Catholic News 2

Rome, Italy, Apr 1, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Reproductive issues often leave Catholics and secular feminists at odds, but a recent anti-surrogacy conference in Rome has created an unusual camaraderie between the two.

“Se Non Ora Quando,” a feminist group known for its left-wing views, called surrogacy “incompatible with human rights and with the dignity of women,” according to the Atlantic.

The conference met last Thursday at a lower House of Parliament in Rome. Women intellectuals, doctors, and scholars from all over the world, pleaded with the United Nations to ban European citizens from traveling abroad to procure surrogate mothers.

Surrogacy is when a woman carries a baby to term for a third party, often involving payment. The pregnancy is achieved by in-vitro fertilization, in which an egg is fertilized in a lab then placed into the woman's womb.

While the practice is legal in Canada and most of the United States, regulations vary depending on the state. Surrogacy is banned, however, in almost all of Western Europe, including France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, and Italy. Some countries, such as England, do not enforce surrogate contracts and women are not required by law to give up the baby they bore for a third party.

The Catholic Church opposed surrogacy in Donum Vitae, a document on biomedical issues written in 1987.

“Surrogate motherhood represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love,” the document reads. It further called the practice a “detriment” to the family and the dignity of the person by divorcing “physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families.”

In recent years, left-wing feminists have actively opposed surrogacy in countries like Spain and France, claiming it as an attack against women's dignity, especially as an injustice to the poor. They have compared surrogacy to prostitution, and the expressed their concern for its promotion of human trafficking.  

“The state of necessity of women who turn to renting their womb, for a price, is not unlike sexual exploitation,” said the Spain-based Feminist Party, who protested a local surrogacy fair in 2016.

The United Nations' parliament condemned surrogacy in 2015, labeling it as a practice which “undermines the human dignity of the woman since her body and its reproductive functions are used as a commodity.” World leaders have also identified a high of surrogate mothers are poor women in third world countries.

Sheela Saravanan gave her testimony to the “Se Non Ora Quando” conference last week, detailing the struggle women are faced with in India.

“Our surrogate mothers are stressed physically and mentally even if they receive money,” and they experience “poverty, illiteracy, submissiveness,” Saravanan said, according to the Italian bishops' newspaper Avvenire.  

She also explained that these “mothers who do not claim rights” are subject to abortions if the baby is disabled.

Many feminists have expressed concern that surrogacy not only coerces impoverished women, but has unhealthy side effects. The psychologist Fabio Castriota, told the conference that birth and motherhood are inseparable, and that a “separation trauma” leaves an impression on both the baby and the woman.

“Se Non Ora Quando,” means “If not now, when?” The group emerged in response to what they view as the sexist treatment of women in the media. They are especially known for organizing the 2011 rally against then-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who faced accusations of sleeping with an underage woman.

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

Full Article

(Vatican Radio) Serbia's strongman Aleksandar Vucic aims to consolidate his grip on power as he seeks to win a presidential election despite opposition fears that the country is heading towards authoritarian rule. While the post of president has largely been ceremonial, critics believe that it would be a more influential position if occupied by Vucic who tries to balance Serbia's interests in historical ally Russia and the European Union.  

Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:

Serbia's opposition says Prime Minister Vucic, who is running for president Sunday, is trying to concentrate power in his own hands. 

One of his main challengers, Presidential hopeful  Vuk Jeremic, is among those openly expressing concern about the situation. 
"This is the first time [Europe's security organization] OSCE was not invited to observe the elections," he said. 

"This is a campaign in which the ruling party’s candidate received 120 times more media coverage than all opposition candidates combined,” Jeremic added.

He and others also say that the campaign for Serbia's presidential poll was the dirtiest since the elections that kept strongman Slobodan Milosevic in power in the 1990s.

MORE TENSIONS

This is expected to lead to even more tensions in the small Balkans country of 7.1 million where the average salary is one of Europe's lowest. 

Vucic says he should be president in part because Serbia saw some economic progress since he become prime minister in 2014. His government even achieved growth of 2.8 percent last year and began cleaning up the public finances.

But the average Serbian still earns $355 per month, far below the average of most member states of the European Union which Serbia seeks to join. In addition unemployment is above 15 percent.

Vucic's centre-right Serbian Progressive Party is pro-EU. But the majority of the population is made up of Orthodox Slavs and many have a closer affinity to traditional ally Russia.

That's why Vucic travelled to Moscow just a week before the vote to discuss the delivery of six Russian Mig-29 aircraft.

BULLISH CAMPAIGN

He also ran a typically bullish campaign, with a video showing a plane marked "Serbia 2017" about to crash for a lack of leadership and taking out full-page ads in the press. 

The opposition hopes to force Vucic into a second round, which will be held if nobody receives more than 50 percent of the vote.  

Shaking up the race is Luka Maksimovic. He campaigns in a Borat-style white suit, sports a samurai-style ponytail and hipster beard, touts a manifesto studded with lunatic pledges and uses a made-up name that mocks politics as the circus of greed.

Using the fictional name of Ljubisa Preletacevic -- nicknamed "Beli" (White) -- analysts claim he could even come second in the race behind Vucic, making this elections even more complicated and interesting.  

Full Article

(Vatican Radio) An attempt to remove one term Presidential limits in Paraguay, has resulted in riots during which the Congress building in the Capitol Asuncion has been attacked, looted and burned. 

Listen to the report by James Blears:

President Horacio Cartes` Administration ends next year. However Senators have narrowly approved a bill, which means a President can run yet again.  

This overturns a law added to Paraguary`s Constitution in 1992 restricting a President to one single five year term.  
Paraguayans are determined NOT to ever again be in the repressive grip of a dictator. General Alfredo Stroessner launched a coup in 1954.  His dictatorship lasted 35 long years. He himself referred to it as "State of siege."  He was ousted in 1989,  and died at the ripe old age of 93,  in Brazil in 2006. 

Demonstrators chanting that this won`t be repeated,  smashed windows in the Congress Building, gained access and trashed offices of legislators who`ve supported this amendment.  Mounted riot police were rapidly deployed on the streets,  water cannon and volleys of rubber bullets were launched.  One activists has  been killed and thirty people have been injured including Legislators. Scores have been arrested. 

President Cartes is appealing for calm. 

Full Article

Washington D.C., Apr 1, 2017 / 11:57 am (CNA).- When last week’s health care bill failed, it wasn’t just Democrats who fought it.

The GOP-led American Health Care Act drew bipartisan resistance for numerous reasons. One of the Republicans who opposed the proposal was Rep. Chris Smith, chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus.

In a statement explaining his decision, Smith said that although the bill included positive pro-life protections, he ultimately could not give the legislation his support because of how other provisions would “likely hurt disabled persons, the elderly and the working poor.”

He cited concerns about how the House bill would have cut Medicaid expansion and canceled essential health benefits for children and pregnant women, as well as for those struggling with addictions and mental health issues.

The American Health Care Act would have made significant changes to the Affordable Care Act, the massive health care law passed in 2010.

However, the new health care bill failed to gain enough support to be sent to the House Floor for a vote, and was ditched at the last minute before a planned vote last Friday.

In a letter to members of Congress on Thursday, the U.S. bishops voiced their opposition to the proposed replacement bill, while at the same time making clear that the current health care law has serious flaws that need to be corrected.

“It was widely accepted that the AHCA contained serious deficiencies,” three leading bishops wrote. “Yet, other problems and barriers to access and affordability within the current health care system still remain.”

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, chair of the bishops’ pro-life committee; Archbishop William Lori, chair of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty; and Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, chair of the bishops’ domestic justice and human development committee, were all signatories of a March 30 letter for Congress calling for bipartisan health care reform that would help lower health care premiums and expand access, especially for undocumented immigrants.

With these ongoing problems of increasing premiums and “barriers to access” of health care, along with a lack of conscience protections for health professionals and protections against federal funding of abortion coverage, “lawmakers still have a duty to confront these significant challenges,” the bishops wrote.

While long pushing for health care reform, the U.S. bishops’ conference had ultimately opposed the Affordable Care Act, in part because it lacked legal safeguards against federal funding of abortion coverage.

The late Cardinal Francis George, then-president of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, wrote at the time of the law’s passage that “there is compelling evidence that it [the ACA] would expand the role of the federal government in funding and facilitating abortion and plans that cover abortion.”

Now, the bishops said in their letter, if full-scale reform is not possible, targeted legislation for specific policies – like the Conscience Protection Act – should be passed, they added. “We urge members of Congress to seize this moment to create a new spirit of bipartisanship and make these necessary reforms.”

In his explanation of opposing the bill, Rep. Smith singled out its proposed cuts to Medicaid and to the Medicaid expansion, noting that according to a Congressional Budget Office report, it would cut Medicaid funding by $839 billion over ten years.

It would also eventually curtail the expansion of Medicaid, a key part of the Affordable Care Act. Under current law, the federal government has increased Medicaid funding to states on the condition that they expanded the Medicaid rolls. It has been credited with expanding Medicaid coverage by 14.5 million since 2013, according to a March 2016 HHS report.

The House plan phased out that Medicaid expansion and would ultimate have cut almost a trillion dollars from Medicaid in ten years according to the CBO, Smith pointed out.

“For years, I have supported Medicaid expansion as a meaningful way of providing access to health care for struggling individuals and families living above the poverty line but still poor despite being employed,” Smith stated, noting that “80 percent of all Medicaid enrollees in New Jersey are families with at least one working adult in 2017.”

He added that in New Jersey, where his congressional district is located, “the bulk of Medicaid funds are spent assisting the disabled and the elderly,” and that most of enrollees in the state were new.

“These people are in need and deserve our support,” he said, pointing to opposition to the AHCA Medicaid changes from the U.S. bishops’ conference and disability advocate groups.

He cited the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, a coalition of over 60 groups who wrote that states, when left with the bill for Medicaid, would start cutting costs beginning with programs benefitting the disabled.

The consortium stated that “people with disabilities are particularly at risk because so many waiver and home- and community-based services are optional Medicaid services and will likely be the first services cut when states are addressing budgetary shortfalls.”

Smith also opposed the bill because it “cancels essential health benefits such as maternity and newborn care, hospitalization, pediatric services, and mental health and substance use treatment.” The Affordable Care Act mandated these services.

All this, he said, “will likely hurt disabled persons, the elderly and the working poor.”

 

Full Article