c. 2004 Religion News Service

Second Court Strikes Down `Partial-Birth’ Abortion Ban

(RNS) A second federal judge has struck down a law against so-called “partial-birth” abortions as unconstitutional, a ruling that conservatives said was disappointing but predictable.

U.S. District Judge Richard Casey called the procedure “gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized,” but said the law signed by President Bush last November does not include a exception to protect the health of the mother.

Four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court mandated such a provision when it struck down a similar Nebraska law. The new law allows the procedure if the mother’s life is threatened, but does not include a broader exception if a doctor felt the procedure might improve a patient’s health.

“This gruesome procedure may be outlawed only if there exists a medical consensus that there is no circumstance in which any women could potentially benefit from it,” Casey ruled.

On June 1, a federal judge in San Francisco also struck down the law, and a federal court in Nebraska is considering a parallel challenge to it. The Bush administration is planning to appeal the rulings to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Critics of the rarely used procedure condemn it as infanticide because it involves partially removing the fetus from the womb in the second or third trimester, at which point surgical scissors are used to collapse the baby’s skull. Critics say the babies feel pain from the procedure.

“Whatever the courts may decide, this issue has already been decided in the court of public opinion,” said Dr. David Stevens, director of the Christian Medical Association. “The verdict is that Americans have declared this to be a barbaric procedure.”

Cathy Cleaver Ruse, a spokeswoman for the pro-life office of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, blamed the decision on the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.

“Today, Roe v. Wade once again made the unthinkable constitutional,” she said in a statement. “Because of Roe, killing a child in the process of being born is called a constitutional right rather than an act of barbarism.”

Abortion rights supporters, meanwhile, said Casey’s decision protects Roe v. Wade from erosion. “We see this decision as another important victory in the ongoing struggle to protect reproductive rights,” said June Walker, national president of Hadassah, a Jewish women’s group.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Catholic Bishops Call for `Bottom-Up’ Trade Policies

WASHINGTON (RNS) An annual Labor Day statement from the nation’s Catholic bishops calls for trade policies that examine the needs of workers “from the bottom up.”

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington called on governments to pursue trade agreements that encourage growth on both sides, reduce poverty, respect workers’ rights and protect the environment.

“On this Labor Day, we urge our leaders to look at trade policies from the bottom up _ how they touch the lives of the poorest families and most vulnerable workers in our own country and around the world,” he said.

McCarrick, chairman of the bishops’ domestic policy committee, said shipping jobs overseas to cheap labor markets can lead to “resentment” among U.S. workers and foster “protectionist” attitudes that ultimately harm those same overseas workers.

He also discounted the view that low-paying jobs are better than no jobs, or that pollution is a necessary byproduct of economic growth. “We respond that one failing does not justify another,” he said.

McCarrick said bottom-line profits and trade deficits or surpluses are not the true scale that should be used to measure trade agreements.

“The moral measure of trade policy is not simply the trade increased, the growth produced or the money made,” he said. “Rather, it is the lives lifted up, the decent jobs created and the families leaving poverty behind.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Archbishop Blasts New Orleans Gay Festival

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes on Tuesday (Aug. 24) deplored the upcoming Southern Decadence festival and other local commercialization of gay and straight sex as a blight on the city’s national image.

But a promoter for the annual event said such assertions couldn’t be further from the truth and urged Catholics to attend the event.

Hughes’ statement closely tracked one he issued in 2003 as the Labor Day weekend festival approached. The network of private parties has become one of the premier gay events in the country.

Southern Decadence promoter Rip Naquin, a practicing Catholic, said Hughes does not understand what the festival is all about.

“Southern Decadence is a celebration of gay life, music and culture,” Naquin said. “It’s very similar to what Mardi Gras is for the straight world.”

Although Hughes’ statement was timed to the approach of this year’s festival, his scope was wider than Southern Decadence.

“The commercialization of sexuality, both heterosexual and homosexual, does not promote respect for persons, family or the common good,” he said. “I urge all Catholics and our fellow New Orleanians to refrain from participating in all those activities which glamorize any behavior that disrespects the dignity of the human person and works against the common good.”

Naquin, however, encouraged all Catholics to come out and take a look at the festival, which he said gives the city’s sluggish summer economy a tremendous boost each year.

_ Bruce Nolan

Actor Alec Baldwin Honored by Muslim Public Affairs Council

LOS ANGELES (RNS) Actor Alec Baldwin was the main honoree at the Aug. 21 media awards banquet held by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, with the Democratic Party-supporting actor denouncing President Bush and Fox News Channel anchor Bill O’Reilly.

“America will do great things again,” Baldwin said in his acceptance speech before several hundred people at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

His speech was sharply critical of the Bush administration.

“The Bush administration is all about the reaffirmation (of) the United States as a white, Christian, male-dominated society,” said the 46-year-old Irish-American actor. He said he thinks administration officials believe many Americans “are created less than equal,” and that Bush supporters “would like to turn the clock back to 1750.”

MPAC honored Baldwin for what it said was the actor’s commitment to “maintaining such strong positions on civil liberties at a time when critics and dissenters were labeled unpatriotic.” The group’s tribute reel showed Baldwin debating civil liberties issues with O’Reilly and also with Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, a harsh critic of Muslims and Muslim organizations.

Baldwin’s film credits include “The Hunt for Red October,” his Oscar-nominated role last year in “The Cooler” and “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

Prior MPAC honorees include filmmaker Michael Moore and actor Mike Farrell, who attended this year’s awards dinner along with radio personality and prominent Arab-American Casey Kasem.

“I’m here because I care about the truth,” Baldwin said upon accepting the MPAC honor.

MPAC executive director Salam Al-Marayati said American Muslims are following in the immigrant footsteps of Catholics and Jews in terms of assimilation.

“We are on their shoulders,” he said, adding, “When we see character assassination, we should be the first and foremost to condemn that.”

_ David Finnigan

Memorial Chapel to Welsh Hymn Writer Crumbling

LONDON (RNS) A campaign has been launched to raise $45,000 to save a chapel built as a memorial to the man regarded as Wales’ greatest hymn-writer. The chapel is in danger of crumbling into disrepair.

Nearly a century after the death in 1791 of William Williams Pantycelyn, best known for the hymn “Guide me, o thou great Redeemer” (“Arglwydd, arwain trwy’r anialwch” in the original), a chapel was built in his memory in his hometown of Llandovery in 1886.

Ironically, given that Williams wrote in Welsh, the chapel was built for English-speakers who were flooding into the town when the railway was being built.

The pulpit of stone from Caen in Normandy has five panels: four depict biblical scenes, while the fifth shows Williams writing on a scroll.

But the chapel’s facade is crumbling, and the $45,000 is needed to match the funding from the local Townscape Heritage Initiative to carry out the first phase of restoration next year.

To distinguish him from all Wales’ other William Williams, the hymn-writer has become known as Pantycelyn after the farm just outside Llandovery where he was born in 1717. He published at least eight collections of hymns in Welsh and two in English, as well as poems and prose writings.

_ Robert Nowell

Quote of the Day: Time Magazine Essayist Nancy Gibbs

(RNS) “In an age with no free time, we buy it through hard choices. Do we skip church so we can sleep in or skip soccer so we can go to church or find a family ritual … that we treat as sacred? That way, at least some of our Sunday faces in a different direction, whether toward heaven or toward one another.”

_ Nancy Gibbs, an essayist for Time magazine, writing about how Sunday has become less a day of rest and more like any other day of the week, in the magazine’s Aug. 2 issue.

DEA/PH END RNS