hospital’s actions are discriminatory.
In an ACLU press release, Hammon said, “The hospital will perform hysterectomies for everyone else, but they did not think that my life, as a man who is transgender, is equally worthy of protection.” This claim is false. St. Joseph’s Medical Center does not perform hysterectomies for “anyone else,” but instead, only performs them when medically necessary. In a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the general counsel for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote in 2016,
A hospital does not engage in ‘discrimination’ when, for example, it performs a mastectomy or hysterectomy on a woman with breast or uterine cancer, respectively, but declines to perform such a procedure on a woman with perfectly healthy breasts or uterus who is seeking to have the appearance of a man.
After years of hailing her as a hero, Planned Parenthood has decided to attempt to distance themselves from their founder, Margaret Sanger. Throughout her life, Sanger made it no secret that she was a firm believer in eugenics, arguing for the forced sterilization of the “unfit” and called her work the “greatest step toward race betterment.” She included a white supremacist on her board of directors, spoke at an event for a women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan, and used her work to target minority communities, opening her first birth control center in an immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn, and the second in Harlem. After decades of glossing over their racist and eugenics-based origins, Planned Parenthood announced on Tuesday that they would be removing Margaret Sanger’s name from their New York building and would be working with the city council to remove her name from Margaret Sanger Square. In an official statement, Karen Seltzer, the Board Chair at Planned Parenthood of Greater New York said,
The removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color. Margaret Sanger’s concerns and advocacy for reproductive health have been clearly documented, but so too has her racist legacy. There is overwhelming evidence for Sanger’s deep belief in eugenic ideology, which runs completely counter to our values at PPGNY. Removing her name is an important step toward representing who we are as an organization and who we serve.
Planned Parenthood’s attempt to distance themselves from Sanger’s racism and eugenicsis half-hearted and hypocritical at best. Following in the footsteps of their founder, the abortion giant continues to target minority communities and kills an estimated 247 black babies every day, and Live Action News has pointed out that 38% of reported abortions are committed on black women, while black Americans make up 12% of the U.S. population.
A recent study from Dr. Tricia Bruce at Notre Dame University revealed that American’s attitudes toward abortion are not always what they would seem to be based on polling data. She and her team conducted a study in which they interviewed people on their views regarding abortion, without letting them know ahead of time what they would be discussing. Rather than asking closed-ended polling questions, they spent over an hour talking to each interviewee and then analyzed the interviews for patterns and trends.
Most of the interviewees acknowledged that they had not given serious thought to the issue of abortion, and that it was a topic they had almost never discussed. “Nearly all Americans feel conflicted in some way about abortion,” observed Bruce. “Surveys underestimate the ambivalence that emerges when Americans talk through their own understandings of abortion.” Bruce also found that many interviewees would give one response regarding their views on abortion, and then follow up by explaining that their response doesn’t actually reflect their views, and that none of the individuals her team interviewed saw abortion as a desirable good. Near the conclusion of her report, Bruce writes,
Most Americans don’t know for themselves what they believe about abortion. No one has ever asked them, beyond a narrow dichotomy. Many are still figuring it out. Americans also find themselves bereft of scientific, legal, and moral lexicons to reason through difficult topics. Most work with a limited set of facts and tools in moral reasoning, leading them to positions without having contemplated the extent of implications.
“As or right now, his quality of life… he doesn’t have much of one.”
“What do you mean? Because he’s paralyzed with a brain injury he doesn’t have quality of life?”
“Correct.”
This was the conversation between a doctor at St. David’s Hospital in Austin, Texas and the wife of a quadriplegic man in early June. Michael Hickson, who was disabled due to an anoxic brain injury he had suffered in 2017, had been admitted to the hospital with a low-grade fever and pneumonia after testing positive for COVID-19 a few weeks earlier.Due to an ongoing custody dispute between Mrs. Hickson and her sister-in-law, a court had appointed Family Eldercare as Hickson’s temporary guardian and Mrs. Hickson no longer had the right to make medical decisions on behalf of her husband.In a recorded conversation between Mrs. Hickson and the hospital, one of the doctors treating Hickson explained that the decision had been made not to pursue further treatment and to instead put him on hospice care,and that this decision was made because of Hickson’s quality of life.When pressed on whether or not the quality of life assessment had been made because of Hickson’s disability, the doctor said that it was, and returned to that point more than once throughout the conversation, arguing that Hickson’s case was different from other patients, saying, “His quality of life is different from theirs. They were walking, talking people.” Six days later, Hickson died.
The New York Times recently proclaimed, “Churches were eager to reopen. Now they are a major source of coronavirus cases.”The since-modified headline is a gross overstatement and makes it sound as if churches have played a significant role in the spread of COVID-19. As Ed Setzer pointed out in Christianity Today, the New York Times reported that 650 cases had been linked to churches since the beginning of the pandemicwhen there have been over 3 million cases in the U.S. during that time. “650 nationally out of 3 million cases is a headline looking for a story,” writes Setzer. “The real story is this: churches are gathering and remarkably few infections are taking place.” Furthermore, out of over 300,000 churches in the U.S., only 40 have been linked to COVID outbreaks. Making the argument that the majority of churches are disregarding the safety of their parishionersand becoming a major source of the virus’s spread is ridiculous.
With religious gatherings being unfairlytargeted, this kind of reporting from the New York Times is dishonest and irresponsible. Churches are not compromising public safety, and they have not been a significant source of the spread of COVID-19. In the past week, there have been an average of 62,000 new cases reported per day. In other words, the number of cases per day is almost a hundred times as many as there have been linked to churches since March.
A federal judge on Monday waived a rule requiring an in-person visit before obtaining the abortion pill after the ACLUargued that the requirement poseda “substantial obstacle”during COVID-19. The abortion pill is subject to the FDA Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) protocol,and with good reason. In the 20 years that the abortion pill regimen has been legal in the U.S., thousands of women have experienced adverse effects and 24 have died. In May of this year, a woman who had taken the abortion pill was rushed from a Texas abortion facility to a nearby hospital as her oxygen levels dropped due to severe blood loss. Ignoring the dangers of the abortion pill, the ACLU filed a lawsuiton behalf of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic demanding thatthe FDA to waive the REMS requirement of an in-person visit.
Writing for Live Action, Nancy Flanders points out,
The purpose of undergoing a physical examination before taking the abortion pill is to ensure the gestational age of the child is not more than 10 weeks, that the woman is either Rh negative or positive, and that the pregnancy is not ectopic. In any of these cases, taking the abortion pill poses a potential health risk to the woman, including the possibility of future pregnancy loss, hysterectomy, and death.
Demanding the removal of in-person visits shows a serious disregard for the safety and well-being of women, and U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang was wrong to bow to the abortion lobby’s demands.
“Who am I to impose my beliefs on someone else?” has become an increasingly prevalent attitude among Christians, especially young Christians, as seen in recentdata indicating a growing acceptance of the LGBT movement among Evangelicals. According to political scientist Paul Djupe, 90% of Evangelicals believed their religion forbade homosexual behaviors in 2007. By 2020, that number had dropped by almost 30 percentage points. According to anotherresearcher, this is especially prevalent among young Evangelicals, with roughly 50% of Evangelical Christians between 18-35 affirming same-sex marriage in 2018. Alongside of this trend, many young people in the church have adopted a deeply secular attitude and treat Christian faith as simply one belief among many. Because of this, they increasingly see standing up for biblical teaching on sexuality as “imposing” their beliefs on others.
Christianity is not simply one belief among many equally valid options.The world is not a neutral space. As Abraham Kuyper put it, “There is not a square inch in all of creation over which Christ, who is Lord of all, does not declare, ‘Mine!’” God reveals himself both in Scripture and in nature, and what he reveals about himself and his handiwork in nature is in harmony with what he reveals in Scripture because God is consistent and does not change (Numbers 23:19). This means that we can and should expect to see nature affirming what the Bible teaches about sexuality, and we should point others to the way that nature affirms biblical teaching on sexuality and the family.
A Freedom of Information Act request filed by the March for Life organization revealed this week that Planned Parenthood North Central States, based in St. Paul, received a forgivable loan through the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) worth $5-10 million. Only one other Planned Parenthood affiliate received more than $5 million, and PP North Central States also reported the highest numbers of employees retained, 495, of any PP affiliate that received money through the program.
Their loan was approved on April 10, 2020, when elective surgeries were still banned in Minnesota under Governor Walz’s emergency order. But Planned Parenthood, supported by the state government, continued to perform abortions instead of conserving personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospitals treating COVID patients.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Supreme Court issued two 7-2 rulings today that are big victories for religious freedom. First, in the Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru case, the Court ruled that religious schools cannot be forced to hire and employ teachers that don’t hold fast to the school’s faith and religious practices. Next, in the Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania case, the Court upheld the Trump Administration’s rule that said religious employers cannot be forced to provide contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs in their health care plans, if doing so would violate that organization’s religious beliefs.
Religious schools, not the government, should have the final say in their hiring and firing decisions. The Court’s ruling protects the First Amendment by acknowledging that. Justice Samuel Alito wrote,
The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission. Judicial review of the way in which religious schools discharge those responsibilities would undermine the independence of religious institutions in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate.
On June 30th, the Supreme Court upheld religious freedom in education by ruling against a provision in the Montana state constitution that was used to excluded religious schools from tax-funded scholarship programs in Espinoza v. Montana. The case was brought before the court by three families who were recipients of the Big Sky scholarship fund, which focused on providing educational opportunities to low-income families and families of children with disabilities. Big Sky was part of a state program that granted a tax-credit to anyone who donated to participating scholarship organizations, which would then enable students to attend private schools by sending money directly from the scholarship organization to the school on behalf of the student.
When Kendra Espinoza, Jeri Anderson, and Jaime Schaefer attempted to use the fund to send their children to Stillwater Christian school,they were blocked by the Montana Department of Revenue on the basis of a “no-aid” provision in Montana’s state constitution. This no-aid provision was based on the Blaine Amendment, a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the late 1800s specifically designed to block funding to Catholic schools. While the amendment failed to pass the U.S. Senate with the necessary 2/3majority, similar amendments were adopted by over 30 states. These amendments lead to policies that single-out religious schools for different treatment simply for being religious, blocking them from grants and scholarship programs that are available to other private schools.
“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Jeremiah 29:7
This weekend, we celebrate our nation’s birth, not because our nation is perfect, but because our founding 244 years ago was the down payment on the promise of self-governance that could improve our nation over time.
That bold statement is possible because our Founding Fathers provided the longest-lasting framework of government in which “We the People” have the privilege and responsibility to exercise our rights as citizens “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” (Preamble to the U.S. Constitution)
Earlier this week, the Minnesota Department of Health released its annual report on abortion in Minnesota, finding that 9,922 abortions were committed in Minnesota in 2019. This marks a slight increase from the year before when there were 9,910 abortions committed in Minnesota.
Of those 9,922 abortions, 8,252 (83%) were performed after fetal heartbeat was detectable via ultrasound. Three babies were born alive during botched abortion procedures, but all three died shortly after. The report also revealed that 43% of the abortions performed in Minnesota were covered by public assistance, a sobering reminder that taxpayer dollars are being used to perpetuate abortion.
60% of the women who had an abortion in Minnesota last year had given birth at least once before, and 38% had previously had at least one abortion. Planned Parenthood continues to play an overwhelming role in Minnesota’s abortion industry, and in 2019 it committed 65% (6,451) of the abortions performed in our state, marking a steady increase in the percentage of abortions carried out by Planned Parenthood in Minnesota each year.
MINNEAPOLIS - Minnesota’s largest Christian public policy group, Minnesota Family Council, made the following statement about today’s Supreme Court ruling in June Medical Services v. Russo.
Today’s decision shows once again that the Supreme Court’s whole approach to abortion jurisprudence is antithetical to the goal of protecting human life. As Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent, “[The Court's abortion decisions] created the right to abortion out of whole cloth, without a shred of support from the Constitution’s text. Our abortion precedents are grievously wrong and should be overruled.”
Minnesota Family Council’s Director of Public Policy, Veronica, Faye, made the following statement: “Let’s be clear: when abortion businesses, who do not have women’s best interests at heart, are allowed to speak for women in courts of law, we are letting the fox guard the henhouse. Under the Louisiana law the Court struck down this morning, the state required abortion clinics to abide by the same standards of care required of other ambulatory surgical centers. By holding abortion clinics to a lower standard, the Court is failing women and girls. Abortion always kills a child, and often hurts a woman. All of Louisiana’s abortion clinics have been cited for safety violations - why would the Court trust them to have women’s best interests at heart? Minnesota Family Council will continue to work in state and federal legislatures, and in the court system, to fight for the God-given right to life.”
This week marked 48 yearssince Title IX became law,opening the door for women and girls to have equal opportunitiesto compete in sports. In the time since then there has been a remarkable increasein female involvement in athletics. Now, two in every five girls plays sports, ten times the number that did when Title IX went into effect.In less than 50 years, Title IX has created opportunities for women and girls offering advantages that go far beyond the accolades of the playing field.
Lisa Hoffer is one of those young women.Lisa began playing softball when she was five and basketball when she was seven. An accomplished athlete, she received multiple awards throughout high school, including All Conference Honors in both sports, the ExCEL Award during her junior year, and becoming her high school’s All Time Women’s Leading Scorer in basketball during her senior year. She has gone on to play both sportsat Bethel University where her basketball team qualified for the NCAA tournament this year.
I never thought I would have to tell my children that there would be negative consequences for believing that God created us distinctly male or distinctly female, or, that the U.S. Supreme Court would redefine “sex,” in certain provisions of the law, contradicting basic biology.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark opinion concerning the meaning of the word “sex” in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts. Six unelected Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court turned biology and the English language on its head when the majority held that “sex” has the same meaning as “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in discrimination claims.” Dissenting, Justice Alito, stated “There’s only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation…A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall.” Citing to the myriad of unsuccessful attempts by Congress to change the meaning of the word “sex” in Title VII, he explained, “[t]he questions in these cases is not whether discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity should be outlawed. The question is whether Congress did that in 1964. It indisputably did not.”
Casting aside biological realities will have consequences, despite the majority’s contention that “bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind” are for another day. We’re still left wondering about the impact of this ruling on religious freedom – particularly religious schools and other ministries. And what about the impact on women? We’re still left to wonder, can a male identifying as a female really win a women’s sports title? This decision certainly serves as an invitation for lower courts to continue building on this narrative, further redefining the meaning of the word “sex.” The consequence are real, and the outcomes are unpredictable, as the Court left many of these questions unanswered. Surely a myriad of lawsuits seeking these answers are forthcoming.
Many abortion activists insist that “abortion is a decision between a woman and her doctor!” This line of argument is used in an attempt to shut down the abortion debate, painting the pro-life movement as an intrusion on women’s privacy and healthcare. But how accurate is this claim? The claim that abortion is “between a woman and her doctor” makes two assumptions. First, that the woman seeking an abortion is the only person affected by her decision,and secondly, that abortion is performed exclusively for medical reasons.
Regarding the first assumption, we have to keep in mind that abortion is really about the life of the child in the womb. Neither a woman nor her doctor have the moral right to make a decision to end the life of another human being. Because of this, we cannot say that abortion is a private decision that ought to be kept between a woman and her doctor. In no other circumstances would we say that two people have a right to make a “private decision” determining whether or not another person should live or die. The death of millions of innocent humans is an issue that touches every single member of our society because disregard for the value and dignity of human life anywhere is a threat to human life everywhere. It is not up to a woman and her doctor to decide that a child does not get to live.
Yesterday the St. Paul City Council voted unanimously to enact a ban on so-called “conversion therapy,” following Minneapolis’s lead last fall. Despite the rhetoric, the ban is actually an attack on individual choice in health care as well as on the constitutional rights of therapists, patients, and families. St. Paul’s proposed ban could prevent mental health professionals from helping patients explore all options when addressing questions over sexual orientation and gender identity, something they should be free to do. “Young people should have access to voluntary, compassionate, client-driven care in the field of sexual identity that pursues the goals of the patient, including living in accordance with biblical teaching on sexuality or becoming more comfortable with their biological sex,” said John Helmberger, CEO at Minnesota Family Council.
The difference between what these bans claim to address and what they actually target is significant. Proponents of “conversion therapy” bans frequently point to horror stories of extreme, abusive instances of aversion therapy tactics. No one is arguing that these unethical practices should be used. Any licensed mental health professional who attempts to utilize such methodsshould lose their license. But as World magazine noted regarding Minneapolis’s ban, “Minneapolis council members… missed one glaring problem: Most tales of abuse apparently do not involve a licensed mental health professional.” These bans only address the actions of licensed mental health professionals who are already held to a standard of ethics that keeps them from resorting to the tactics described by proponents of these bans. If so-called “conversion therapy” bans were really addressing abusive situations, they would be redundant. The “conversion therapy” that these bans seek to limit is talk therapy, in which a licensed mental health professional helps their client through questions and conversation.“Conversion therapy” bans limit what counselors can say and what kind of questions they can ask when their client is dealing with questions regarding their sexual identity.
In March, as nursing homes were beginning to limit visitors in order to slow the spread of COVID-19, the heartwarming story of a man visiting his father at a Minnesota nursing home every day, sitting outside his window while chatting with him on the phone, made its way into many social media feeds. The story offered encouragement and hope in the midst of uncertainty. Come what may, the most vulnerable members of our communities would be cared for and we would weather this storm together. Putting nursing homes in lockdown and keeping families away from loved ones may be difficult, but if it was keeping people safe, it must be worth it, right?
By late Aprilthings had shifted. It became clear that elderly populationsmight not be as safe in nursing homes as people had hoped, and by the third week of May, Alpha News reported that Minnesota had the highest percentage nursing-home related COVID-19 deaths nationwide. What happened? Minnesota had followed New York and other states in funneling COVID-19 patients out of hospitals and into nursing homes.
During the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns, the Abortion Pill Rescue Network received a record number of calls. In February a mother gave birth to twins who were saved through the abortion pill reversal. Early this year a little boy named Isaiah celebrated his first birthday thanks to the Abortion Pill Rescue Network. To date the Abortion Pill Reversal Network has saved over 1,000 babies. Now abortion pill reversal websites are currently under attack as a pro-abortion “watchdog” group, Campaign for Accountability (CFA), demands that the FDA remove these websites.
Abortion pill reversalwebsites offer lifesaving hope. When a woman begins the abortion reversal process, the abortion industry has already made their money off of her, so why are the abortion industry’s allies dead set on taking down these websites? Because women who change their minds and find help from abortion pill reversal groups to save their babies challenge the abortion industry’s narratives. By choosing hope, they demonstrate that women do not need abortion in order to be successful and they promote a culture of life through their actions. Abortion pill reversals empower women to choose life, and that threatens the abortion industry and their allies.
