Wyoming becomes first state to ban abortion pills

By Kate Scanlon OSV News

Wyoming became the first state in the nation to specifically ban the use or prescription of abortion pills on March 17.

Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed the bill into law with a ruling by a federal judge in Texas still outstanding that could potentially implement a nationwide ban on the drug mifepristone used in medication abortions amid a legal challenge brought by pro-life groups.

Wyoming’s Legislature passed two bills in March that would restrict abortion in the state. Gordon allowed the other bill to become law without his signature.

The other bill prohibits most abortions in Wyoming with narrow exceptions for cases of rape or incest, risks to the mother’s life, or “a lethal fetal anomaly.”

Local media reported that Gordon told reporters during a March 7 news conference he was weighing the bills’ constitutionality, and wanted to ensure there is an understanding of “how they interplay with one another; how they interplay with existing law.”

“And then also whether there are any unforeseen consequences that could be problematic,” he said.

State law gives Gordon 15 days to veto legislation or allow it to become law without his signature.

Gordon announced a list of his recently signed bills March 9, including legislation to boost the state’s tourism economy and efforts to protect the state’s Native American cultures. The abortion bills were not among those he signed at that time.

The ACLU of Wyoming had called on Gordon to veto the bills, circulating a petition arguing that “deeply private, personal, and unique decisions about abortion should be made by pregnant people in consultation with their doctors — who should be able to treat their patients according to their best medical (judgment).”

Students for Life Action, the lobbying arm of Students for Life of America, had urged Gordon to sign both bills, which the group characterized as important efforts to protect mothers as well as the preborn.

“Preborn children in Wyoming needed their representatives to step up to bat for them, and that’s exactly what we saw play out through a grueling amendment process thanks to principled leaders who boldly defended the preborn,” Dustin Curtis, SFL Action vice president of political affairs and operations, said in a statement.

Adam Schwend, SBA Pro-Life America’s western regional director, said in a statement that the legislation sent to Gordon’s desk “values all human life, born and unborn, and the wellbeing of women.”

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uBiden administration works to reduce ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency proposed in March the first federal limits on “forever chemicals” in drinking water, a move the Biden administration said will save thousands of lives and prevent some serious illnesses. The proposal would limit toxic PFAS chemicals, or per- and polyfluorinated substances, to the lowest detectable levels. The chemicals are known as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in water and are linked to an array of health issues when humans are exposed over time, including lower infant birth weights and kidney or testicular cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also has called for federal efforts to reduce human and environmental exposure to PFAS chemicals.

uSouth Carolina GOP lawmakers’ bill opens up women to death penalty over abortion, a move pro-life leaders reject. South Carolina lawmakers introduced a bill that could subject women who undergo abortions to the same punishments as those for murder in the state, including the death penalty. The proposal, which sparked criticism and controversy, stands in contrast with national pro-life leaders, who have rejected criminalizing women who undergo such procedures. The South Carolina Pre-Natal Equal Protection Act of 2023 would “afford equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization.” It would classify abortion as “willful prenatal homicide,” equivalent to “acts committed against a person who has been born.” Under the bill, an abortion would be considered homicide, subject to sentences of 30 years in prison or the death penalty. National and state pro-life groups condemned the proposal, and pointed to a May 2022 letter that leaders of 70 right-to-life organizations (including the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference) signed and sent to state lawmakers that read: “We state unequivocally that we do not support any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women and we stand firmly opposed to includ(ing) such penalties in legislation.” uUS extends stay for thousands of Ukrainians as war enters second year. Thousands of Ukrainians who fled their nation in the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion can now apply to extend their stay in the U.S. by one year. On March 13, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it would begin considering case-by-case extensions for Ukrainian nationals and immediate family members who entered the U.S. prior to the federal government’s Uniting for Ukraine program, which grants a two-year stay. The move aligns both groups of Ukrainian refugees in the U.S., who remain grateful for U.S. aid and continue to face challenges due to family separation, trauma, lack of employment and language barriers. Metropolitan Archbishop Borys Gudziak of Philadelphia, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the U.S., welcomed the extension. “Most refugees do indeed want to return to Ukraine. They love their country, their people, their culture,” he told OSV News. “(But) some people don’t have anything to go back to. Their towns and their cities have been destroyed. Others have children already traumatized by the brutality of the war, and they want to wait it out until the victory of God’s truth (in Ukraine).” uIndigenous Canadians seek support to fight violence against women, girls. Women leaders from among Canada’s Indigenous nations visited the United Nations’ New York headquarters seeking broad support, including from Pope Francis, in their campaign to stop violence against their communities’ women and girls. “We are united in our collective goal to end violence against Indigenous women,” RoseAnne Archibald, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations in Canada, said in her March 8 address to a nearly empty U.N. press room. Archibald said that in Canada there were “thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.” “It’s a national emergency,” said Archibald, explaining that this unresolved crisis is proof of “ongoing genocide.” Michèle Audette, an Indigenous leader and senator from Canada’s Quebec province, noted that Pope Francis’ Canada visit and subsequent apologies were useful in shedding light nationally and globally on abuses of Indigenous people that Catholic authorities had “covered up” for years. She encouraged him to do more to help hold those people accountable, and to “make an official declaration…of what he saw and heard in Canada” as well as provide access to Vatican archives and return to their nations “our sacred objects from Vatican vaults.” uAlbany diocese files for Chapter 11; Santa Rosa diocese files for bankruptcy. The Diocese of Albany New York announced March 15 that it has filed for bankruptcy reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Bishop Edward Scharfenberger said the decision is “the best way” to ensure that sexual abuse survivors with pending litigation against the diocese “will receive some compensation” amid what he called the diocese’s “limited self-insurance funds which … have been depleted.” In its official statement, the diocese said it has been “named in more than 400” lawsuits filed between Aug. 15, 2019, and Aug. 14, 2021, under the New York Child Victims Act of 2019, which extended the state’s former statute of limitations by granting a one-year look back for time-barred civil claims to be revived. The Diocese of Santa Rosa in California filed for bankruptcy March 13, days after Bishop Robert Vasa concluded the decision was necessary to address potentially 200 new claims brought against the diocese by survivors of child sexual abuse. Legislation in California opened a three-year window in the statute of limitations, from Jan. 1, 2020, to Jan. 2, 2023, that allowed survivors of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits within that time frame. u’New pro-life agenda’ sees wins in state battles to expand Medicaid coverage for new moms. The pro-life movement in post-Dobbs America requires robust support for health care and social service programs to accompany parents who choose life, some clergy, legislators and advocates told OSV News — including efforts to expand Medicaid coverage for postpartum mothers. After a two-year clash of political wills, Mississippi’s House March 7 passed 88-29 a Medicaid postpartum coverage extension already approved by the state Senate, after the governor said the legislation was part of the “new pro-life agenda.” Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon signed a similar expansion into law March 3, calling it a “signature piece of pro-life legislation” that is expected to help as many as 2,000 low-income Wyoming mothers. The 2021 American Rescue Plan Act allowed states to extend Medicaid pregnancy coverage from 60 days to one year postpartum — however, the law’s provision expires in May. “I am grateful for the prayer, hard work and collaboration that brought this bill to the finish line,” Bishop Joseph Kopacz of Jackson, Mississippi, told OSV News. “One big step forward for the common good.”

— OSV News

The Director is responsible for the overall management of six owned and operated cemeteries of The Catholic Cemeteries Corporation

Deadline: April 14, 2023

Dan Delmore • ddelmore@delmore.com

Church in Ireland aims to boost priestly vocations with new program

Irish bishops’ Council for Vocations told OSV News.

The Church in Ireland is launching a Year for Vocations as it grapples with a steep decline in seminary numbers and with aging priests.

Focused on diocesan priesthood, the special year opens April 30, on the 60th anniversary of St. Paul VI’s launching of the World Day of Prayer for Vocations in 1963. It will last until April 2024.

Take the Risk for Christ is the theme of the initiative, which was unveiled at the national seminary in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, March 7 by the Irish Bishops’ Council for Vocations.

It takes place as the Irish Church’s 26 dioceses implement radical structural changes, including parish partnerships and enhanced roles for the laity, to offset the lack of priests.

“I suggest you look at your priest. He may be the last in a long line of resident pastors and may not be replaced,”

Archbishop Francis Duffy told the congregation in St. Mary’s Church, Westport, in the Archdiocese of Tuam last July. His stark warning was borne out by a survey published by the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) last November that showed that a quarter of all priests currently serving in the Irish Church are set to retire over the next 15 years.

The survey revealed that 547 of the 2,100 priests working in the Irish Church are between the ages of 61 and 75 and nearly 300, or 15%, of working priests are 75 years old or older. The survey also showed that just 52 priests — or less than 2.5% of working priests — are younger than 40, and there are just 47 seminarians in St. Patrick’s College. In 1984, there were 171 ordinations in Ireland.

One of the factors that has contributed to the decline in vocations is the clerical sexual abuse scandals. It was publicly underscored recently when a rising political star of the Fianna Fáil party announced he was resigning his council seat to train as a priest. Thirty-year-old Councillor Mark Nestor said he first thought about priesthood in his late teens but was “put off by the various scandals involving the Church in Ireland.”

“There are vocations in Ireland. God is constantly calling; it’s just that in the midst of the loudness of the alternative voices, God is being drowned out a bit at present,” Bishop Lawrence Duffy of the

Ordained in 1976, Bishop Duffy trained for priesthood at Carlow College, St. Patrick’s, one of a string of seminaries across Ireland that no longer offers formation. Bishop Duffy said the Church of the future “will be less clerical and less dependent on a priest” as the Irish Church moves toward “greater lay leadership.” But he underlined, “To say that there are ‘no Irish priests’ is clearly not true.”

A case in point is the Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Dundalk, in the Archdiocese of Armagh, seat of the Primate of All Ireland and the place where St. Patrick is reputed to have built his first church. Last year the seminary, which was established in 2012 to form priests for the Neocatechumenal Way, announced it was building an extension to cater to a sustained growth in vocations. So far, four priests have been