Insights & Resources
ABORTION RIGHTS HISTORY turned another page as the US Supreme Court neared the end of its recent term. The Court announced several important decisions, including June Medical v Russo, in which it upheld its own 2016 landmark decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.
AMERICANS WILL MARK THE 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade with celebration dinners, candlelight vigils and major protests. Despite the deep cultural divide Roe exposes, these events will have one thing in common: They will be almost exclusively about abortion. That’s because Americans have learned to see Roe only through a narrow lens, missing that the decision, and the right to privacy it conveyed, once stood for something much more expansive.
IN A SERIES OF PRIVATE memoranda this spring, US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh urged his colleagues to consider avoiding decisions in major disputes over abortion and subpoenas for President Donald Trump’s financial records, CNN reported exclusively.
SUCCUMBING TO MOUNTING legal pressure, Northern Ireland’s Department of Health authorized abortion services in the region, putting into force legislation that overturns one of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws.
Stephanie Toti is an advocate for sexual and reproductive rights within her own community, in society and the judicial system. She is a member of the board of directors of Whole Woman’s Health Alliance and is senior counsel and project director for the Lawyering Project, an organization she founded in 2017 aimed at improving access to reproductive healthcare in the US through litigation that advances an intersectional framework.
THE US ROMAN CATHOLIC Church used a special and unprecedented exemption from federal rules to amass at least $1.4 billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus aid through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Millions of dollars went to about 40 dioceses that have paid hundreds of millions in settlements or sought bankruptcy protection because of clergy sexual abuse cover-ups.
Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Roman Catholic cleric to ever face trial over child sexual abuse, walked out of prison a free man after Australia’s highest court reversed his 2018 conviction for molesting two boys decades earlier.
RIGHT TO LIFE OF MICHIGAN dropped a petition drive to prohibit a second-trimester procedure after state election officials said the campaign didn’t produce enough valid signatures.
ONCE A RELIABLE DEMOCRATIC constituency, Catholic voters are seen as a key swing bloc by many political observers. The campaigns of President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are making efforts to attract and energize their kind of Catholic voters: those motivated primarily by abortion, and those who see in the last four years a turning away from caring for society’s most vulnerable and marginalized.
AS POLAND’S PARLIAMENT pursued a controversial proposal to tighten what are already among the strictest abortion laws in Europe, dozens of women in cars and on bicycles protested in central Warsaw, honking horns and displaying posters against the law. Although public gatherings are banned, videos show people in the streets of Warsaw and Poznan following recom- mended social distancing and holding placards.
Washington, DC— Catholics for Choice is relieved to see the common sense decision announced today by the US Supreme Court in June Medical v Russo, ...
