Nina Martin Posts

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is meeting in Baltimore this week, and members are considering whether to begin the process of revising — and likely tightening — its directives governing health care mergers and partnerships. The goal, according to a USCCB press release, would be to incorporate Vatican principles ensuring that Catholic institutions do not “cooperate immorally with the unacceptable procedures conducted in other health care entities with which they may be connected” or “cause scandal” as a result of such collaborations.

What is the personhood movement? And when did this anti-abortion, anti-women and regressive political idea become such a force? A comprehensive timeline.

Alabama Supreme Court Judge Tom Parker is an avid "constitutionalist", a follower of the personhood movement, and a grave danger to Roe v. Wade.

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods birth control cases, the most significant religious-freedom cases in at least a generation. The central issue is whether or not companies whose owners have deep-seated religious objections to some forms of contraception should be required to provide birth control benefits to employees. A ruling isn’t expected until the end of June, so there’s plenty of time to do some background reading.

A suit against the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the hospitals they run has a stiff uphill climb. Religious doctrine forbids certain procedures like abortion from ever being done, even if it would save the life of the mother, the suit alleges. But procedural hurdles may scuttle the claim.

As director of the UCSF’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, part of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, Tracy Weitz has co-authored seven studies in major journals in the past year alone, on topics ranging from how low-income women pay for abortions to why some women who want an abortion delay until it is too late. Her invaluable research has led to law changes in California, as well as inadvertently and wrongfully in Texas, but the limitations of private funded research has Weitz looking at other avenues to help women.

Concerns are growing that Catholic hospitals are refusing to mention or offer abortion in the exceptional case of saving the mother's life. A Colorado cardiologist says he was faced with a severe reprimand because he mentioned the procedure as a possibility to a patient.

Catholic hospitals are merging at an astonishing rate in fairly liberal Washington state. This has very real repercussions in the realm of contraception, abortion and physician-assisted suicide.

When you read about abortion these days, the news is mostly about restrictions — new state laws, regulations, and court challenges — that aim either to make the procedure safer for women or to put providers out of business, depending on your point of view. But California is going in the opposite direction, with two bills that could lead to the one of the biggest expansions of access to abortion in the United States since the FDA approved mifepristone, aka the abortion pill, in 2000.