Both sides of the abortion debate will be focusing on Baltimore on Monday, when the City Council is expected to approve a first-in-the-nation law that would impose new regulations on faith-based organizations that try to steer women away from the procedure.

The measure, introduced by council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake at the behest of Planned Parenthood of Maryland, would require organizations such as the Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns to post signs saying they do not provide or make referrals for abortion or birth control.

Proponents say such organizations give false or misleading information about the effects of abortion and birth control. Pregnant women, they say, should be told when they are not being given access to all of the options legally available to them.

Keiren Havens, vice president of Planned Parenthood of Maryland, says the local effort could serve as a national model.

"We've been very concerned about crisis pregnancy centers for quite a while," she said. "There's a growing national network of crisis pregnancy centers that are specifically designed to target what they call abortion-vulnerable women and deny them full medical information about abortion and contraception, including referrals for those services. And that's of great concern to us just as a public health issue."

"It's not asking these centers to provide any sort of service that they find objectionable," added Jennifer Blasdell, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland. "It's just asking them to disclose what is true."

But officials at such centers say the information they give is accurate. They say that making them advertise the services that they don't provide would be an unprecedented form of harassment.

"It really impugns our integrity," said Carol A. Clews, executive director of the Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns, which has two locations in the city and a third in Dundalk. "We are very forthright about what we do here and what we don't do. To put us in a position where we would have to put up a sign is offensive."

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Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

In an apparent response to criticism of Catholic lobbying for tougher restrictions on abortion in the healthcare overhaul, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said church leaders have an obligation to raise their concerns in the debate.

The bishops opened their fall general assembly Monday at the Waterfront Marriott Hotel in Baltimore a week after lobbying successfully for an amendment to the healthcare bill approved by the House last week. The Stupak-Pitts amendment, named for the lawmakers who introduced it, would block federal subsidies for insurance policies that cover abortion. At least one Senate Democrat has said he would consider a similar measure as the upper body takes up the issue.

The amendment came as the result of a furious lobbying effort by the bishops’ conference, which has long called for universal health coverage but opposes abortion. The bishops’ role has drawn criticism from abortion rights supporters; Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat, suggested last week that the IRS might investigate the bishops’ tax-exempt status.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the president of the bishops’ conference, said "issues that are moral questions before they become political remain moral questions when they become political."

George said it was the job of the bishops to be public without being "co-opted" by any political agenda and serve as "leaven for the world's transformation" in policy debates, the Associated Press reports.

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Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

The American Civil Liberties Union, known as a watchdog for the separation of church and state, wants to make sure that prisoners have access to religious material.

In a letter sent last week to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Information and Privacy, the ACLU demanded that the federal Bureau of Prisons release records related to alleged attempts by prison officials to purge religious material from prison chapel libraries.

The demand follows what the ACLU says was an inadequate response by prison officials to a Freedom of Information Act request by a California graduate student writing a thesis on the censorship of religious materials in federal prisons.

According to the ACLU Joshua C. Harris, a master’s degree candidate in religion at Claremont Graduate University, is writing a thesis on the 2007 implementation of the Standardized Chapel Library Project, which authorized BOP officials to purge from prison chapel libraries any material that was not on a list of “acceptable” publications that the libraries could maintain. Among those titles banned at the time, the ACLU says, was Maimonides’ “Code of Jewish Law.”

“The refusal of prison officials to provide a full accounting of their rationale for banning religious material is just the latest example of an ongoing effort to secretly and unconstitutionally censor material they consider to be unacceptable,” David Shapiro, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project, said in a statement. “To deny prisoners their constitutional right to access religious materials is bad enough. But to attempt to do so in a way that skirts transparency and prevents the public from knowing what they are doing is entirely unacceptable.”

Harris filed a FOIA request in April asking for “any/all documents that detail the reasoning behind, and implementation of” the Standardized Chapel Library Project, according to the ACLU. The prison bureau gave him four documents.

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Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Church and State, Education, Judaism
        

A federal judge has ruled that South Carolina can't issue license plates showing the image of a cross in front of a stained glass window along with the phrase "I Believe,” the Associated Press is reporting.

U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie ruled Tuesday that the license violated the First Amendment ban on establishment of religion by government.

Within hours, a private Christian group said the ruling doesn't stand in the way of its "Plan B" to get a similar plate issued using a state law that permits private groups to issue tags they design, according to the AP.

The fight over the plates started shortly after Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer helped push the legislation through in 2008, the AP reports. Groups including Americans United for Separation of Church and State and American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee challenged the state's ability to put a religious message on a state license tag.

Read the rest of the story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (28)
        

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat dismayed by the House vote over the weekend to prohibit taxpayer subsidies for insurance policies that cover abortion in the healthcare overhaul, is saying maybe the IRS should investigate the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church following its lobbying effort for the restriction.

“I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill,” Woolsey writes in Politico. “I just didn’t expect it from the United States Council [sic] of Catholic Bishops … Who elected them to Congress?”

Abortion rights supporters say the restriction will effectively deny abortion for the low- and moderate-income women whom the healthcare overhaul is intended to insure. The U.S. Conference (not Council) of Catholic Bishops, which supports universal health insurance coverage but opposes abortion, lobbied hard for the restriction as the healthcare bill neared a vote on Saturday.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien told us on Monday that it was appropriate for Catholics to make their beliefs known during the healthcare debate.

"When it comes to abortion and research on human life, we can't compromise on those things," he said. "Once we get the foundation established that human life has to be respected, then let the debate go on as to what the health bill will contain."

But Woolsey says the bishops’ effort went beyond advocacy.

“They seemed to dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure. And this political effort was subsidized by taxpayers, since the Council enjoys tax-exempt status.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (53)
        

The historic House vote over the weekend to block the use of federal funds for abortion in the healthcare overhaul is only the beginning of a battle that is reshaping the reform debate.

While at least when Senate Democrat is talking about adding the restriction to that body's version of the legislation, dozens of House Democrats now say they will vote against any bill that contains it.

We have a story in Tuesday's newspaper about how Marylanders on both sides of the abortion divide are readying for the fight.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The City Council bill that would require pro-life pregnancy counseling centers in Baltimore to post signs indicating that they don’t provide abortions or birth control passed a first hurdle this week, clearing the judiciary and legislative investigations committee on Monday by a 3-1 vote.

It now goes to the full council for a preliminary vote next week, with a final vote to follow.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien has described the proposal as an unconstitutional “harassment” that infringes on the centers’ free speech. Carol Clews, executive director of the Center for Pregnancy Concerns, says it “impugns our integrity.”

Both say the centers in question do not hide their opposition to abortion. Clews has asked whether abortion providers will be required to post signs saying that they don’t refer pregnant women to adoption services or provide assistance to mothers and children after the birth – services offered by her organization, which operates two clinics in the city and one in the county.

The judiciary and legislative investigations committee amended the bill, which was introduced by council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake at the behest of Planned Parenthood, which hopes to make Baltimore the first city in the country with such a law. The committee voted to reduce the fine for not posting a sign from $500 per day to $150, and to require the city health commissioner to notify a center of a complaint and give the center 10 days to comply before facing penalties.

O’Brien remains unsatisfied. In his column in the archdiocesan newspaper The Catholic Review, he urges readers to contact city council members.

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Four Amish leaders have been charged with failing to report suspected child abuse after they chose to shun an accused child molester in their community rather than turn him in to authorities.

Each of the four bishops in rural Webster County, Mo., has been charged with a misdemeanor charge of failure to report child abuse as a mandatory reporter, according to the Associated Press. Under Missouri law, the AP reports, people with “responsibility for the care of children” – including doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers and ministers – are required to report suspected abuse.

Charged were bishops Emmanuel M.S. Eicher, 44, Peter M. Eicher, 59, Jacob P. Schwartz, 79, and Christian J.F. Schwartz, 41.

Authorities say the four men knew that a member of their community, Johnny A. Schwartz, 36, had abused two underage children from June 2007 through June 2008. Schwartz was charged in mid-October with six counts involving sexual abuse of children.

Authorities would not say how Schwartz and the bishops with the same surname are related, the AP reports. They also would not release the ages of the children or their relationship to Johnny Schwartz.

Sheriff Roye H. Cole said authorities found out about the alleged abuse from someone who works among the them, the AP reports. That individual, who has not been identified, had heard about Schwartz being shunned by the community and asked why.

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Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Amish, Church and State